…not sure what it’s like around your area but it seems particularly epic this year. A sea of white where I live – I’m not the sort to usually notice this sort of thing, so maybe it’s always been this way! 🙂
Yes it’s been the best showing of blossom I’ve seen for a good few years. From our attic window there are bushes way up into the hills that are visibly white.
So much insect life on them too. Hopefully a good berry season later in the year.
Ditto here – brilliant showing from the hawthorn this year. Don’t remember it as full on as this.
Nor do I ever recall a year like last for sycamore seeds, which are sprouting all over the place and we’ve literally got a carpet of the bloody things in places.
Agreed a great year for them. I think up north a cool start to the year held back the blossom past the frost period and now we have nice warm and calm weather.
I was up Whinlatter one evening last week and the view from the North red side back towards Keswick was filled with a white blanket in places.
In the last couple of weeks it’s been stunning in West Yorkshire, the Forest of Bowland and up near Winter Hill. Is the pinkish one a different sub-species?
I can’t remember it being like this before. Is it the mild, wet spring followed by a warm dry spell causing this?
I was thinking the same over the weekend, its an absolute sea of white and pink around the South Downs this year. Absolutely incredible. Even the twigs I planted in the garden for hedging last winter flowered.
As a novice beekeeper (see a previous thread), the bees have gone absolutely berserk for it – I’m continually checking they have room to store all the nectar, and adding more empty boxes every 4 days or so, to encourage them not to swarm!
Was just saying the same this weekend. I think because it’s not rained for 3 weeks and been really sunny the blossom has lasted longer and been more plentiful
I planted a tiny little hawthorn at the bottom of my garden several years ago, to fill in a gap left by my cutting down a horrible straggly elder, and this year it flowered right at the beginning of the month. The gorse I dug up as a tiny little plant from Fyfield Down around the same time is a lot bigger and has been flowering for several years.
I was up on Morgan’s Hill nature reserve at the weekend, looking for early orchids, and the hawthorn was out as far as I could see, which was Cherhill to the east. There are loads of bushes in the middle distance as well. Found some orchids, a few common spotted, quite a few twayblades, and a single large butterfly orchid, which I’ve never seen there before. Lesser butterfly orchids in quite large numbers, but not in this particular area of the site