Field Scabious

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 The cutting of the old railway line above the house is filled with the flowers of the field scabious at the moment.



These flowers are a great source of food for insects as you can see from the image of the small tortoiseshell butterfly drinking it's full.
Why "scabious?" Well the stem of the plant is rough and flaky in the same way as scabby skin. This dates back to the bonkers medieval idea of the "Doctrine of Signatures". In this way of thinking you used the plant that looked like the disease to treat the disease. God was telling you that if a plant looked like flaky skin then this would be a good source of medicine to treat flaky skin. Infusions of scabious plants were used to treat all manner of skin diseases such as scurvy. I wonder which of the current fads in medicine will look bonkers to people in years to come. Homeopathy perhaps?!
There is another sort of scabious that is called the "devil's bit scabious" pictured below.
This plant has a very short root system. The notion was that the plant was such a good medicine that the Devil bit off its root to punish it. As I say - bonkers! There are a lot of devil's bit scabious about at the moment.

Diary.
Cooler today with rain forecast and possibly some thunder showers. I set my trail cameras around the tawny owl's tree last night and of course it didn't use that tree last night! Three red squirrels in the garden at the same time yesterday.





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