New life


Discovered on a walk by the River Spey yesterday. A patch of precocious green, and not just a few shoots, but burgeoning flower heads.


Their habitat was an east-facing mossy bank, scattered with fallen leaves, and in dappled sun. Sheltered from the prevailing westerly and northerly winds, and above all but the very highest reach of the river in spate.


And flowering - delicate, deeply divided individual flowers emerging from fresh green bracts, some of them frost-burned.


I turned to the family copy of the Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers. First printed 1955, ours is the seventh edition, 1969. No first edition, sadly, as for our Reader's Digest 'The Gardening Year'.


When my mother and I used to use it to identify flowers we found on our walks, we would invariably discover that we had whittled the possibilities down to something extremely rare and confined to the south of England. The explanation of the star system used by the Collins guide has a schoolmasterly tone, "We have devised a star system to show how common or rare a plant is, to add to the pleasure of finding something uncommon, and to discourage rash identification of unlikely rarities". Continuing in that fine tradition of pleasure rapidly followed by discouragement, my first stab this time turned out to have three stars for rarity, and to be "confined to woods and copses in one small area in E Sussex. Flowers June-July". A second attempt gave me the satisfyingly Lord of the Rings sounding White Butterbur, two stars for rarity and "local in plantations and by roadsides, chiefly in the N". A quick cross-check with photos on the internet (the Collins guide is illustrated by line drawings), and I'm sure that it is indeed White Butterbur. The two star rarity is for scarce plants "which usually grow only in limited areas, but may be thinly scattered over a wide area". White Butterbur is apparently an early flowering plant, so its January appearance is not a cause for climate change concern.

With this stirring of new life even in the north of Scotland, I'd like to wish all my readers and commenters a Happy New Year. Who knows where blogging will lead us in 2012. Writing this post, I found myself wondering about taking a botany course at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh...I'd be interested to hear where blogging has led or might lead you.

Comments

  1. It's amazing how soon into the new year we start to see new growth (maybe we don't start looking till now) and ,2 star, rare growth at that.

    I'm not sure that blogging has led me anywhere new but it does encourage me to look at things sometimes, in search of material, when I might otherwise sit at home with a cuppa.

    Have a good new year

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  2. Somehow I think it's magical that you found this beautiful flower at the start of the new year. Good things to come?

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  3. White Butterbur - what a delightful name. I wonder where the "butter" description comes from? Did your book say? I suppose I can just google it myself... ;-)

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  4. It's always astonishing to find things growing during the winter, isn't it? It hardly ever happens in Montreal though, unless there's something seriously weird going on with the weather over an extended period of time!

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  5. What a beautiful name. Even nice to say "butterbur" out loud.

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  6. Sounds like your Mum passed on a real love of nature,looking forward to following your discoveries/places of interest in 2012.

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  7. What a lovely discovery. Yesterday while out walking I saw 2 Campion in full flower early even for Cornwall.

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  8. What a great find to start the New Year! I noticed some snowdrops have their noses up here in Aberdeen.

    Blogging has brought me an incredible amount of encouragement and goodwill from others during a difficult time. And also, I've discovered that I am really interested in architecture, as I seem to keep taking photos of buildings. This is something I never would have consciously articuled before starting my blog!

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  9. I loved this glimpse of green. We have tiny shoots along the rose stems and some little weed seedlings coming up where I've been spreading compost. I know we're not really approaching spring, but we are in my heart!

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  10. Well, thank you for this - you learn something every day. I have never seen or even heard of butterbur before, and I agree that it has a delightfully hobbit-ish name.

    Blogging is a strange thing, the publicising of the private. For me it has brought the invaluable support of the kindness of strangers when I wrote about my brain injury. It has also made me realise just how much I value woodlands and wild places. Where will it lead? Well, it is slowly crystallising my desire to write 'properly', so we'll see...

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  11. There is certainly nothing growing here after today's frigid weather. Good IDing of the plant.

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  12. I believe one of the characters in Lord of the Rings was named Butterbur, and then there's always "butterbeer" in Harry Potter, which I'm sure is a derivative. Lovely flower, in any case... brave, too.

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  13. I think you should take the class. It would be a lot of fun.

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  14. What an interesting and beautiful flower the White Butterbur is. I am sure you would love taking a course in botany. I find that reading about flowers is very interesting, but have never tried to itendify any of our wild flowers in this area. We do have a lot of them and they are so gorgeous when they are all in bloom. We live in the desert but are in a true oasis so do have quite a bit of water underground. When we moved here about 25 years ago, they said we had enough water to last us about 300 years, but I wonder now, because the golf courses waste so much of it. Some of them use water that has gone through some method of recylcling and more should, I think. At any rate, I will try to take a picture of our wild flowers when they come into bloom this spring. I am not the photographer that you are though, Linda, but I will try.

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  15. It looks like a plant in the allium family; maybe wild garlic or something similar. Did your book say anything about butterbur being an allium?

    I just goggled butterbur, and it's a very useful plant for lots of different purposes. Apparently it grows in North America too, but I've never seen it. I'll have to keep a lookout for it.

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  16. What a wonderful post...I love the detective work, the pretty, unusual flowers, and the reminiscenses (sp??). Botany course at RBG sounds fabulous!
    Blogging for me has brought new friends into my life, and increased my interest into visual art of all kinds. I've started reading (not just flipping thru) Art & Audiance textbook that was used at the local junior college, and I realize how much I don't know about the art world and artists -- and that a little reading goes a long way.

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