Dandelions add dash of colour to camp site
IT’S that time of the year again, when I have a month of punk rock – that most misunderstood of musical genres.
Punk was more a movement than a kind of music and Spring Bank Holiday’s Strummercamp is the perfect example of this.
There is a wide range of goodies for all musical tastes on show at Oldham Rugby Union Club from May 24.
Noisy rock will be soothed by reggae, ska, soul and folk, with some humour and a chance to meet up and camp with friends, some old and some a lot younger.
It is also a chance to wake up and appreciate an absolutely cracking spot for nature.
Strummercamp is at the centre of an amazing bowl.
You are surrounded by green and gold, wild plants and flowers that give you an amazing buzz.
And that buzz is obviously complemented by the insects feeding and pollinating on those plants.
I will be taking my phone and checking out some of the wildlife in the quieter moments of what I hope is another glorious weekend.
One of main colours available in summer is the equally misunderstood common dandelion.
We all know dandelions and we will have been told that this wild and beautiful flower is a ‘weed’, spoiling the grass in your garden.
To be honest, the way the dandelion grows in all sorts of places does not strike me as weedy – it is pretty rough and tough in my opinion.
Of course, dandelion flowers turn into dandelion clocks, ready to spread seeds into other nooks and crannies.
How many of us spent hours as kids blowing the fluffy seeds from its head and watching them fly off in the wind.
The seed ‘clocks’ can carpet a grassland in white pillows only weeks after the bright yellow, gaudy flowers have coloured it gold.
Common dandelions grow in all kinds of grasslands from lawns to roadside verges, pastures to traditional meadows.
The common dandelion is actually a micro-species and there are a number of other dandelion species, so identification can be tricky.
This means I may find many different dandelions at the rugby club next week, which will be exciting as, for a long time, I thought there was just one kind of dandelion.
The golden flower head contains closely-packed florets, which are tiny flowers.
The leaves are lobed and spoon-shaped.
If you break the stem it will spill a milky white sap.
As the clocks fluff up the seeds appear with their downy, white parachutes and form a globular, packed seed head.
These are perfect for flying off and finding areas to grow and annoy gardeners.
This column would not be complete without something a bit risqué, and the dandelion is actually known in some places as ‘tiddle-beds’. Why? Some myths suggest that if you just touch a dandelion you will wet the bed.
Therefore, I must be careful that I do not touch any dandelions before I head off back to my tent to recover for another day of dance.
Strummercamp begins on Friday, May 24 at Oldham RUFC, who do a brilliant job in maintaining this fabulous site.
Headlining this year are The Ruts and the Barstool Preachers – www. strummercampfestival. com.
To become a member of the Trust go to the website at www.lancswt. org.uk or call 01772 324 129.
For more information about Cheshire Wildlife Trust call 01948 820 728 or go to www. cheshirewildlifetrust.org. uk.