March visit 7

Wild flowers

We saw loads of scilla (squills) and hellebores (stinking, I think, but having virtually no sense of smell I couldn’t tell!) in the grass verges. It’s so lovely seeing the wildflowers, not something we’re used to here…

They were wild daffodils in a couple of woods (the Wordsworth kind, narcissus pseudonarcissus). We were in a hurry one day, so I never stopped to take any photos. We went back the next day, and they’d all gone; we’d seen a couple of people collecting them, but I wouldn’t have believed they could strip an entire wood. Someone had… We saw lots of the wild daffodils in florists and in windows, so I suspect they are either not protected like here, or the protection is just ignored. We found another little wood we’d seen from the road – across a field, over a stream and behind a barbed-wire fence – and that still had plenty; so difficult to photograph, but at least no one had managed to pick them all. It was beautiful to see the wood carpeted like that!

Makes me wonder whether I should plant some under our trees…