Toothwort and Violets

Giving priority to redecorating a bathroom I missed the annual count of flowering Yellow Star-of-Bethlehem plants at Whitehill Wood two weeks ago.   To catch up I went there yesterday, but found only 2 flowering plants, (cf the official count's 10 flowering plants) spotting made difficult by the conditions - rain - and the flowers were well past their best.   On my 5m test strip I counted 46 plants from the path to the river, and 47 1 metre back from the path.  There were no flowers.  Most were juvenile plants with very narrow leaves; one of the flowering plants further away had by contrast a leaf of width 8.1mm.   

However the later visit meant that the attractive parasitic plant, toothwort (Lathraea squamaria) which is easily seen there, was in full flower.  

Toothwort

Early Dog-violet

Yellow Star-of -Bethlehem

There were lots of violets, almost all surprisingly early dog-violets (Viola riechenbachiana).  Closer to home the commonest violet seems to be sweet violet (Viola odorata), both the purple and white forms.   I did find one which was part way between these two colour forms.

Mixed colour form of Sweet violet

In the wood near Park Farm I found this alien corydalis which I think is Bird-in-a- Bush (Corydalis solida):

Bird-in-a-Bush

Muscari are everywhere at the moment, but I am convinced that in quite a few of the gardens and verges around the village they are Muscari neglectum, the scarce native plant (which is thought to be naturalised in Oxfordshire eg at Chadlington), rather than Garden grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum).  An example from Park Hill, in the village:

Muscari neglectum