Nature Watch, with Ron Freethy

LAST month will go down not just as Flaming June but flaming rotten June.

The wind and rain battered down the early summer flowers as soon as their buds burst.

July, if the sun does appear, is likely to be colourful and among the most attractive flowers will be honeysuckle, meadow cranesbill and foxglove.

Honeysuckle is a climbing plant seen at its best in the early morning or late evening.

The delicate flowers which are pollinated by insects, including moths, have a delightful smell.

Many years ago honeysuckle was called woodbine (or woodbind) and its flowers were once mixed with tobacco to produce the world famous Woodbine cigarettes.

Meadow cranesbill is another plant of the hedgerow.

It gets its name not from the flower but from the fruit and seed arrangement, which appears after the flowers have withered. These are shaped like the beak and head of the heron, hence the name cranesbill.

The meadow cranesbill flower is a delightful colour of blush purple. The foxglove is tall, erect, common and both useful and dangerous.

All parts of the flower, but especially the leaves, are full of a chemical called digitalis.

This is used in the treatment of heart complaints but the dose has to be carefully calculated.

If it is too high the patient dies.

The flowers of foxglove are carried on a long solid stem and some have said it resembles a saxophone.

Each flower is bell-shaped and one of the plant's old names was "dead man's bell".

The word foxglove is also accurate because it does look like a set of fingers but where the fox part comes from I don't know.

Every flower has an interesting story and I would be pleased to see readers' flower photographs and a story - or perhaps a poem - to go with them.

I could use some of these in a future column.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.