I saw these flowers up the Welcombe Hills

With my woodpecker fixation purged by thoughts of honey fungus (now that's a sentence you won't see very often) my walks today up the Welcombe Hills allowed me to enjoy the May blossom.

With apologies to hay fever sufferers, there surely can be no better sight in the hills than the May blossom. The hawthorn can be a pernicious tree: it readily propagates, spreads everywhere and once established, denies light to the ground preventing anything else from growing there. Its thorns are sharp. In the spring and autumn though it redeems itself and I for one will never tire of those pure white blossoms and deep red berries.
The picture on the left is of two hawthorns in Clopton Fields which are likely to have been part of a hedgerow, judging by the bank they stand upon and the ridge and furrow to the fore. The buttercups add a lovely yellow that also covers your shoes as you walk. In the background is a tall lime tree to the left and shorter ash to the right.

The blossoms themselves repay close inspection as the two close ups I took today show. Such is the brilliance of the white when viewed from a distance en masse it is easy to miss the beauty of the individual flower. 

The deep pink anthers (as you'll remember from school biology…) produce the pollen. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Some hawthorn trees have petals tinged with pink. There are a few of these in the Welcombe Hills. If you enter the Clopton Park field from the parking area you'll see one just to your left as you go in. How gorgeous is that?