AN odd thing might happen as you walk down a city street on a mild winter’s day. Everything seems dull and grey, the colourful blooms of spring and summer a distant memory, and then... a waft of something floral and citrusy, with a hint of spice, hits your nose. Surely not a flower, at this time of year?
We probably all encounter many more winter-scented plants than we realise, only partly registering their unlikely perfume. Several of them are so easy to grow that they are often incorporated into council planting schemes or placed in banks outside smart offices, only for us to give a cursory sniff and shake of our heads as we pass by.
What we are smelling is an evolutionary strategy in action. All flowers offer a small pot of sweet, sustaining nectar to reward pollinating insects for visiting them. They want insects to visit, so that they pick up a little pollen and carry it on to another flower or so they deposit a little pollen onto them in turn. Thus begins the process of fertilisation that will end in the creation of seeds, ensuring the plant’s reproduction and its line’s survival (‘Fifty shades of green’, September 13). This is what the colour and scent of flowers are really about. They don’t actually exist to please us and make our gardens pretty; that is merely a wonderful side effect.
Denne historien er fra November 29, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra November 29, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
