The flower of Oxfordshire

From a distance, the snake head fritillary can seem inconspicuous, but up close it seems more like a work of origami than a flower.
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Once  common, it has suffered a massive decline in recent years as their habitat, flood plains, has been drained and ploughed for agriculture.
This has made it nationally rare and the riverside meadows in Oxfordshire - like the BBOWT reserve at Iffley Meadows - are some of the few places where they can now be found. 
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Flowering in April and early May, most flowers are an elegant purple lantern with a white checked pattern.
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Some are pure white and a few are white with a purple checked pattern.
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As they are most often found in Oxfordshire, the charity Plantlife nominated it as the flower of Oxfordshire to help raise awareness of it's plight: http://www.plantlife.org.uk//wild_plants/plant_species/fritillary/


And Iffley Meadows is not the only place to find them, other notable sites are the grounds of Magdalen College (http://viewsoftheock.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/the-flowers-of-magdalen-college.html in Oxford and for one day a year, the meadow near Ducklington Church is open to the public and this year it is Sunday 15th March