How many kinds of sweet flowers grow?

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow
On an English country foo-ootpath
I'll tell you now, in case you don't know
It's enough to fill a foo - oot bath

Several footbaths in fact. Here are a few of them on the cut at the moment. And here's a link to a more or less definitive list of 135. Cow Parsley, or Queen Anne's Lace, or Wild Chervil. You can eat it the leaves and a chef who lived with us for a while used to pick it and take it to his restaurant. The only problem is that the flowers are rather the same as Hemlock - the poison they used to execute Socrates so take care.

Garlic mustard is down below - formatting has gone to hell on this post! You can eat this too and I might try because it sounds quite tasty. Boil it like greens. Greater Stitchwort (the little white flower below), cures the sort of stitch you get when you run and also good for bones. The "Doctrine of Signatures" (see an earlier post) suggests that you can see this by the fact that the stems are so delicate - like broken bones. This rather confirms the view that the doctrine of signatures was used as much for a mnemonic as a way of discovering what might do what. Here's a nice link about stitchwort.

Next it's a wild strawberry plant. I've never seen any strawberries in the cut and they won't ripen till June or so. Then there are primroses. The wood pigeons (or some bird) comes regularly and picks the flowers and strews them all around the plant. Maybe they eat the honey or something.

Bluebells are still there and here is a pink one that sprang up. I thought these were only cultivated ones. But maybe it sprung up as a sport. Or maybe there was a house nearby and this came from their garden. There's a plaintain flower because I used to enjoy these when I was a boy. You can bend the stalk over and fire off the plaintains at your friends.

Finally there;s Lady's Smock pinky rather than silver white when you see them one at a time but anyway here's Shakespeare's song about them.













When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!



"Paint the meadows with delight". That's worth repeating.