A mainly sunny day after the recent heavy rain and winds.
Halfway down our garden we have a bush of Colletia hystrix ( often listed as Colletia armata in catalogues) that produces masses of white, honey scented flowers at this time of year attractive to a wide range of insects, late butterflies being the most obvious.
Today here were literally dozens of visiting red admirals, Vanessa atalanta (above), maybe 30 or 40 of them, and I have never seen so many as this together. There were also a few commas, Polygonia c-album, and a couple of southern hawker dragonflies trying to pick off some of the smaller insects attracted to the flowers.
Colletia hystrix, a member of the Buckthorn Family, comes from Chile where it is known as espino negro (i.e. blackthorn) or yaqui. It is a very spiny plant and can be used, like gorse as a stock fence. Ours is now about 4 or 5 metres tall and makes an impenetrable, but attractive, thicket. It seems perfectly hardy in Sussex.
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