I spent 16 years tracking down hundreds of different wild flowers – it was like finding treasure

A FLOWER fan spent 16 years tracking down hundreds of different blooms.

Suzanne Rowcliffe found all 240 listed in her Collins Gem guide to Britain’s wild flowers.

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Suzanne Rowcliffe spent 16 years tracking down hundreds of different wild flowers[/caption]

Travelling on foot, train, bus and boat, she visited forests, meadows, the seaside and mountains.

Seamstress Suzanne, 51, recorded the date and location of each of the wild flowers she identified.

She said: “It has been an amazing challenge and I’ve loved it.

“I really enjoy walking and find it very therapeutic to be outdoors.

“I’d plan trips away at weekends with the wild flowers as my focus.

“Some were easy to identify, like primrose, chicory, poppy and foxglove, but others were quite tricky to distinguish, like umbellifers, violets and hawkweeds.”

Suzanne, of Marlow, Bucks, found the chickweed wintergreen in a remote Yorkshire bog thanks to a local botany group.

She spotted the spring squill after walking for hours along the Welsh coastal path.

And she took two days trekking 17 miles to see a rare butterbur at the end of a canal path in Gloucestershire.

Suzanne said: “Finding each new species became like finding treasure.”

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Suzanne found all 240 listed in her Collins Gem guide to Britain’s wild flowers[/caption]