First signs

It’s perhaps a little bit selfish - we shouldn’t wish any flowering plant to have to struggle through the depths of winter – but, come on, how could the spirits not be lifted by this gem: a Purple Hellebore. We found it on our lockdown walk, growing less than 500m from our back door but in a part of the common ground we don’t normally visit. Perhaps we should as this nodding head of fuschia/crimson must have already pushed its way through the leaf litter last week when everything seemed unyieldingly grey and we most needed a lift.

Purple Hellebores belong to the Ranunculaceae, 'the little frogs', a vast floral family of more than 2000 species which brings Clematis, Aconites, Delphinia and Buttercups under one roof. It’s not native (wild hellebores are found from the Balkans east to China), but they are nectar-rich, non-toxic, and while they self-seed they don’t seem (at least around here) to have escaped from a formal garden setting.

Not much else has poked through the soil yet, though we can see the first shoots of a clump of Snowdrops which flower every year in a rockery by our front door. A few Primroses (the ‘prima rosa’ or first rose of the spring) are clearly thinking about having a look to see if anything approaching spring is on its way (not just yet, my petaled friends), as are some early White Dead-nettles.

The forecast is for a milder week though. Enough to put a touch more warmth in the soil perhaps? Not enough to lure out any very early insects hopefully (we’re especially thinking queen Buff-tailed Bumblebees) as there’s very little nectar around to keep them alive...unless they too visit the Hellebore patch, perhaps, but even there it’s slim pickings.

Still, at least these first signs of something of a change are – if not in the air – in the ground and given how grim the last few months have been, frankly we’ll take anything we can get.