Category: plant blindness

Remembering to look

Posted on by andy.winfield

By Andy Winfield

Purple crocus flowering through grass and covered in raindrops.
Crocus tommasinianus.

The other day, I was walking through the Garden as a very heavy shower of rain had just finished. The landscape around me seemed to be looking up disgruntled, rainwater dripping down waterproofs, running down the path, off branches and twigs. Then the sun came out. The dark clouds carrying the rain were moving away behind me and the low January sun shone in my face. I stopped; between me and the sun were three low trees, and as the sun’s light travelled through them to me, the recent water glowed. It looked like the tree was made of water, so recently had the shower passed; I’d never really seen anything like it, and it reminded me to keep looking, even in darkest January, keep looking, otherwise we don’t see. This is the same with January and early February flower, they’re there, but we have to look. (more…)

Light in the darks days of winter

Posted on by andy.winfield

By Andy Winfield

A Robin sitting on a branch and looking back.

So, December has arrived, the two darkest months of the year are upon us; it’s normal for this time of year to get us down. On midwinter’s day there is just 7 hours and 49 minutes of daylight, almost exactly half the amount of light on midsummers day.  In the Garden and green spaces, it may seem that everything is in stasis, just sitting and waiting for four months until light levels are productive enough for leaves, but there is a lot going on in the ground and within those bare branches. (more…)

Making time stand still for a moment

Posted on by andy.winfield

The face of a clock. By Andy Winfield

So, we’re at 2024, which seems a bit weird. 2020 seemed like it would never end, and now time is swishing by. Marking duration with dates and times is now baked into our way of existing; getting somewhere by a certain hour and organising an event for a particular date is how our lives work. St Augustine wrote in 400AD “No time is wholly present, all time is forced on by the future”.  That was said a long time ago, and that idea has only accelerated. Humans today, myself included, are constantly looking ahead to the next thing, squeezing ever onwards. But what about now? What about the present? In the natural world, and the Botanic Garden, there are moments that aren’t defined by our perceptions of time; these moments give us opportunities to disembark the time train for a moment, and observe what’s happening right now, in the present. (more…)

Plant blindness

Posted on by andy.winfield

By Andy Winfield

You may or may not of heard of the term ‘plant blindness’; it’s a phrase that we in the Botanic Garden have been hearing much more of in recent years and will continue to throw around in the future. It refers to the slow shutting off of plant knowledge from generation to generation resulting in an inability to acknowledge plants around us. The simple things that were once common knowledge, such as dock leaves used for nettle stings are becoming bred out of a collective instinct and plants are becoming irrelevant and annoying green things to many people.

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