Every year I am taken by surprise by the early Spring arrival of banks of vibrant yellow flowers – the blooming of the rape seed flowers offering banks of yellow contrasting so beautifully with the bright green of neighbouring fields.

So if like me, you feel these vast swathes of yellow enhance our country landscapes, now is the time to take camera in hand and start travelling around the countryside.

The first fields blossoming that I have seen this year are around Lovedean but as you can see from these images of the past few years, they will soon be taking over our views for a month or two in both Sussex and Hampshire.

Although I seem to be coming here from a purely aesthetic point of view, these flowers are very useful indeed and have been farmed across Europe for centuries.  Via Wikipedia, I learn that it was only cultivated on an industrial scale from the 13th century for use as lamp oil.

The world “rape” as applied to oilseed crops is derived from the Latin word rapum that means turnip.  Now you wouldn’t have expected that, would you?

Enjoy the moment.

Photographer & contributor:  Sue Lowry

Follow A3Traveller on Twitter: @A3Traveller and Sue Lowry on Google +, YouTube, Linkedin, Flickr and Pinterest. I also operate another blog for my company, Magellan PR – http://www.magellanstraits.com. They can be followed on Twitter: @MagellanPR, on Google+, on YouTube, on Pinterest and on Facebook.