Wild roses

OUR WOODLANDS and hedgerows along the roadside verges are full of wild roses at this time of the year, small delicate flowers with an exquisite scent that look so fragile but beware anyone who tries to pick them because they are protected by razor-sharp, hooked prickles that can tear into the skin of the unwary.

There are several species but the most familiar is the dog rose (Rosa canina). This wild ancestor of the garden rose was the symbol of the Tudor kings of England but it is thought to derive its name from an ancient Greek belief that it would cure a person who had been bitten by a mad dog. The flowers can be shell-pink or white and their stems arch and scramble in the hedgerow and twine their way around the trees in the woods.

When the petals fall, red berry-like fruit or hips form and these can be made into jelly and syrup because they are rich in Vitamin C. During World War Two, when nourishing food was scarce, the government sent us kids out into the hedgerows to collect them and in 1943 alone, some 500 tons of rose hips were amassed in this way and processed to provide children with rose hip syrup as a supplement to the meagre diet that resulted from food rationing. Today, this vast natural commodity is left to the birds.

Here, wild roses can also be seen at Thurlby Fen Slipe, almost 19 acres of marsh and wetland three miles south of Bourne, and the site of a nature reserve administered by Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust which stretches for about 1.2 miles on the north side of the River Glen, a secluded and tranquil spot formed by borrow pits with reed beds, scrub and grassland, all teeming with wildlife.

This is a favourite haunt of Geoff Bell and his companion Guy, a black labrador, and where he took the top photograph in June 2010, returning this week to capture more images of wild roses, together with a remarkable shot of a honey bee about to land on an open flower with its leg sacs laden with pollen. "It brought back memories of my childhood", said Geoff, "when I often collected posies of these attractive small roses from the hedges to take home to my mother."