A trip to Ards forest park - an ancient coastal forest.
Today - flowers from Ards forest park. More fungi from Ards tomorrow.
Bright periods with occasional torrential rain.
A new flowering plant for me - the native Golden Rod - Solidago virgaurea. A bit late, but most of the plants had gone over.
Ards forest is on a peninsula jutting out into the sea. At the fringes there are dunes and grassy meadows. I spotted a few of these Harebells still in flower.
And close-by I found a few Yarrow plants with bright purple petals.
I'd always associated Devil's-bit Scabious with open heath, but there were quite a few specimens growing in the fringes of the woodland. They were much more lush than I'm used to, with many rich green leaves.
And here's one I took today and just had to show. This is a Lycoperdon puffball, doing what puffballs are named for. The brown mist in the photo is the spores emerging from the hole in the top of the fungus.
