Painted Summer

 

Is this a Painted Lady Summer? I ask because this immigrant butterfly has a habit of coming here in waves and one of them was way back in the late 1950s when I saw one in Harlow Carr gardens at Harrogate. It was my first 'exotic' butterfly after a humdrum diet of 'Cabbage' Whites, Red Admirals, Small Tortoiseshells and Peacocks - the last three very fine butterflies but common. The Painted Lady was something else, a subtle mixture of tawny, honey and pink and very fast-flying; naturally my brother and our sisters giggled about its name as well. I can conjure up the sighting still today.

My composite picture above was taken at Oxford Parkway train station where good landscape-gardening with lavender and other shrubs is complemented by a lovely verge of wildflowers beside a ramped walkway up the embankment to the bus stop. The butterflies were romping between the two and we had luckily left enough time between bus and train - the first stages of a journey to Boston, Mssachusetts - for me to stalk them. They tend to be jittery and not rest for long.

The heatwave sun was still beating down as we came into Wembley Stadium station an hour later and there on the tracks was another Painted Lady scooting about. And now, ten days later, here is a further one roosting on one of our hanging baskets where it came to rest after jinking about so dementedly that at first I thought that it was a day-flying moth.

I checked on it at 3.32pm and 7.52pm that day ad it was still there, completely inert and unfussed by my parting the lobelia to get a picture. Ditto at 7.17am the next day. But when I went cycling off an errand at midday, it had gone.

Since starting this post, I have posed my question online and found this satisfying answer straight away in an article in the Guardian, my old employer. Hooray! Of course, the weather has quixotically turned wet and colder since we got back from the US, but there will be plenty of sun between now and October to keep the Ladies content.

Meanwhile our orchid adventures have been closer to home where the magnificent Lizard Orchid which appeared on a very ordinary road verge half a mile away five years ago is in full flower. So is a second plant on the other side of the road and we are going back soon to see if we can find any more. The species is enjoying a very welcome revival in southern England. When we sent the pictures below to the excellent orchid expert Prof Richard Bateman of Reading University and Kew, he replied:

 "Quite extraordinary to see them flowering this early; in my youth I regarded the Lizard as a species to seek out during the last week of June or first week of July; how things have changed. Fingers crossed that your population continues to spread. A few years ago I was called out to a garden in East Hertfordshire to see a Lizard that had miraculously appeared in the lawn. The year before last, 74 plants flowered in the lawn and surrounding area, and the owner's dog was happily cocking his leg at them!"