The Lyons Share

I went to meet Jo for lunch on Brighton Uni's Falmer campus and found loads of cool and scarce plants. I was however hampered by things like forgetting my memory card so I didn't get photos of everything. At a bus stop I found this huge patch of Strawberry Clover, a plant I usually see in coastal grazing marshes. The flowers look like a small cross between Red and White Clovers but the fruiting head is something else, looking like a papery, bleached strawberry, it is this that gives the flower its name. It is surprisingly easy to walk right past this plant and I think it's the first time I have seen it in Sussex although I don't think it's that scarce.  This patch was perhaps a metre in diameter and roughly circular.

With all the development that is going on the campus, the site is like an arable plant nature reserve! In the half hour I was there I saw Sharp-leaved Fluellen, Babington's Poppy, Wild Pansy, Equal-leaved Knotgrass and most amazingly Dense-flowered Fumitory. This last one is nationally scarce, I have seen it before at Southerham and it looks quite different to other fumitories but I wish I had got a photo. I might try and get back to the spot. Jo found a Knotgrass moth larvae as well as a Forest Bug.