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I feel as though I spent a large part of my childhood rummaging around in the undergrowth in the woods. I was mostly looking for Anemone nemorosa, which I only
found on one occasion. Well, found is probably the wrong word. It rather overwhelmed me with its massed excess. In the process, I ran into the usual Primroses, Cowslips,
Bluebells and Violets. I even learnt to appreciate the subtle beauty of Dogs Mercury. Isn't it interesting how the real names for these things are entirely bypassed in childhood memories?
Anyway, in the process, I found a single tiny clump of cut leaves that looked like a wood anemone. The following spring I watched it flower, and finally identified
Adoxa moschatellina. I still prefer to call it Five-faced Bishop, and I have to say, it has coloured my expectations of Bishops when I have met them in later life! Anyway, I visited it every year in the spring as I grew up. When I was about 30, I returned, but it had gone. Kids had turned the woods into a cycle track. Things move on. This plant came from a nursery on Anglessey, hundreds of miles from the fat Essex clay that I grew up on, but I still adore its subtle green charm. The wood anemones in the beds next to it are wonderful in the spring, but it is the emergence of Adoxa that makes my heart leap, and I will always look at it through the eyes of a twelve year old. The BSBI say: "A perennial rhizomatous herb of mesic brown earth soils on the shaded banks of rivers and streams, in deciduous woodlands and shaded hedgebanks; also occasionally in shaded base-rich sites in mountains. This is a vernal species which disappears by May or June in the lowlands. It is self-fertile, reproducing by seed and vegetatively." |
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| 16th March 2008 | ||
