This, by the way, is my 1000th post on the Potwell Inn.
I just seem to keep going and people just seem to keep reading my stuff and whatever my stats lack in reach they certainly make up for in the quality of the readers. Please feel free to raise a glass to the Landlord of the Potwell Inn who’s feeling a bit chipper today. The next big celebration will be when we reach 1,000,000 words – hopefully by the end of the year; and remember you can search the whole site on any word at all – not just the featured keywords. Happy browsing.
I once went to the GP with a very painful big toe. He examined my foot intently; moved the joint until I winced; sat back in his chair and pronounced – “you’ve got hallux rigidus”. I believe the expected response is to whisper “How long have I got Doc?” but happily, and entirely due to the efforts of some of my teachers who thought it was important to teach even oiks like us a bit of Latin, I curled my lip and said – “That just means stiff toe, and I knew that already”. As Sam Weller might have said – “Collapse of stout party”.
Latin can be a real obstacle to botanists and gardeners alike. It can be used defensively to lock out the great unwashed or in attack by making earnest apprentices feel stupid. Yesterday’s post – “The Three Graces – a rainy day job” called for a fair bit of searching through a heap of floras. I can’t resist buying them, but when it comes to taking them out on field trips they’re often too heavy or too obscure to contemplate carrying around all day. The other enduring flaw is the overuse of Latin terms which make sure you spend as much time in the glossary at the back as you do looking at the plant itself. I’ve even got two large volumes of Latin terms that can slow an identification down to a crawl. At this point I’m not moaning about the Latin names of plants because – although I’m not a taxonomist (there you go again), I do understand perfectly well that if a species isn’t given a name that’s the same wherever on earth it’s found, we’ll get utterly bogged down in misunderstandings. So of course we need the Latin, alongside the Linnaean binomial system: surname followed by forename so not only am I one of the Poles, I’m not Lancelot Pole or indeed Lady Margaret Pole – because she’s been dead for centuries – but Dave Pole; landlord of the Potwell Inn which doesn’t exist except in my fantasy.
So now we’ve cleared that up I would also want to say that I absolutely love the English names of plants. Any plant name beginning with viper’s, dog’s and devil’s, or ends with bane attracts me as a moth to a flame. Geoffrey Grigson’s book of English plant names is pure poetry in my eyes – after all he was a poet – and so often the English plant name gives a clue to an ancient use. Scabious and perhaps in particular Devil’s-bit Scabious was used to cure scabies and it was, so legend has – so effective that the Devil himself spitefully bit the root off. Pilewort I’ll leave you to work out, and Scrophularia seems suggestive of the apothecary’s shelf too. I could take you to the exact place on a clifftop in Tenby where I saw Viper’s Bugloss for the first time. and the poor old adjective dog has been attached to so many less than exciting plants it should probably sue. The fact that I once, at the age of about ten, heard dandelions being referred to by an old man in Pucklechurch as Piss the Bed as we walked back from the Rose and Crown Inn at Parkfield, has lodged forever in my memory. Corn Marigold and Marsh Thistle give important clues about their habitats.
So which flora do I most often take out in my bag for a day’s botanising? As ever there’s a story attached. While I was still struggling through the botanical foothills I was once on my knees on a footpath in St Brides Bay, Pembrokeshire examining some Hemlock Water Dropwort, when I was stepped over by a tall and somewhat tweedy scotswoman who stopped to ask me what I was looking at. I explained as best I could and she was enormously helpful and encouraging. It transpired that she was a professional and teacher of botany so I plucked up my courage and asked her if she could recommend a flora for a relative beginner. She told me that she always advised her students to get hold of a copy of the revised edition of Francis Rose’s “Wildflower Key” revised by Clare O’Reilly. It’s a little out of date in places and the illustrations could be better but of all the floras lined up in my bookcase, it’s the most battered because the keys and identification hints are so good. Like all old friends it takes a while to build a relationship with it, but when I pick up my copy I get the warm feeling that comes with knowing that even if I don’t get the full species name, I’ll get close enough to make my homework much easier – and yes, I also use Stace and all the others. One of these days I’ll honour my promise to write about the wonderful resources available to newcomers online but meanwhile the best way forward for anyone wanting to find out about our UK wildflowers would be to join a natural history society and go out on some field trips; and to join the BSBI (Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland).
Happy hunting!
