North Merchiston Cemetery

 I had a lovely lunchtime walk around North Merchiston Cemetery yesterday. The sun was shining brightly and the dandelions were looking beautiful. The council manages this cemetery to benefit wildlife and this means allowing dandelions and other wild flowers to thrive in amongst areas of longer grass. 

Dandelions are very important as a source of food for pollinating insects, but this year although there are dandelions everywhere (it looks like more people are starting to learn about how important they are) there are very few insects on them - normally you would expect to see several small flower beetles in a dandelion, but mostly this year so far, the flowers are empty

The cherry tree is in full bloom 

It was lovely to see the first Speckled Wood Butterfly of the year, hopefully the first of many as this species is a common visitor to the cemetery these days

There is a small area of Wild Garlic in the cemetery, which will soon be in bloom