Lesser celandine

With a few days of sun (thank you, God), things are bursting into flower. Here's one of my favourite wildflowers, lesser celandine, which is suddenly all over the place.

Sorry for the chopped petal - I'm still learning about close-ups

The flowers only open when the sun is out*, and it takes its name from chelidon, the Greek for swallow. Goodness knows why since swallows (in my experience) arrive about April and celandines January–March.

My wildflower book says that it can be a troublesome weed but I love having it in the garden. It grows in the shade, provides good ground cover and makes way for later flowers with perfect grace.

A carpet of lesser celandine in the hedge. (Spot the dog.)

It’s a member of the buttercup family but not related to greater celandine (which is a poppy). I used to confuse it with winter aconite, another small yellow shade-growing early-spring flower but the leaves of the two are actually quite different. (Nor is winter aconite native.)

Winter aconite - which has what they call 'strap-like' leaves

 

Lesser celandine, with its adorable trowel-shaped leaves

* So the books say. I was out today (Sunday) in the rain and several celandine were open. I shall study the subject.

Stitchwort and wildflower conservation

I had resolved not to blog for a while so as to save my time and energy for novel-writing but I couldn’t resist posting this picture of the first stitchwort to appear this year. It was just the one and it looked so brave and hopeful standing on its own in the hedge.

I keep records of wildflowers because it interests me and because I think it might help when I’m writing about different times of year in my fiction. According to my records, stitchwort doesn’t usually appear until the beginning of March (although in 2012 it appeared on 1 January and in 2010 not until 10 April).

This means I suppose that the weather is warmer than usual (if there is a usual any more). One thing to be grateful for perhaps – and another, as my neighbour said this morning, ‘At least they’re getting it in the Thames Valley as well now’. (By which I don't mean that I don't care desperately about everyone who's flooded but that, the closer these things come to the powers that be, the more likely they are to help or to do something about them - if they can.)


The stitchwort above is ‘greater’ stitchwort. There’s also a ‘lesser’ stitchwort which produces mats of exquisite star-like flowers in the summer. (Perhaps that’s why their Latin name is Stellaria). The stitchworts are related to garden pinks and also to the wildflowers chickweed and campion.

A mat of lesser stitchwort in July 2011

As its name suggests, stitchwort was once used to cure muscular aches. It’s also said to be a cure for any misfortune that suddenly strikes one down. When I was researching my folklore books (see my old blog ‘Mad Englishwoman and Dog’) I came across a warning not to pick stitchwort because if you did you ran the risk of being ‘pixie-led’ – being deliberately led astray or confused by the West Country’s little people.

My advice would be not to pick any wildflower, ever. They need all the help we can give them, and I can’t understand why they have a lower profile in the conservation stakes than birds. To my mind they are just as entrancing (and they stay still so that you can get a good look at them) and equally essential to our health and happiness.

There is a wildflower charity called Plantlife to which I belong whenever I can afford it. In the meantime I simply try to spread the word.

Glastonbury, Burrow Mump and the Somerset Levels

On the surface Frog and I are opposite in almost every way. My ideal day out is to get as far away from human civilisation as possible. His is to go shopping. Glastonbury and the Somerset Levels are a good compromise.

The town is charming – lovely people, quirky and dog-friendly shops, attractive main street, and wonderful vegetarian café (Rainbows End). It has a rich spiritual history dating back (perhaps) to prehistoric times*, and sites to see include the mysterious Tor, a ruined abbey and the intricate Chalice Well gardens. Even I like the place.

The Levels aren’t everyone’s idea of beauty but I love their strangeness and the fact that the only tourists (apart from Frog and me) are birdwatchers. Frog likes them because the walks are easy - I'm not likely to drag him up precipitous cliffs or get him lost in remote moorland. Sometimes we walk along the Taunton and Bridgwater Canal and sometimes we climb Burrow Mump, which is a smaller version of Glastonbury Tor but without the crowds and the concrete paths.

Burrow Mump and its ruined church, probably built up here because the spot was once a pagan sacred site. Glastonbury Tor has something similar

Both Burrow Mump and Glastonbury Tor would once have been islands as the whole area, until it was drained in the Middle Ages, used to be marshland. Over the last two winters the Levels have started to flood again. Some blame exceptional weather, some lack of maintenance – the ditches haven’t been cleared properly they say or the river dredged. This winter, some villages and houses have been either marooned, or paddling in several feet of water, or both, for weeks.


Here is what we saw on our day out yesterday.

Floodwaters lapping at the carpark below Burrow Mump . . .

 

. . . and at the foot of the hill itself

An inland sea

The straight line crossing this picture from the (approximate) centre to the bottom right corner is the flooded main road (A361). A fire engine stands guard in case anyone is foolish enough to try and drive along it. Would anyone be that stupid, we wondered, as an ambulance and another fire engine raced past the hill flashing their lights.  (Apologies for my usual wonky horizon.)

The River Parrett, on the bank to the right of the picture, is higher than the floods. Just out of shot (and too far away to photograph), a pump is pouring water into the river (from the floods). Talk about emptying the sea with a teaspoon.

Floods almost as far as the eye can see. Contrast this with the scene in February 2011

The scene from Burrow Mump in February 2011

* For more on the spiritual history of Glastonbury and the surrounding area you could do worse than read The Mists of Avalon, a novel by Marion Bradley (who also writes science fiction under the name Marion Zimmer Bradley)

Our much-thumbed copy of this novel about the spiritual history of Glastonbury

For a factual summary you could check out one of my publications, New Age Encyclopaedia