Just. NOTES // Wildflower memo

The flowers got the sunshine memo and are out in bloom, our liberated wildflower lawn at school a slice of the biodiversity of nearby Wanstead Flats. Roger Phillips helps us make the connections.

I was going to start this piece with the common analogy of killing two birds with one stone in relation to writing two pieces at once. But I love birds and don’t relish killing them, especially a pair at a time, so went hunting for a more compassionate comparison: dig two holes with one shovel (this would definitely be handy sometimes), create a forest with one seed (hope in a nutshell), brighten two hearts with one smile (trying), fill two needs with one deed (daily life goals), smell two flowers with one nose.

It’s easy to do the latter without trying much at the moment, the flowers got the sunshine memo and are out in force – scent, in many cases, part of an arsenal of charms designed to allure pollinators to the inner workings of their anatomies. Stamens and anthers for the pollen, styles and stigmas for the deposit of it in order that male and female unite and multiply. Reproduction and propagation.

Wanstead Flats is getting busy with it. Drifts of white lacy cow parsley crown the top of the ‘hill’ by the changing rooms, the many-branched, cone-shaped creamy panicles of horse chestnuts turning from yellow to pink within each bloom to signify a consummation (from which a conker may now grow), tassels of hornbeam (on the walk there), sweet-pea-like vetch and broom with landing stage and wings, startling violet and bright yellow accordingly, the diminutive upside-down tutus of clover (petals in repose when bees have visited), the stubby brown florets and delicate stamen circles of ribwort plantain, and legions of daisies, dandelions, and buttercups.

I stumble across a scattering of cornflowers, which I know was not there before. Has someone sown them? Did they creep over from another part of The Flats I am not so familiar with? Discovery day was still steely grey and so their ragged blue petals stood out against the sky. Today they are cut outs of the blue above, within a stage set of grasses, each one with its own flower form.

At school we have ‘liberated our lawn’, aligning with Plant Life’s No Mow May campaign but also with a view to establishing a permanent wildflower meadow. An autumn sowing of seed-balls has produced the odd specimen, cornflowers among them, but again these are outliers among the dandelions and daises, the dock leaves and the ragwort. I get the children to go hunting for different plant species, to draw and label them so we might collectively record the biodiversity of our patch (but also because it’s a sunny day, we all love drawing, and it’s relaxing, so much so we run every lesson over).

I bring a copy of Roger Phillip’s Wild Flowers of Britain (1977) with me, proclaiming the importance of ‘before the Internet’ items such as this book, and indeed myself. They are genuinely amazed at how such a book became to be made and why – the author inspired by nature walks with his son Sam, rain or shine in the worry that ‘he was missing the dirt and the damp of the countryside.’ His initiative went from '‘outward bound’ to popular event with other children joining in.

Questioning the plants that Roger saw over seven years of walks, he decided to use his photographic skills to create a system of visual plant identification that could be tackled by anyone. The flowers are in chronological (calendar) flowering order rather than in families (for those that don’t know botany), each one flat-lay photographed (very unique at the time), displayed in a large format book so each specimen has room to shine (not great for portability but it’s worth lugging around anyway), with the habitat and description of each plant besides.

The kids want to hold the book, to peer within its pages, to get to know the plants better. Several ask me to write down its name so they can get a copy for themselves. I promise to bring in other books from my library, and then we sit and chat about the names and features of plants - toothed dent-de-lions, and spoon-shaped daisy leaves hiding at the flower bases, the grass blooms that sway in the breeze and the more upright ones, neither of which look like ‘flowers’ at all.

The flowers are out in force in our liberated lawn, as they are just 100 feet away on Wanstead Flats. Connected in nature. We turn our heads to the sun in unison and breathe a little easier for it.