On Wednesday 11 July Roy Vickery will be leading a wildflower walk at Cranham Marsh Nature Reserve, Upminster.   Organised by the local Green Party, this will be the fifth annual walk at the site; for further details see the Events page on this website.

Report:  Unfortunately this event coincided with England playing Croatia in the football World Cup semifinals, so only four people (instead of the usual 20+) turned up.  The Nature Reserve seems to be relatively unharmed by the recent drought, and betony (Betonica officinalis) was looking particularly colourful.  Despite being ‘officinalis‘ – suggesting that it has medicinal uses – these uses seem to have been long forgotten, and no such uses have been collected by the Plant-lore Archive project.