If you look carefully at the right hand photograph you’ll see a little jet of water, reminiscent of a Brussels fountain, exiting a split in a plastic pressure vessel used – so the blurb says – to equalise the water flow at the taps in the campervan. It’s OK, I suppose, but it means keeping the pump turned off unless you want to fill a kettle because it will make loud pumping noises all day and night if you don’t, and it will also empty the main tank very quickly; not a disaster but a bit irritating. Not nearly as irritating, though, as the almost complete absence of internet signal down here near St Anthony’s Head in Cornwall.
Turning to the good bit, we’ve managed to get out into the weather nearly every day and we’ve eaten well and finished up all the sweetcorn, runner beans and tomatoes that we brought with us. We’ve also carried on our exploration of a lane that goes down to the beach from our campsite and turns, about halfway, into a sunken lane which has got a delightful array of unusual and even rare plants – so I’ve been practicing using the new camera to which I’ve added a flash diffuser ring which makes a huge difference to extreme close-ups and macro photos. I’ve also been using a new, cheapest money can buy, GPS, which is actually very good for recording accurate grid references and saves me recording plants in the middle of the sea. Both the camera and my phone boast that they give grid references in the EXIF data but they can be hopelessly unreliable.
The yellow flower at the top is of the unaccountably named Dark Mullein that we found growing on what must be a collapsed Cornish wall. In the same short stretch we’ve found Red Bartsia, Hedge Woundwort and Babington’s Leeks alongside all the usual suspects, and just up the lane we found a single flower among hundreds of Yellow Flowered Strawberries, known as Yard Strawberries in the US and which I’ve been assuming were common wild strawberries for years. We followed a man accompanied by half a dozen female fans, down the lane on a foraging walk. I hope he didn’t make the same mistake as I have for years. Apparently they’re inedible if not poisonous. I’d never have discovered that from tasting them because I’m very suspicious of the impact of foraging when it goes too far. Down here whole lanes of Wild Garlic have been stripped and sold off to posh restaurants. As if you could gain any esoteric knowledge or benefit of the wild by eating it?
The rest of the time has been spent revisiting some old (plant) friends, now in seed, to tie down their exact names. I’ve been looking at a clump of wild Radish for three or four years, trying to distinguish them from Sea Radish and yesterday I got the evidence I was looking for; an unmistakable string of beads seed capsule and a single yellow flower to seal the deal. I made some progress with the same problem of Wild Carrot/Sea Carrot and comparing the seed heads I’m nearer to understanding which is which.
If you can seriously enlarge the right hand picture you’ll see the exquisite spiked seeds of the clifftop carrot – a sculptor’s gift! As for the wild Leeks, the seed heads have now become balls of fully formed bulblets, like tiny onion sets. I picked up a few and we’ll see if we can grow them on the allotment.
Apart from all that, reading, and ten hours of sleep most nights, I’ve been working on my database of plants, their locations and photos – hence the frustration with the internet. Yes I’m aware this all sounds a bit eccentric but it’s my happy place and that’s not up for negotiation!
