{"id":85,"date":"2018-06-09T10:17:33","date_gmt":"2018-06-09T10:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2020-03-29T09:04:52","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T09:04:52","slug":"the-windflower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/journal\/the-windflower\/","title":{"rendered":"the windflower"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobody<\/em> <\/span><\/h2>\n

calls them windflowers, either, though the link with anemometers is pleasing.\u00a0 The thing about wood anemones is that they get a very creditable bronze medal in the vernal woodland spectacle stakes, after bluebell, and, shooting up the charts in recent years, ramsons.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Keeping its head out of the wind: anemones in bracken, Herefordshire.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Arguably anemones beat both for sheer raw beauty, but only locally in Britain do they carpet the ground as much, sometimes content with just a scattering on a wood-bank, or occupying, say, a handful of car-parking spaces.\u00a0 In my mind they lay like snow only in the classic coppices of places like Kent and Suffolk, but who knows.\u00a0 I expect and hope they will suprise me one day in another, unexpected place.<\/p>\n

Last year I found a fine old colony in a dene incised into Durham’s Magnesian limestone.\u00a0 The plants were large and healthy and had finished flowering, their seeds going from straw yellow to brown.\u00a0 I gathered some, scattered them in a pot, and had it outdoors over winter, hoping for seedlings.\u00a0 It was exciting, though none came this time.\u00a0 We all know about seeds, but apart from the weeds in the garden and the edge of the rapefield, we rarely get to see wild seedlings, especially those of the popular wildflowers, because above- and below-ground competition is so intense that they almost never make it.\u00a0 There is something thrilling about a globeflower seedling, or a clover seedling even, unable to summon up the resources for three leaflets until its second attempt.<\/p>\n

Who knows how rare wood anemone seedlings really are?\u00a0 Cue the great under-recognised and gobsmacking topic of herb longevity.\u00a0 When it comes to old age it seems our nursery imaginations can’t escape being drawn, time and time again, to wizened old trees, their furrowed and twisted skins perhaps reminding of us of our own nonagenarians, children in comparison.\u00a0 But some studies suggest the shell-thin wood anemone passes the three-hundred year mark, their otherworldly black rhizomes pushing back through the a-horizons, conduits for George I, piracy, brutal woodland management.<\/p>\n

I went back to the Magnesian Limestone this spring.\u00a0 On a rainy morning, there they were again, sheets of them, gone over, sheeny in the permeating drizzle under an arriviste sycamore canopy.\u00a0 Beside, on the dangerously steep slope, a recently used bivouac and two buckets, one fallen over.\u00a0 Someone had had a hell of a view, the tide of windflowers washing their feet in apology for the not-so-dim roar of the A690. I’ve no idea who they were, but clearly the anemones were providing something that neither Simon Cowell nor the Metrocentre were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobody calls them windflowers, either, though the link with anemometers is pleasing.\u00a0 The thing about wood anemones is that they get a very creditable bronze medal in the vernal woodland spectacle stakes, after bluebell, and, shooting up the charts in … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":87,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuarthedley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}