Richard Williamson's Country Life Column September 29

The high summer season soon fades, but still there is time to see its specialities, or if not then to think about them for next year. One has for a hundred years been called The Pride of Sussex '“ the round-headed rampion, Phyteuma tenerum. Where you see it for the first time, then surely that place will be forever imprinted on your mind.

This week I saw a bumble bee feeding on its nectar. It was on the ramparts of Iron Age Trundle, above Goodwood. Here the dry chalk embankments, catching full sun, are its chosen habitat.

So brilliant that blue, so dense and verging on the indigo, it is almost the colour of the deep vault of space as seen from mountains. So, finding it at your feet upon the ground, you wonder whether a piece of glass bead has fallen off a necklace, for it almost glitters with the sun. Or is it some life-sucking aquamarine creature of the deep, seizing the helpless bee and enrolling it within whiplash spines, like the sundew on the heath.

Richard Williamson's Nature Trails appear every week in the West Sussex Gazette. You can read the full version of this article in September 29 issue.