As I was closing the lid on the laptop after writing about a bit of botanising in White Field yesterday I thought something along the lines of – “is it discouraging to someone interested in nature for me to write in a way that makes me sound much cleverer than I really am?”
The thing is, I’m a relative beginner and when I go out on field trips with very knowledgeable guides, I sometimes come home feeling a bit stupid. I was leading a field trip myself a few weeks ago and before we set out I read aloud half a page from a book I was reading which expressed exactly that sentiment in the hope that in such a mixed ability group we could look out for one another and try not to be patronising towards less skilled newcomers. I was, of course, thinking about my own experiences. However it was not to be and the propeller heads in the group all shot off trailing latin names behind them like condensation trails in the sky. You could see the hope die in the eyes of some of the others.
There’s no shame in not knowing a Latin name, or what tetraploidy means – they’re just steps on a road that leads to deeper understanding and far more fun. Some leaders are good teachers and some aren’t and if you think back to your biggest and most important learning experiences they usually began with someone taking your puzzled question seriously and helping you – as it were – through the hedge. On our very first field trip the leader took me in hand and began naming some very ordinary and common plants, knowing – as good teachers always do – that a willing learner will store that knowledge joyfully and never need to ask again. One of those plants was Nipplewort – and I was struck by the fact that the flower wasn’t as much like a human nipple but a grease nipple of the kind that used to lubricate old steam engines. In that short conversation I absorbed something of what birders call the jizz of the plant and now when I pass it on a walk I name it silently in my head and think to myself “Nipplewort; Lapsana communis” – in a form of greeting to an old friend. If I should be out walking with our grandchildren I’d do the same thing out loud. It could be the first step in a consuming interest. When, last autumn, we were out with them in Dyrham Park we passed some Spindle Trees I talked about the use of the wood in making spindles. What I didn’t know until very recently was that spindles were more likely to be pegs or skewers or – in Gloucestershire – skivers! Being more of a wordsmith than a taxonomist it’s often the local names that excite me as much as the strict accuracy of the scientist.
Anyway, the allotment takes up most of our time in the summer – here’s another photo I took today and I hope you’ll agree that it’s a very pretty mess.
We went messy a couple of years ago in the hope of increasing our insect population. We dug a pond, stopped obsessively clearing the ground and continued never using any chemicals. The weeds said thank you very much and duly populated any square inches of bare soil – just the way nature intended it to be. About four years ago I found a rather bothersome weed with very pretty purple and white flowers colonising one of our beds. After a struggle and with the help of the national referee we finally found the name and it turned out to be rather rare in our district in spite of its name “Tall Ramping Fumitory” but a rare subspecies in this country – Fumaria bastardii ssp. hibernica – better known in Ireland. How lovely to have a rare plant growing wild on the allotment.
Then today, I was locking up the shed and I spotted something else – although this time I knew its name because I’d been shown it before by a competent botanist, growing close by..
So this is Stone Parsley – Sison amomum – another unusual plant taking advantage of our relaxed, not to say libertarian regime. I took some photos and when we got home I hit the databases and field guides and confirmed the identification – at least to my own satisfaction – it’ll have to be approved by a referee before it gets into the big database.
So to get back to where I kicked off, absolutely none of this demanded a degree level qualification or anything like it. Just a curious mind, a bit of tenacity and a willingness to ignore any snotty remarks from fellow allotmenteers about how untidy we are. I do this purely for pleasure and I have no interest in impressing anyone. When I was regularly on BBC Radio 2, I was in the supermarket chatting to a friend and a woman came around the corner and said to me “are you Dave Pole?”. “Yes I am”, I replied. She looked at me quizzically and then said “Oh. I thought you were tall”.