Summer Flowers and Butterflies in the Vineyard, July 2025

 ” The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her beauty of life, yields a new thought with every petal.”

Richard Jefferies

No one can complain about lack of sunshine to date this year. The warmest and sunniest spring on record has been followed by the sunniest June, and then a July of heatwaves making the recent rain seem very welcome. And as the seasons move on so does the succession of wild flowers and butterflies in the vineyard. In the wild flower areas the newly-sown Yellow Rattle has gone to seed, its bright yellow flowers shrivelled and replaced by the pods of seeds which give the plant its name: the dry seeds rattle inside their casings like mini-maracas when shaken by the breeze. The Dandelions have vanished, the clocks all blown, and the grasses have now flowered and covered the vineyard with a brassier shade of gold. Among them, despite the drought, are the vital yellow and purple flowers of high summer: Knapweed (centaurea scabiosa), Field Scabious (knautia arvensis), Marjoram (oreganum vulgare) and Ragwort (senecio jacobaea).

The sunshine has brought out the summer butterflies in abundance, including Meadow Browns, Gatekeepers, Common Blues and the Whites. The second brood of Brown Argus are now on the wing, flitting tiny and silvery among the tall golden grasses. But you can have too much of a good thing: and this year the lack of moisture has led to drying up of nectar in the abundant flowers. It has been a sad sight to see the butterflies flying from flower to flower, moving quickly on because they cannot find what they need. The rain may be just in time to save the lives of the many tiny caterpillars that depend on eating the juicy young leaves of plants

The bees in the vineyard beehives have also been affected this summer, making longer than usual journeys to bring home the necessary nectar to turn into honey for the hive.  However, as the spring this year was exceptional and nectar flow extremely strong, the bees were able to store their honey, so the summer has been less stressful for them than for the insects which feed day to day.

As the steep south-facing slopes of the vineyard have the same chalk soil as the neighbouring SSSIs (Sites of Special Scientific Interest) of Ranmore and Box Hill, they consequently have similar chalk-loving flora. In Areas A and B, now that these areas have been set aside for nature, the wild flowers are thriving, with Scabious,  Marjoram and Knapweed being particularly eye-catching. These are favourite nectar plants for insects, and the Marjoram here does better than almost anywhere else, painting swathes of the slope with a wash of lilac among gilded grasses, an artist’s dream of summer.

Marjoram, being a herb of Mediterranean heritage, copes particularly well with the heat, and having reliable supplies of nectar provides a feast for the insects. Vital, too, in a different way is the low-growing Bird’s-foot Trefoil (lotus corniculatus), with its tiny yellow ‘lady’s slipper’ flowers. It is on this plant that several butterflies, including the Common Blue, will lay their eggs, the foodplant for the young larvae.  And if you are lucky you may spot one of the beautiful day-flying moths, such as the scarlet and black Burnet Moth, or even one of the Fairy Longhorns such as nemophora metallica whose stunning golden sheen is offset to perfection on a Scabious flower.

And as this month is the time of Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count (18th July – 10th August), why not do your count in one of the wild flower areas of the vineyard? If you do, we would love to hear what you see!

Jenny Desoutter,  22 July 2025