David

The vegetation in the hothouse at the Stratforn on Avon Butterfly Farm is, like the insects themselves, tropical. Occasionally I dragged my attention from the butterflies, constantly moving as well as brightly coloured, to a few of the flowers and fruits.

A visit to the Butterfly Farm at Stratford on Avon over the Christmas period, where I went rather wild taking pictures with a camera phone. Lots of snaps, so I’m posting them in several batches. Here’s the first.

Probably my favourite is the one with the transparent panel in its wings. By coincidence, it was the first one I got a shot at.

Black woodwart, a dark fungus lying prone on a dead tree in West Park, easy to overlook.

A lone redlead roundhead mushroom growing on wood mulch in a front garden. The pictures date back to last November. Very few mushrooms can survive freezing weather. This is not one which can.

Camelia flowers in a front garden, seen on one of the mornings when it was starting to be frosty early last month.. The even colder nights a few days later finished off the flowers.

The first heavy frost of the winter, early in December, decorating the hedges of the Dutch Garden at the back of Bantock House.

Enough leaves were still left on the surrounding trees to make even the Pitch and Putt course look pleasant in the morning sunlight.