LOCAL FLORA GROUP

I once knew a botany professor whose opening words to first year undergraduates were always "I know very little about plants". He did not mean he had strayed into the wrong lecture hall. As he no doubt explained once his' audience had recovered from the shock,

information about, say, a rose's genetic structure, category and so on, provides no insight into what it is, and why it is as it is. He had to acknowledge that despite his academic armoury, the essentials of the plant world escaped him.

This can be heartening to the casual forager in the hedgerows. It's in the spring that my old botanist friend comes most to mind. Sun, moon and stars, earth, wind and rain conspire each year to come up with something I hadn't noticed before. Two springs ago it was the tiny moschatel - townhall clock they sometimes call it. Now there's a mystery if ever there was one: 4 five-petalled little flowers like 4 clock faces look north, south, east and west. And like the roof, looking up to heaven, is the 5th flower - but it has only four petals! What does it think its doing? "Telling Christian folk to be ever watchful", the folklore says. Well, that's more promising than something a geneticist might come up with. Then there are those giant hogweeds along the canal last summer. At 10 ft high why don't they topple over? A sky-scraper's height is limited to a maximum of ten times its base. What's a hogweed got for it to fly in the face of the building regulations?

Occasionally on my walks I come across another enthusiast - not expert, not botanist, let alone professor - and we exchange discoveries: "Bee orchids in front of that stone wall"; or terminology: "We always call that bush Whitsun Boss, I don't know why". I've never exchanged name or address; just relied on bumping into them again. But I rarely do. So I thought I'd join a U3A botany group. But there isn't one - yet.

If interested, please give me a ring

Michael Stott 01453 542380

Click Back Arrow to Return