I know. Sometimes my enthusiasm for creating long lists can be a bit – or very -trying because listing every plant we pass and then photographing it can make a seaside walk feel like crossing a desert. On Thursday there was a mutinous atmosphere that grew above us like a thundercloud. The secret of a long relationship is to know when to give up; so that’s what I did and we concentrated solely on one plant; a wild leek which is pretty rare but which happens to be a resident of our two favourite places in Cornwall – the Lizard peninsula and the Roseland peninsula. It’s a variety of the “normal” wild leek which is, in itself, rare; but this one is known as Babington’s Leek. The two are very close, and it’s only possible to distinguish them when they’ve developed those natty allium spikes at the end of their season. Wild leeks are full of seeds and Babingtons contain bulbils – tiny little readymade clones of the mother plant which drop off and take root in the soil around her. In the collection of photographs at the top, you can see the plant at various stages shown from two sites and I think the tiny bulbils coiled together in their filmy cover are just a bit sinister. They look like Medusa’s haircut. Ironically, you can buy the bulbils online and try to grow them in your garden so long as it provides exactly the right soil, seasonal weather and temperature and all the other conditions they need. Alternatively you could take your holidays here and enjoy them in their wild state like we do. The colony we photographed here on Roseland was strimmed off some time in the last couple of days in order not to scratch the sides of some grossly polluting SUV on its way to a holiday cottage. Grrrrr.
We’ve been so lucky with the weather; fourteen out of fifteen days of sunshine and I’ve been testing some AI plant identification and recording apps for a talk I’m doing in the autumn. None of them are perfect and some of them come up with some wonderful howlers. One recording app I was testing managed to lose 25 of my 102 identified species which, sadly, I hadn’t committed to paper. None of them except one were at all rare but it was enough to make me resolve to keep parallel paper records for the time being.
I’ve no idea how or why I’ve developed such an attachment to field botany; it kind of crept up on me when I wasn’t paying attention. Forbidden to do any serious surveys over the weekend, I decided to clear up my personal muddles with four closely related white wildflowers. Disambiguating two Stitchworts and two Mouse Ears all with similar – (same Campion family) – flowers sounds like an odd way of finding joy but they all grow close to the campsite and nobody would think it odd if I spent my time doing crosswords. Mission accomplished yesterday we were able to spend our time lazing around and watching our neighbours. Holidays seem to be very stressful and we’ve witnessed a few smouldering rows and a walk out; we watched some young women set out on a club night. They made me feel like Wellington before the Battle of Waterloo, who said of his troops that he didn’t know what they’d do to the enemy but “by God they terrify me!” One of them had an American Bully dog which caught sight of a rabbit, pulled his lead out of the ground and set off at such speed his lead caught around his owner’s leg, dragged her along the ground and damaged the skin on her leg. It was almost like being at home – but without the clouds of weed. Anyway nobody died, and the girls came back quietly at 2.00am.
I’ve delayed taking my medication until after we’ve gone for our long walks in the cool mornings and I feel miles better. Today we covered just under five miles and stopped for a healthy bacon butty at the Thirstea Cafe. On the way around I found three plants to record very quickly and slipped on the wet grass to do a kind of nine step polka down the track, whilst attempting to regain my balance. Thank goodness no-one saw me.
Behold – the new ones (for me) left to right; Wild Clary, Beaked Hawksbeard, Spotted Medick and Spear Thistle. Incidentally I now know the Latin names for all these – I have to, in order to record them; but the English names are much more evocative – see Geoffrey Grigson’s “An Englishman’s Flora” for an encyclopaedic view of all the poetic names.
