Just of late, I’ve gotten interested in plants again in a big way. When I was at university reading Environmental Science, botany was by far and away my favourite subject. I loved it, both for its own sake and also because I was lucky enough to have a lecturer who was really passionate about their subject and really brought it alive in a way that few could. I love plants, in all their different varieties, families, genii; I find them endlessly fascinating. So much so, that recently I started to research a book on plants, myself. I’m now spending hours immersed in country, county and other books on flora.
But I find myself with a dilemma. Floras are great for telling you about the sheer variety of plant life, but how much of that plant life are you ever likely to see if you don’t live in a rural area. For instance, the plant in the photograph below – It’s Red Valerian, Centranthus ruber, but this photograph was shot about two years ago now and to date I have seen this plant nowhere else.
Poppies, Papaver rhoeas, are a particular favourite of mine (not because of any narcotic associations I hasten to add in the case of Papaver somniferum, but simply because I think that they are far and away one of the most beautiful flowers in the UK flora), but how often are they seen growing wild. Yes, you see them in gardens, but not that often wild where I live.
Your average roadside bank in some places is likely to consist of weeds, such as dandelions, and not much else. And here I don’t mean weeds in a derogatory sense at all, just, maybe that they’re very common, it doesn’t make them any less beautiful as a plant to me.
So in keeping with my old lecturer’s advice to concentrate on what’s actually there and not what the book says should be there or what you think should be there, as of tomorrow I am out and about with the camera, to see actually what is there and to concentrate only on what’s there.
I would have gone today, but I’ve been thwarted by the good old Welsh weather, rain and plenty of it and wind too unfortunately. So it will have to be tomorrow.
Hope you are all well.
Bye for now Radders xx
