A diary of back garden botany, urban ecology, rural rambles and field trips to the middle of nowhere...
Monday, 26 February 2018
Changing of the guard. The Snowdrops will start to fade soon as the daffodils come into flower. The daffs in this photograph look like they're Narcissus pseudonarcissus- the Wild Daffodil that's native to this island.
These were seen in Hertfordshire where they're by no means common, unlike say the Lake District where Wordsworth wrote:
" I wandered lonely a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils".
This photo was taken in a copse which contains the ruin of an old cottage so perhaps they're a remnant of a garden there. "Cottage garden" is now a style of garden design but an actual cottager's garden would have been based on plants of the surrounding area.
Sadly this floral vernacular is largely lost. I notice this when I walk through rural areas that are still rich in the wildflowers of that locale. When I come to a village the gardens tend to be dominated by the kind of generic garden centre plants that can be purchased anywhere.