A London peculiar. On a grass verge in Church Lane, Tottenham, opposite the cemetery gates grows a multitude of crocuses. Numerous species grow alongside each other (and have hybridized) to create drifts of colour.
 It rates a mention in Richard Mabey's seminal book 'Flora Britannica'. This was published over 20 years ago so I wondered if the colony still existed in this rather unlikely location. Indeed it does, flowering abundantly.
 I can find no reference anywhere as to how this spectacle came into being. It could be some long forgotten piece of municipal planting, though Mabey reckons it to be ancient. Perhaps they have persisted from the time when this was a rural district and manor, before Tottenham was swallowed up by the expansion of Greater London in the 19th. century. The setting might provide a clue: crocuses are often a historical feature of churchyards and cemeteries.
 In some obscure way this tapestry of flowers is a visitation from another age.