Amateur botanist

Now the morning walks are almost a habit, and I look forward to new routes. This morning I walked for the first time the "long" route; I added the whole 1.3 km running/ski track to my normal walk. This is the view from the highest hilltop to the South.





This time I concentrated on the berries. They look a lot nicer than most mushsrooms ;) ! This is the European blueberry, or bilberry (Vaccínium myrtillus), in autumn colours. The berry time was in July/August.




This is lingonberry thinking it is June, white flowers in September:

And here are the berries. I just found in the dictionary that the lingonberry is only the commercial name for the berries, and the Vaccínium vítis-idáea really is cowberry or mountain cranberry.

Here is Rúbus saxátilis, or roebuck berry or stone bramble. The berries are not edible.

This is Convallária majális, lily of the valley. The big beautiful berries are poisonous. I used to pick all the flowers from our yard when the children were little, but I also told them not to eat any berries from the nature without showing me first.

The last berry is a real bush, Ríbes alpínum, or alpine currant. The berries are red and tasteless.

I was so focused on the ground that I forgot to take a picture of yet another berry, Sórbus aucupária, the rowan tree. Yesterday, when I took another route (without the camera), I suddenly heard loud sounds of birds, fieldfares according to my dictionary. A noise in fact, they are no great singers. There were hundreds of them all over the rowan trees eating the red berries. The bird flocks move in the area eating every tree empty. Sometimes the Bohemian/northern waxwings find these berries in winter and they also come in big flocks to eat. They look and sound a lot nicer than the fieldfares, who ate all redcurrants from my garden in July.

Today I have my day off, and DH is away on a fair. I'm alone at home until the evening. I have great plans for the day and I hope to be able to show something hand made for a change in my next post!