The Call of the Wildflower Part 3

Even in the case of those wildings whose beauty or scent has made them generally popular, it is thought the highest compliment to domesticate them, to bring them--poor waifs and strays that they are--from their forlorn savage state into the fold of civilization, just as a "deserving" pauper might be received into an almshouse, or an orphan child into one of Dr. Barnardo's homes. And strange to say, this reverential belief in the garden, as enhancing the merits of the wild, has found its way into many of the wildflower books: for instance, in Johns's well-known work, _Flowers of the Field_ (of the _field_, be it noted), we are informed that the lily of the valley is "a universally admired garden plant, and that the sweet-brier is "deservedly"

cultivated.

The more refined wildflowers, it will be seen, can thus rise, as it were, from the ranks, at the cost of their freedom, which happens to be the most interesting thing about them, to be enrolled in the army of the civilized; and the result has been that some of the more distinguished plants, such as the _daphne mezereum_, are fast losing their place among British wildflowers, and becoming nothing better than prisoners and captives of the parterre. This disdain that is felt for whatever is wild, natural, and unowned, is largely responsible for the unscrupulous digging up of any attractive plants that may be discovered, a subject of which I propose to speak in the next chapter.

The absurdity of the typical gardener's att.i.tude toward wildflowers is well ill.u.s.trated by some remarks in Delamer's _The Flower Garden_ (1856) with reference to that exceedingly beautiful plant, the tutsan. "Tutsan is a hardy shrubby St. John's-wort, largely employed by gardeners of the last century; but it has now, for the most part, retired from business, in consequence of the arrival of more attractive and equally serviceable newcomers. One or two tutsan bushes may be permitted to help to form a screen of shrubs, in consideration of the days of auld lang syne."

Fortunately the tutsan is not "retiring from business" in Nature's garden. It seems to me that, instead of carrying more and more wildflowers into captivity, it would be much wiser to set at liberty the many British plants that are now under detention. I would instruct my gardener (if I had one) to lift very carefully the daphnes, the lilies of the valley, the tutsans, the cornflowers, the woodruffs, and the rest of the native clan, and to plant them out, each according to its taste, by bank or hedgerow, in field, common, or wood.

VIII

PICKING AND STEALING

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies.

TENNYSON.

THERE is, as I have said, a positive contempt in many minds for the wildflower; that is, for the flower which is regarded as being no one's "property." But the flora of a country, rightly considered, is very far from being unowned; it is the property of the people, and when any species is diminished or extirpated the loss is not private but national. We have already reached a time, as many botanists think, when the choicer British flowers need some sort of protection.

That some injury should be caused to our native flora by improved culture, drainage, building, and the extension of towns, is inevitable; though these losses might be considerably lessened if there were a more general regard for natural beauty. But that is all the stronger reason for discountenancing such damage as is done in mere thoughtlessness, or, worse, for selfish purposes; and it were greatly to be wished that some of the good folk who pray that their hands may be kept "from picking and stealing" would so far widen the scope of their sympathies as to include the rarer wildflowers.

It cannot be doubted that there is an immense amount of wasteful flower-picking by children, and also by persons who are old enough to know better. Nothing is commoner, in Spring, than to see piles of freshly gathered hyacinths or cowslips abandoned by the roadside; and many other flowers share the same fate, including, as I have noticed, the beautiful green-winged meadow orchis. Trippers and holiday-makers are often very mischievous: I have seen them, for instance, on the ramparts of Conway Castle, hooking and tearing the red valerian which is an ornament to the grey old walls. I was told by a friend who lives in a district where the rare meadow-sage (_salvia pratensis_) is native, that he is compelled to pluck the blue flowers just before the August bank-holiday, in order to save the plant itself from being up-rooted and carried off.

Primroses, abundant as they still are in many places, have nearly disappeared from others, in consequence of the depredations of flower-vendors; and there was a time when they were seriously threatened in the neighbourhood of London because a certain fashionable cult was at its height. Witness the following "Idyll of Primrose Day" by some unknown versifier:

How blest was dull old Peter Bell, Whom Wordsworth sung in days of yore!

A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.

Alas! 'tis something more to us; No longer Nature's meekest flower, But symbol of consummate Quack, Who by tall talk and knavish knack Could plant himself in power.

For his sweet sake we mourn, each spring, Our lanes and hedgerows robbed and bare, Our woods despoiled by clumsy clown, That primrose-tufts may come to town For tuft-hunters to wear.

And so, on sn.o.bbish Primrose Day, We envy Peter's simple lore: A primrose, worn with fulsome fuss, A yellow primrose is to us, Alas! and something more.

The nurseryman and the professional gardener have also much to answer for in the destruction of wildflowers. Take the following instance, quoted from the _Flora of Kent_, with reference to the cyclamen: "Towards the end of August, 1861, I was shown the native station of this plant. . . . The people in those parts had found out it was in request, and had almost entirely extirpated it, digging up the roots, and selling them for transplantation into shrubberies." In the same work it is recorded that, when the frog orchis was found in some abundance near Canterbury, "in a wonderfully short s.p.a.ce of time the whole of this charming colony was dug and extirpated."

Again, if it be permissible to call a spade a spade, what shall be said of those roving knights of the trowel, the unconscionable rock-gardeners who ride abroad in search of some new specimen for their collections? A late writer of very charming books on the subject has feelingly described how, after the discovery of some long-sought treasure, he craved a brief spell of repose, a sort of holy calm, before commencing operations. "We blessed ones," he said, referring to botanists as contrasted with ornithologists, "may sit down calmly, philosophically, beside our success, and gently savour all its sweetness, until it is time to take out the trowel after half an hour of restful rapture in our laurels."[9]

[Footnote 9: From _My Rock Garden_, by Reginald Farrer, p. 257.]

Other flower-fanciers there are who show much less circ.u.mspection. In Upper Teesdale, where the rare blue gentian (_gentiana verna_) is found on the upland pastures, I was told that a "gentleman" had come with two gardeners in a motor, and departed laden with a number of these beautiful Alpine flowers for transplantation to his private rockery. The nation which permits such a theft--far worse than stealing from a private garden--deserves to possess no wildflowers at all; and such a botanist, if botanist he can be called, deserves to be himself transplanted, or transported--to Botany Bay.

The same vandalism, in varying degrees, has been at work in every part of the land, and nothing has yet been done effectively to check it, whether by legislation, education, or appeal to public opinion: it seems to be absolutely no one's business to protect what ought to be a cherished national possession. In no district, perhaps, has the greed of the collector been more unabashed than among the mountains of c.u.mberland and North Wales. "Thanks to the inconsiderate rapacity of the fern-getter," wrote Canon Rawnsley, in an Introduction to a _Guide to Lakeland_, "the few rarer sorts are fast disappearing. ... There has been, in the time past, quite a cruel and unnecessary uprooting of the rarer ferns and flowers;" and he went on to ask: "When will travellers learn that the fern by the wayside has a public duty to fulfil?"

All such remonstrances have hitherto been in vain: neither the fear of G.o.d nor the fear of man has deterred the collector from his purpose. It is pleasant to read that in the seventeenth century a Welsh guide alleged "the fear of eagles" as a reason for not leading one of the earliest English visitors to the haunts of Alpine plants on the precipices of Carnedd Llewelyn; but unfortunately eagles are now as scarce as nurserymen and fern-filchers are numerous.

IX

ROUND A SURREY CHALK-PIT

I found a deep hollow on the side of a great hill, a green concave, where I could rest and think in perfect quiet.

RICHARD JEFFERIES.

AS a range of hills, the North Downs are inferior to those of Suss.e.x in beauty and general interest. Their outline suggests no "greyhound backs"

coursing along the horizon; nor have they that "living garment" of turf, woven by centuries of pasturing, which Hudson has matchlessly described.

Their northern side is but a gradual slope leading up to a bleak tableland; and only when one emerges suddenly on their southern front, with its wide views across the weald, do their glories begin to be realized. In this steep declivity, facing the sun at noon, there is a distinctive and unfailing charm, quite unlike that of the corresponding escarpment of the South Downs: it forms, as it were, an inland riviera, a sheltered undercliff, green with long waving gra.s.ses, and sweet with marjoram and thyme, a haven where the wandering flower-lover may revel in glowing sunshine, or take a siesta, if so minded, under that most friendly of trees the white-beam.

I have memories of many a pious Sabbath spent in this enchanted realm, with the wind in the beeches for anthem, and for incense the scent of marjoram enriching the air. To one who knows these fragrant banks it seems strange that though the wild thyme has been so celebrated by poets and nature-writers, the marjoram, itself a glorified thyme, has by comparison gone unsung. We are told in the books that it is a potherb, an aromatic stimulant, even a remedy for toothache. It may be all that; but it is something much better, a thing of beauty which might cure the achings not of the tooth only, but of the heart. Its relatives the lavender and the rosemary have not more charm. It was the _amaracus_ of Virgil, the flower on whose sweetness the young Iulus rested, when he was spirited away by Venus to her secret abode:

She o'er the prince entrancing slumber strows, And, fondling in her bosom, far away Bears him aloft to high Idalian bowers, Where banks of marjoram sweet, in soft repose, Enfold him, propped on beds of fragrant flowers.[10]

[Footnote 10: _aeneid_, I. 691-4.]

Who could wish for a diviner couch?

Along this range of hills the chalk-pits, used or disused, are frequent at intervals, some of such size as to form landmarks visible at the distance of twenty or thirty miles. For a botanist, these amphitheatres, large or small, have always an attraction; for though they vary much in the quality of their flowers, and some have little to show beyond the commoner plants of a calcareous soil, there are a few which present a surprising array of the choicer kinds; and to light upon one of these treasure-troves is a joy indeed. I have in mind a large semicircular disused pit, lying high among the Downs, and bordered with abrupt gra.s.sy banks and coppices of beech, hazel, and fir, where during the past thirty years I have spent many long summer days, sometimes writing under the shade of the trees, at other times idling among the flowers, or watching the snakes that lie basking in the sun, or the kestrels that may often be seen hovering over the adjacent slopes. For all their unrivalled openness and sense of s.p.a.ce, the Suss.e.x Downs have no such "sun-trap" to show.

One has heard of "the music of wild flowers."[11] I used to call the floor of this chalk-pit "the orchistra," so numerous are the orchids that adorn it. The spotted orchis, the fragrant orchis, the pyramidal orchis, the bee orchis, the b.u.t.terfly orchis, and the twayblade--these six are stationed there within a small compa.s.s. The marsh orchis grows below; the fly orchis is in the neighbouring thickets; in the beech-woods are the bird's-nest orchis, the broad-leaved h.e.l.leborine, with its rare purple variety (_epipactis purpurata_), and the large white h.e.l.leborine or egg orchis. A dozen of the family within the circuit of a short walk! The man orchis seems to be absent, though it grows in some plenty in similar places on the same line of hills.

[Footnote 11: See note on p. 12.]

Another feature of the chalk-pit is the viper's bugloss. If, as Th.o.r.eau says, there is a flower for every mood of the mind, the viper's bugloss must surely belong to that mood which is a.s.sociated with the pomps and splendours of the high summer noontide. Gorgeous and tropical in its colouring beyond all other British flowers, as it rears its bristly green spikes, studded profusely with the pink buds that are turning to an equally vivid blue, it seems instinct with the spirit of a fiery summer day. Like other members of the Borage group, it has the warm southern temperament; its name, too, suits it well; for there is something viperish in the almost fierce beauty of the plant, as if some pa.s.sionate-hearted exotic had sprung up among the more staid and sober representatives of our native flora. Its richness never palls on us; we no more tire of its brilliance than of the summer itself.

Akin to the bugloss, though less striking and less abundant, is the hound's-tongue, with its long downy leaves and numerous purple-red buds of a sombre and sullen hue that is not often to be matched. It has the misfortune, so we are told, to smell of mice; were it not for this hindrance to its career, it might justly be held in high esteem. Among the larger plants prominent on ledges of the chalk, or in near neighbourhood, are the mullein, the teazle, the ploughman's-spikenard, and the deadly nightshade or dwale. The buckthorn is frequent in the hedges and thickets; and the traveller's-joy is climbing wherever it can get a hold.

But it is on the shelving banks that skirt the margin of the pit that the comeliest flowers are to be found; the most beautiful of all, perhaps, is the rock-rose, a plant so delicate that its small golden petals will scarcely survive a journey in the vasculum, yet so hardy that it will flower to the very latest autumn days. The wild strawberry is creeping everywhere; and the crimson of the gra.s.s vetchling may occasionally be seen among the ranker herbage, to which the stalk seems to belong; on the shorter turf is the small squinancy-wort, lovely cousin of the woodruff, its pink and white petals chiselled like the finest ivory.

The elegant yellow-wort, glaucous and perfoliate, and the handsome pink centaury, are common on the Downs; so, too, in the late summer, will be their less showy but always welcome relative, the autumnal gentian: all three have the firm and erect habit that is a property of the Gentian tribe. It is one of the many merits of these chalk hills that their flower-season is a prolonged one. Not the gentians only, with yellow-wort and centaury, are still vigorous in the autumn, but also the blue fleabane, cl.u.s.tered bell-flower, vervain, marjoram, basil, and many l.a.b.i.ate herbs. Even in October, when the glory has long departed from the lowlands of the weald, there remains a brave show of blossom on these delectable hills.

The Pilgrim's Way, often no more than a gra.s.sy track, runs eastward along the base of the Downs, interrupted here and there by the encroachment of parks and private estates, which now block the ancient route to Canterbury; but where Nature has provided so many shrines and cathedrals of her own, there is no need of any others; certainly I never lacked a holy place wherein to make my vows, many as were the pilgrimages on which I started.

On one occasion that I recall, I was joined in my quest by a rather strange fellow-traveller, a man who met me, coming from the opposite direction, and eagerly asked whether I had seen anyone on the hillside.

When I a.s.sured him that n.o.body had pa.s.sed that way, he turned and walked in my company, and presently confided to me that he was an attendant at a lunatic asylum, and was in pursuit of an inmate who had escaped an hour or two before. We went a short distance together, he peering into the coombes and bushy hollows, as incongruous a pair as could be imagined; yet it occurred to me that his mission, too, might be considered a botanical one, since there is a plant named the madwort--nay, worse, the "German madwort," a t.i.tle which, in those feverish war-days, would of itself have justified incarceration.

Nevertheless, as I always sympathize with escaped prisoners (provided, of course, that it is not _my_ bed under which they conceal themselves), I was secretly glad that my companion's search was unavailing.

To return to my chalk-pit: I have mentioned but a few of the many flowers that belong there; within a mile, or less, others and quite different ones are flourishing. The rampion, though very local in Surrey, is found in places along these Downs; so, too, is the strange yellow bugle, or "ground pine," which is much more like a diminutive pine than a bugle; also the still stranger fir-rape (_monotropa_), which lurks in the thickest shade of the beech-woods. That interesting shrub, the butcher's-broom, or "knee holly," as it is more agreeably called, is another native: it wears its small flower daintily, like a b.u.t.ton-hole, on the centre of the rigid leaves of deepest green.

A few miles east there is another chalk-pit which, though inferior in the number of its flowers, has a sprinkling of the man orchis, whose shape, if there is any likeness at all, seems to suggest a toy man dangling from a string; a simile which I prefer to that of a dead man dangling from the gallows. In the woods that crown this pit there is a profusion of the deadly nightshade; and I noticed that during the war-summers, when there was a scarcity of belladonna, these plants were regularly harvested by some enterprising herbalist.

Such are a few of the delights of the Surrey undercliff; but alas! they are vanishing delights, for the proximity to London has rendered all this district peculiarly liable to change. How could it be otherwise, when from the top of the ridge the dome of "smoky Paul's" is visible on a clear day, and a view of the Crystal Palace, "that dreadful C.P." as one has heard it called, can seldom be avoided. What havoc has been wrought in the Surrey hills by the advance of "civilization," may be learnt by anyone who studies the district with a sixty-year-old _Flora of Surrey_ for guide. Between Merstham and G.o.dstone, for instance, the hillsides, which were then free, open ground, have become in the saddest sense "residential," and the wildflowers have suffered in proportion.