These stunning blue and purple pea-flowers were found in tall herb fen at Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Ranworth Reserve (part of the Bure Broads and Marshes NNR).  This is a part of the Reserve only accessible by boat and we were very grateful to NWT staff for enabling access for a Norfolk Flora Group outing.

We saw a wonderful range of fenland plants but this Marsh Pea scrambling up through the reed was the most spectacular.  Marsh Pea is a perennial herb of base-rich fens mown on a 2-3 year rotation and less frequently in reedbeds and fen meadow.  In Norfolk, it is a bit of a speciality of the Bure Valley, being much less commonly found in the freshwater marshes of the Yare and Waveney.