It is quite amazing how many of our wild flowers continue to flower even into the darkest and coldest months of the year. Some just seem to keep going and have always done so but of course recently with climate change many flowers have been appearing earlier or have kept going later into the year.
White Dead Nettle is one that has traditionally been one to flower in almost every month of the year. Here it is doing quite well growing out of a wall at Tintern Abbey on the Wye valley in Wales. It was taken on 24th November 2021 and I fully expect it will be flowering in a months time ie Christmas eve.
Many folks go out after Christmas for a walk, get a bit of fresh air and blow away the alcohol and carbohydrate build up. Often this is a bird spotting trip. Many birders keep lists and as such are twitchers and one list is the Year list. So a January the first walk can help to get this off to a good start. Similarly a smaller but growing band of wild flower enthusiasts do the same thing and see how many wild flowers they can spot at the beginning of the year.
I did this last year (the wild flower count, not the birds) and just managed to get into double figures however this is a fairly poor total but some peoples standards.
Woodland Wild flowers 