[Burntollet, Pyramidal Bugle, Co. Derry, Faughan Valley, flower, meadow, nature, Ness Woods, trees, wildflower, Wildflower Card, Woodland Trust, woods, purple, >500 views]

1. Tuesday 30th October 2012 View Count reached 501

This photograph was shot in Canon Raw mode on an EOS 5d Mkii at 1/25 f5.6 with a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM lens set at 300mm with a circular polarizing filter.

This wildflower was photographed in Burntollet Woods – a new area of open access woodlands in County Derry, Northern Ireland. Burntollet Woods is a 24 hectare (59 acre) area of woodland in Faughan Valley. It was created by The Woodland Trust. It lies between Ness Country Park and Oaks Wood, providing a habitat corridor for wildlife between the two areas of woodland.

Burntollet Woods has been planted with 43,000 native trees – mostly oak but also ash, alder and wild cherry. It also includes an 11 hectare (27 acre) meadow of wild flowers.

The Woodland Trust say that the project was made possible by funding from the NI Environment Agency, The Forestry Service and by public donations including one significant donation by an “anonymous Canadian tree enthusiast”.

The flower is a spear of purple-ish-blue flower-lets about 4-6 inches (10-15cm) tall. At first I thought that this was a Pyramidal Bugle – based on a bad picture in a pocket flower book. But I was not totally convinced that I got that right. Thanks to Carla Wick I think we have now identified it as BugleHerb.

Can anyone on the ID Me group refine this identification or come up with a better idea?

Bugleherb has dark green leaves with purple highlights. The leaves grow 5–8 cm (2"–3") high but in the spring it sends up 10–15 cm (4–6 in) tall flower stalks with many purple flowers on them. I think the specimen shown here is in that “Spring flower stalk” mode. The first flower identification book I looked at ignored the spring phase and showed only the lower growing stages for Bugleherb, but showed spikes for Pyramidal Bugle.

Bugleherb is also known as: Blue bugle, Bugleweed, Carpetweed, Carpet Bungleweed, Common bugle, Burgundy lace and, due to an assumption that it could stem bleeding, “Carpenter’s Herb”.

Botanical Name: Ajuga reptans

Photographic Technical Details
This photograph was shot on a Canon EOS 5d Mkii at 1/25 f5.6 with a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM lens set at 300mm with a circular polarizing filter. In post-production processing in Apple Aperture it got a bit of a tweak of differential contrast … soft on the background and a little crisper on the flower.

History of this Photographic on RedBubble

1. 4th June 2012 Photograph taken at about 2:00 pm on sunny day
2. 11th June 2012 Uploaded to RedBubble
3. 20th June 2012 view count reached 104 it has been made a favourite by 3 people and been commented on 8 times.
4. 17th July 2012 view count reached 208