28th April

So much going on it is almost impossible to catch breath in the garden let alone write about it. Finding a moment to take a look at the Bees brought me to thinking about Tree Flowers. Last week and this is the brief best moment, the time of Candles. It comes seconds after the time of Dandelions -the few days following Easter when these leonine stars beam out everywhere only to turn, in moments, to downy nebula. The effect of the passing traffic of spring becomes now not the Doppler effect of such and such coming out and passing through the consciousness as a continuous roar, clamouring for the attention of birds and bees. When the Horse Chestnut in the middle of Wick village lights up like Prince Albert’s proverbial Christmas tree the moment has come, the time of Candles and Tassells and what I call Beech Raff as every leaf and flower on every tree throws of its winter garments. At this party there are quite a few side shows, easily missed amongst the flashy teeth and tits of flowering cherries and crabs and magnolias. One of the oddest tree flowers is the Yew. Once you have noticed a big ancient yew tree apparently smoking in a march wind as the pollen is buffeted from its million subtle mud coloured anthers you will never miss its flowering again. Not so much a flowering as a great puffing pollen bearing organ. I have always wondered if the mustard coloured ‘smoke’ of this pollen is healing or noxious, and do the bees collect it? Bees plunder trees more than anything else for pollen, and nectar and sticky propolis. The next platter of pollen I notice is the Sycamore. I can only guess that there are male and female because some dress up in a salad of livid inflorescence so completely covered it looks like light bearing leaves. Again year in year out the Sycamore on the bend in Chippenham by the telephone box into which Eddie Cochran drove his motor one night in the 50’s(?) is always a signal, a lighthouse in case you had any doubts that you were entering the rocky shores of spring. Simultaneous but a lighter bite are the flowers of the Elm family. These are more like bunched bracts or a vegetarian’s dream green crisplets. As the light filtres through them they appear to be floating on a pond. How heartbreaking to think of them towering over the Vale of the White Horse in my early childhood, two hundred foot of light bearing green pylon, bending as they talked to one another over the heads of Ash and Beech and Oak below. Early in the year they were beacons, later they cast the deepest longest shadows on those incomparable ‘Battle of Britain’ days in high summer. Depending on the year it seems difficult for me to pin down when the Oak flowers. Oaks appear flower when they feel like it and they cause the Ash to sulk. Right now the Ashes are deeply hung over in their winter beds, and the Oaks are partying. The decking out of the Oak is suitably baroque, ponderous, majestic and magnificent. The dangles of inflorescence are a marvellous tawny, masculine decorator-chic colour, an understated shabby gold. They are the finest passmenterie, hand made, weighty with quality, the trees become a Daniel Marot bed of State in the flag waving pollen fest that last barely two weeks.

Friday, May 08, 2009