Ok, so I was another year older today and to comiserate celebrate I headed off to the Dales with the family for lunch at The Angel pub, Hetton. Before we hit the food, we had a short walk around Janet’s Foss near Malham and it was nice to see so many wild flowers blooming in the (very) warm spring sunshine: ramsons, dog violets and bluebells were all beginning to show, but well ahead in terms of flowering was the butterbur. Chiefly a plant of damp verges, the butterbur is an impressive plant with the flower spike showing before the leaves. I only had a snapshot camera with me but here’s an image of a common butterbur spike (Petasites hybridus) surrounded by the leaves of ramsons (or wild garlic).