Left to right –
- Devil’s-bit Scabious, Succisa pratensis, Porthor beach, Lleyn.
- Sheep’s-bit, Jasione montana, Martin’s Haven, Pembrokeshire.
- Small Scabious, Scabiosa columbaria, Bannerdown Common. Bath.
- At least I think so!
This little botanical odyssey began for me in July 2017, approaching seven years ago. I suppose a flora written by an extremely inexperienced botanist would find very few buyers, and sorting this group out has been a long job for me, foxed -as I’ve always been – by the similarity in colour. They all look a bit like the Scabious my mother loved and grew in the garden. Now; looking at them side by side on the page it’s obvious that they’re different but I’ve never seen even two, let alone three of them side by side in the same place. They were all separated by years and distance across a line between Bath and Snowdonia; each to its own preferred habitat.
Anyway it’s been raining for two days, limiting any outdoor attractions, and three big ideas came along like buses. The first idea was that I’m probably not going to die – at least not yet. This idea – call it the Black Dog if you like – has been haunting me for more than fifty years. The first and worst occasion nearly got me thrown out of art school for not showing up. We were living in an idyllic cottage above Bybrook and doing the things we were most passionate about, and yet I was tormented by the spectre of death – winter trees became veins and lungs, I felt permanently exhausted and without any hold on the future, no vision; no comfort at all in nature. In the end, and under threat of being expelled, I went to the doctor and, refusing to give me antidepressants, he prescribed regular trips to the pub.”You need people, not pills” he said. He was right, and soon afterwards a wonderful revelation was given to me. “Yes you are going to die, but not yet!” So bus number one came back this week and I realised that the phobic anxiety I was diagnosed with all those years ago had returned and then gone away again.
Bus number two was the annual discussion with Madame about whether we should sell the campervan. When she suggested it would be better to get it repaired and perhaps even take ourselves away for a whole month of walking, drawing, writing and botanising I felt my heart leap – for once in a good way.
Bus number three was the impulse buy I mentioned in my last post – “Frustrating Flowers and Puzzling Plants” by John M Warren and published by Pelagic Press. After a couple of months of being unable to do any serious botanical study, the book lit me up and I suddenly felt that spring and summer were truly on the way and calling me outside to meet all those precious plants again. Even better was the fact that the illustrations in the book were not only excellent but also looked very like a series of studies I once did of Hyacinth flowers. It suddenly occurred to me that what this little group of three – but could be half a dozen pale blue Scabious like flowers - needed, was a highly detailed set of drawings of their heads, including blowups of their reproductive bits, to help me – and perhaps others as well – get our heads around identifying them apart. I knew I could do it. A hand-holding guide to avoid being made to feel small by an expert. I once said to a very experienced botanist that I found grasses difficult. They simply said “Oh grasses are easy!” I was so incensed I spent months crawling around in fields trying to sort them out and three years later I’m nowhere near good, but improving.
So the oppressive cloud suddenly lifted and I felt a happy place opening up between now and the unavoidable fact that one day the wheels will fall off – but not yet! Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
All this led to a deep dive into my photos. My usual practice is to photograph plants – which is a skill in itself; knowing what you’ll most wish you’d noted when you’re back home with the books. However my enthusiasm for pressing the shutter – which takes moments – is countered by the time it takes to put names to the plants. It can take hours, days or even years to make a secure identification, and the more you practice the harder it seems to get. The photos are just the beginning of the process. The three graces at the top of the post involved a fascinating excursus around the sex life of the Devil’s-bit scabious when I realized that my photos were nowhere near good enough to make any visual sense of the meaning of gynodioecious, thrown at me by the Book of Stace (IV). That knowledge will go forward with me because I now have a plan to revisit all three plants, and any more cousins I can find – in order to become a bit of an expert at some perfectly ordinary and common plants. Naming things is the most tremendous fun. It turns nature into an old friend and makes every walk and adventure; and if I make a mistake – well, nobody dies and the worst that can happen is that I feel a bit silly for a moment: but then field botanists are some of the kindest and most helpful people you could hope to meet. Mostly.
I don’t joke about my old enemy the black dog. It can really mess you up, but if that’s you too, take heart in the truth of the moment. The beauty at hand will always drive out the dog on the horizon.