More than can be said for Cephalanthera rubra, the red helleborine. This is now critically endangered, it is Britain’s most threatened flower, being reduced to three locations only, and it is also exceptionally lovely: the beauty and the rarity combine in an incomparable allure, which is why my heart beat faster and faster as on that hot day at the start of July I stumbled through the Chiltern beechwoods towards it. And I was not disappointed: I gazed and gazed. I trembled with excitement. I wanted to shout for joy. In the Chilterns, for God’s sake, in the gentlest of landscapes, what can do that to you in the Chilterns?
Only orchids.
Michael McCarthy, 2016
Duckweed, and some other pond weeds, appear soon after Midsummer, so that stagnant waters are seldom clean during the aestival season. In Aug. and Sept. many ponds and ditches are quite green, like a carpet, with it.
Thomas Furly Forster, The Pocket Encyclopaedia
of Natural Phenomena, published 1827
If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five o’clock, and drives home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never does anything to it with his own hands; but he takes great pride in it notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes a walk round it, before he starts for town in the morning, and is particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat. If you call on him on Sunday in summer-time, about an hour before dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on the lawn behind the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young gentlemen, who are holding parasols over them – of course only to keep the sun off – while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid, are strolling listlessly about, in the shade. Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to dinner on a week-day, he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has drank three or four glasses of his favourite port, he orders the French windows of his dining-room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his arm-chair, descants at considerable length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it. This is to impress you – who are a young friend of the family – with a due sense of the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he has exhausted the subject, he goes to sleep.
There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town – say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. He and his wife – who is as clean and compact a little body as himself – have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at about five years old. The child’s portrait hangs over the mantelpiece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about, is carefully preserved as a relic.
In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it, by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest delight. In springtime, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look like epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has, is the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses in the parlour-window, and geranium-pots in the little front court, testify. She takes great pride in the garden too: and when one of the four fruit-trees produces rather a larger gooseberry than usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-glass on the sideboard, for the edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted the tree which produced it, with his own hands. On a summer’s evening, when the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little summerhouse, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers – no bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their only recreations, and they require no more. They have within themselves, the materials of comfort and content; and the only anxiety of each, is to die before the other.
This is no ideal sketch. There used to be many old people of this description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still more. Whether the course female education has taken of late days – whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings, has tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we should feel little gratification in discussing: we hope not.
Let us turn now, to another portion of the London population, whose recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be conceived – we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural ‘Tea-gardens.’
The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women – boys and girls – sweethearts and married people – babies in arms, and children in chaises – pipes and shrimps – cigars and periwinkles – tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, ‘cutting it uncommon fat!’) – ladies, with great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen – husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of ‘shrimps’ and ‘winkles,’ with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort – boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked them – gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes.
Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile, but they are all clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so confidentially, inserting a ‘ma’am’ at every fourth word, scraped an acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them – that diminutive specimen of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party in the opposite
box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the visitors. These are the father and mother, and old grandmother: a young man and woman, and an individual addressed by the euphonious title of ‘Uncle Bill,’ who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some half-dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for that is a matter of course here. Every woman in ‘the gardens,’ who has been married for any length of time, must have had twins on two or three occasions; it is impossible to account for the extent of juvenile population in any other way.
Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother, at Uncle Bill’s splendid joke of ‘tea for four: bread-and-butter for forty;’ and the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper ‘pigtail’ on the waiter’s collar. The young man is evidently ‘keeping company’ with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s hints – such as ‘Don’t forget me at the dinner, you know,’ ‘I shall look out for the cake, Sally,’ ‘I’ll be godfather to your first – wager it’s a boy,’ and so forth, are equally embarrassing to the young people, and delightful to the elder ones. As to the old grandmother, she is in perfect ecstasies, and does nothing but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have finished the ‘gin-and-water warm with,’ of which Uncle Bill ordered ‘glasses round’ after tea, ‘just to keep the night air out, and to do it up comfortable and riglar arter sitch an as-tonishing hot day!’
It is getting dark, and the people begin to move. The field leading to town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily along, the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of going to sleep – the mothers begin to wish they were at home again – sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for parting arrives – the gardens look mournful enough, by the light of the two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of smokers – and the waiters, who have been running about incessantly for the last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their glasses and their gains.
Charles Dickens, ‘London Recreations’, 1835
‘Daddy, look!’ he calls from the top of the slope. ‘Sausage lichen!’
It is a rare cloudless blue sky in the middle of the summer, and we are visiting a favourite spot on Dartmoor. Holding a small branch as if it is the most fragile of porcelain sculptures, he runs carefully towards me. There is a subconscious skill in the way he runs down the slope, aware of everything around him: his precious cargo remains safe as he effortlessly dodges the most delicate purple violets, and zig-zags through young ferns unravelling their bright green new fronds, cautious not to trample anything. Perhaps his senses are so astute not because he has super powers, but because he is aware of the natural world all around. He is four and a half years old, but he has an innate respect for nature. And it shines.
He approaches, holding out his prize. The small rugged-looking branch is about as long as my forearm, but this is no ordinary piece of wood. And he knows it. Dangling down, is a soft looking, light green clump; as if an oddly coloured sheep has snagged its wool on the branch.
‘And look Daddy, there. Lettuce lichen,’ he says excitedly. His subtly creased brow lines reveal his familiar seriousness when he has discovered something he is proud of.
We talk about the wind-broken stick and the lichen that have made their home there. He is hungry and his curiosity needs feeding. His enquiring mind is churning out many questions so he can make sense of this odd thing he has discovered. This clump of an otherwise obscure growth on a broken twig gets us talking about Peter Rabbit and the beasts of the last Ice Age in the South West. And why shouldn’t it? Lichen is bizarrely wonderful. What makes it so funky is that it is not just one species but two, and sometimes three! In passing, some lichen may seem like a flat, dull, lifeless, crusty thing on a surface, but it is in fact an incredibly complex system of two (or more) organisms living together for mutual gain. Lichen is the Han Solo and Chewbacca of the natural world (with Luke Skywalker occasionally hanging around). This incredible relationship is between single celled algae or cyanobacteria (or sometimes both) and filaments of fungus. It is a truly symbiotic relationship: the algae get the protection from the fungus, and the fungus feeds from algae’s photosynthetic food. With no need for roots to take up food, the fungus can grow almost anywhere, from the tops of delicate leaves to in between paving stones beneath your feet. Lichen can grow in some of the most extreme environments on the planet, from the hellishly hot conditions at Yellowstone Park to the freezing, Hoth-like temperatures on Antarctica.
And Peter Rabbit? Well, this is a nice little link. Peter Rabbit and friends were brought to life through the wonderful imagination and glorious illustrations of Beatrix Potter. Her fascination with wildlife didn’t stop with anthropomorphising rabbits, frogs and foxes. In incredible detail, Potter painted hundreds of elegant watercolours of fungi and lichen. She was fascinated by these botanical curiosities, and carried out countless experiments to observe how they grew. She even questioned what lichens actually were. However, Potter wasn’t the first. Some thirty years before, a Swiss botanist, Simon Schwendener, spent several years looking at the relationship between fungus and algae to explain exactly what lichen is. His ideas about lichen being two separate organisms didn’t take root with the British botanical circles, even when Potter tried to reignite Schwendeners’ ideas, producing her own unique experiments. Her results, and her views, were ignored. The botanical world in the mid 1890s was not ready for two organisms living as one. Nor was it ready for a female botanist to be explaining what lichens really were, backed by successful experiments.
Little old lichen, inconspicuously alive and elegantly beautiful, is a lifeline for many animals. In harsh winters, the wonderfully shaggy musk ox and the sturdy reindeer scrape lichen off the rocks for food with their strong front incisors. What’s more incredible is that, until relatively recently, these beasts were wandering the British landscape: while reindeer trundled along in their huge herds, woolly mammoths lolloped. Reindeer fossils have been found at cave sites across Britain. In the South West of England, around 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, when the climate was much colder, reindeer were scraping lichen off rocks with wolves howling in the distance.
One of the favourite stories my son loves is that some species were used to dye clothes in the past. There is a special ingredient added to lichen which was hand scraped off the cold, hard granite on Dartmoor. The key is in the pee. (The ammonia in the urine brings out the colour from the lichen.) This has been used for hundreds of years all across Europe. A wonderful fact he shares with his little sister.
As we chat my son spots a small weevil moving through the sausage lichen. He holds his breath for what seems like an eternity, for fear of unleashing a terrible gale on this tiny creature. He watches it move each jointed leg incredibly slowly through what must seem like mangrove forests to this enigmatic little beetle. My little one notices everything: the odd, unsynchronised movement of the antennae, the comically disproportionate nose. His brow lines begin to crease again.
Nature captures us so strongly because we all have a natural curiosity with the animals and plants of the world. David Atten-borough recognised this, when he wrote, ‘Every child in this world has an innate pleasure and delight and interest and curiosity in the natural world.’ I would go a step further, and say every person in this world has that innate pleasure, delight, interest and curiosity.
That may seem like quite a bold statement, but I have seen it so many times. The reaction of little ones and their parents is so similar when they see a real skeleton up close or come face to face with a pickled octopus, the only difference being that adults are more restrained. But talk to them about the creature, show it to them close, and that inner child comes out pretty quickly. Perhaps as adults our lives are so filled with bills, chores, jobs and other things that we often forget to stop and look at the world around us. Maybe not everyone likes dinosaurs. Not
everyone likes trees. But there is something about nature that everybody does like.
Look at this wonderful organism, and you will see beautiful colours, with those stunning tiny cups to release its next generation. By looking closer at the lichen, your eyes are seeing more. We might catch a shimmer of blue as an iridescent ground beetle moves nearby, or a blue tit singing on a nearby branch. The world around us is breathtakingly beautiful. The more we look, the more we see that beauty.
Jan Freedman, 2016
The Farne Islands off the Northumbrian coast provide a feast for the senses. There is a smorgasbord of sounds: the calls of innumerable seabirds mingle perfectly with the sounds made by tourists and the rumble of waves against rock. The Farnes are pristine to look at: bleached cliffs, jagged outcrops and shadowed caves; a true wilderness. But it is the smell of these islands that captivates me. The whitened rock, stained by centuries of guano, emits a fantastically fishy odour in the warm summer sun. It is a stench that may be unpleasant to some; to me, it epitomises everything good about the Farnes.
In summertime these islands spring to life as countless seabirds return from their winter habitats. Guillemots and razorbills now bejewel the cliffs, black and brown against the pale rock. The latter, though at first appearing docile, vigorously defend their chicks from marauding gulls, presenting a wall of upturned bills not dissimilar to a medieval spear wall. Another auk, the puffin, is the reason most people visit these islands. The clowns of the avian world, charismatic and confiding, puffins never fail to delight. Whether loafing on the sea or pottering across paths, often with a bill full of shimmering sand eels, they invariably draw a crowd. With some thirty-seven thousand pairs currently residing on the Farnes, visitors are rarely disappointed.
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