High summer means lots of plants are flowering along the riverside walk, many of them statuesque and sculptural. We've met Himalayan balsam already and, despite it being a huge problem plant, I still enjoyed this little trio of flowers I spotted (above).
I've no idea what the seed-head below is. I'm old enough to refer to it as a 'sputnik', after the spiky satellite first launched by Russia in the 1950s! Google Lens suggests it is some kind of angelica. Nice, anyway.
I can never identify the various umbellifers you see either. There are too many similar ones. I like their sculptural forms.
I do know this one (below): meadowsweet, with its fragrant, feathery, creamy-white flowers. Apparently parts of it are edible, used to flavour desserts and jams. It contains salicylic acid, related to the active ingredient in aspirin. It was traditionally used as a strewing herb to scent rooms.
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