This is turning into something of a series. On January 5th I wrote about the plants being markers of the passing seasons after walking down a lane towards the beach here in Cornwall; none of them rare in any sense but all capable of lifting your heart as an avatar of spring. On 6th January I wrote about plants and their properties as irreplaceable sources of as-yet undiscovered drugs; but I warned that they’re also the canaries in the environmental coalmine warning us clearly about the danger of our extractive and instrumental abuse of nature. Then on the 7th January I turned towards the difficulties but also rewards of a meditative relationship with plants and nature as a whole. Notwithstanding the difficulties of talking about “soul” and “spirituality” I asked whether a loosely Taoist spirituality can build a deeper relationship with the earth and creation without resorting to religious fanaticism. Is there a way into a green spirituality that honours Wittgenstein’s wise aphorism – * “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” ? or perhaps more simply, can we ever attempt to explain mysteries without distorting and diminishing them?
So today, in the fourth of these I want to address another gift that plants bring to us – their sheer beauty. Anyone who’s ever loved a William Morris wallpaper or fabric design will understand his debt to natural forms. Any ceramic artist must surely be especially inspired by the natural forms, textures and colours of fungi. Any painter could learn how to replicate the colours, and any sculptor the forms of these exquisite parts of creation that were growing here long before the first hominids evolved and will still be here and still evolving long after we’ve gone the way of the dinosaurs. I don’t write this as a knockdown stand-alone argument for preserving nature, but I believe that the aesthetic can’t be left out of the argument because it’s the aesthetic dimension that helps us to value those parts of life that can’t be reduced to money. If you ask the question “what is a Cowslip worth?” could anyone respond fully without mentioning its beauty, its history, its place in the scheme of things? The value of a wildflower meadow could never be expressed without including its aesthetic dimension except – I write this with a heavy heart – a property developer who might pay lip service to its “recreational value” by offering to build a playing field somewhere else – a promise that will be waived away by the local planning authority if the developer pleads that they can’t make a profit unless they build on the football field too!
And if I might sound off a little bit longer, if we all watched nature programmes on TV from dawn ’till dusk, seven days a week, we’d be in danger of being as ignorant of nature as we were when we were born. Television is inherently passive entertainment more or less presented as education. The real stuff is out there in the cold and rain or, with a bit of luck, on those warm summer evenings when once, in France, I grumbled because a churring Nightjar was keeping me awake in my tent. Real nature is sensual, tactile and mucky, and it demands patience and fierce concentration as well as some ultra rewarding book-work.
When I was learning to do botanical illustration (I never got very far but it taught me the value of close attention), I took dozens of close-up photographs of a Hyacinth so I could paint it using just three colours. This is a great exercise for anyone to try. I’ll never be a William Morris, but I’ll never again dismiss a Hyacinth from a supermarket as “just a Pot Plant”. As I went through my albums looking to pick some appropriate photographs for this post, it occurred to me that one other gift from the natural world to us is to inflame our curiosity. But that would demand a separate post.
*Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The Potwell Inn New Year quiz – answers below
First image – which kind of Wild Carrot is this?
Second image – what’s so fishy about this?
Third (Bindweed) what’s the significance of the little pointed bit between the two reddish leafy things?
Upper fourth – Which children’s’ book character shares a name with this plant?
Lower fifth – which word does this plant share with the one above?
Left upper sixth – What part of the body shares a name with this fern?
Left lower seventh – what’s wrong with this Strawberry?
Right eighth – where would you look for this plant?
Left ninth – What punctuation mark shares the name of this butterfly?
For the photo at bottom right, check out the tree label!
Answers – 1. Sea Carrot, 2. Oyster fungus, 3. !t’s the difference between Large Bindweed, where you can see it, and Hedge bindweed where you can’t. Gardeners hate both! 4. Marsh Woundwort. 5. Marsh thistle. 6. Hart’s tongue. 7. It’s yellow, still a strawberry but it’s inedible, 8 Sea radish. 9.Comma. 10. See nameplate.
