Cats' ears on the way to East Lock

I had to drop Simon off at Tonbridge station relatively early for him to get to his London interview with the Institute of Engineering for an industry grant. Then I found myself doing a fair bit of catch-up College administration, and checking on Aaron and Adam painting the house outside, and soon, before I knew it, it was lunchtime and it was time that I collected Simon from the station again to get him back home.

In the afternoon I walked South from Golden Green over the fields towards East Lock on the River Medway in miserable windy weather with lots of rainy squalls. The tractors were moving bulk bins around the orchard as the pickers carefully picked the apples to be taken directly to the pack-house for delivery to the supermarkets, or to be held in cold store for later sale. Next to the upper field the grassy corner meadow was in flower again, having recovered from the close cutting a month ago.

In the lower field the ground had been disc-ploughed, harrowed and sown with next year's oil-seed rape crop,

with the little seedlings subject to attack from flea-beetles, caterpillars and pigeons.

There wasn't a great deal to be seen in the bad weather, and little reason to hang about, but Monty had a great time and lots of exercise!

There were quite a few Asteraceae on the sides of the tracks and on the grassy corner meadow, and the cat's ear Hypochaeris radicata was prominent, with its heads raised on branching stalks up to about 40 cm above ground level. It's fairly obvious how it gets its name, as the leaves are covered in rough silky (and, critically, unbranched) hairs:

The inflorescence stalks however are generally hairless, with occasional small, purple-tipped bracts,

The inflorescences themselves are surrounded by purple-tipped bracts, again generally hairless, except for a few spines on the midrib (tips?)

The inflorescences open out into bright yellow clusters of strap-shaped florets, with the characteristic Y-shaped styles poking out in between. Broken apart there should be scales between the florets, although I didn't know to look for these - another day I will!

It may be that the scales are visible here, at a later stage, in the "clock-heads". However these pappuses (or pappi) don't look as if they still contain the central branched hairs described in Francis Rose, only the simple outer ones - further observations will obviously be necessary,

One critical character is that although the inflorescence itself narrows suddenly into the stalk, the stalk itself tends to widen out towards its top as in this picture (it certainly isn't always very clear in my view, as here),

The outer florets are greyish underneath, and in this particular picture the stalk widening is, I think, quite convincing

The inflorescences seem to be quite popular with bees, and a few, including this one, were out pollinating even in these conditions,

There were also some Bumblebees around, and I think this one is a well coloured Buff-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris,

Perhaps this one, on the other hand, is a White-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris,

This one is a little bit more of a puzzle, and I wonder whether it might actually be a cuckoo-bee, and not a true bumblebee at all,