Flowers along Grantham Canal in November

November is typically the tail-end of the flowering season – the majority of the late flowering species have come to an end; the spring flowers are still a couple of months off. However this autumn has been startlingly mild and where the conditions are right, there are still some good splashes of colour to be seen.

Under the hashtag #wildflowerhour, @fennelandfern and @bsbibotany invite people to share photographs of flowers they have seen that week, every Sunday evening between 8pm and 9pm. A scan through last week’s tweets shows that many people are still finding a range of species in flower into November.

I took a walk along the Grantham Canal between Harlaxton and Grantham early on Wednesday morning and totted up the species I could see still flowering. The stretch of canal in question runs through a cutting and most of the species I spotted were flowering on the banks which rise up beside the towpath towards the surrounding land. This cutting provides sheltered conditions which are likely to encourage species to persist longer into the autumn and winter before the cold and frost finish them off.

I counted up seventeen species in total – some of which are pictured below. The complete list is:

White dead-nettle (Lamium album), bramble (Rubus fruticosus agg.), herb Robert (Geranium robertianum), red campion (Silene dioica), white campion (Silene latifolia), hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium), hedgerow cranesbill (Geranium pyrenaicum), ivy (Hedera helix), creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense), black horehound (Ballota nigra), false oat grass (Arrhenatherum elatius), meadow grass (Poa spp.), common ragwort (Senecio jacobaea), water forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpioides), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), nipplewort (Lapsana communis) and wood avens (Geum urbanum).