On the verge

There’s a straight footpath we sometimes walk, a narrow worn track with ditches and birch woods on either side. Along its length run margins of the same exuberant greenery you can find along any lane or road until council mowers arrive to raze it. We pass it all the time but rarely pay it much attention. But when you stop to look, it’s no longer nondescript green stuff but cow parsley, dock, nettles stinging and dead, tall grasses, ribwort and broadleaved plantain, dandelions, wild campion, meadow buttercup, and much else.

Verges are important habitats, teeming with insects, their flowers food sources for bees and butterflies. In these dense and diverse mini-forests, small mammals forage and tunnel – vole, shrew, wood mouse. As I walked, a frog crossed the path in two huge leaps and, a few minutes later, a stoat rippled ahead of me before vanishing into the undergrowth.

Speedwell

 

Vetch

Two photos of vetch, because I love its delicate green, its symmetry, its questing tendrils.

Vetch

 

Silverweed

The Welsh name for silverweed is Palf Y Gath Palug, Cath Palug’s Paw – named after a monstrous cat that haunted the Isle of Anglesey and killed nine warriors before it was slain by Cai, Knight of the Round Table.

Life and lore. It’s all around us when you look for it.