PICKING AND STEALING
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies.
Tennyson.
There is, as I have said, a positive contempt in many minds for the wildflower; that is, for the flower which is regarded as being no one's "property." But the flora of a country, rightly considered, is very far from being unowned; it is the property of the people, and when any species is diminished or extirpated the loss is not private but national. We have already reached a time, as many botanists think, when the choicer British flowers need some sort of protection.
That some injury should be caused to our native flora by improved culture, drainage, building, and the extension of towns, is inevitable; though these losses might be considerably lessened if there were a more general regard for natural beauty. But that is all the stronger reason for discountenancing such damage as is done in mere thoughtlessness, or, worse, for selfish purposes; and it were greatly to be wished that some of the good folk who pray that their hands may be kept "from picking and stealing" would so far widen the scope of their sympathies as to include the rarer wildflowers.
It cannot be doubted that there is an immense amount of wasteful flower-picking by children, and also by persons who are old enough to know better. Nothing is commoner, in Spring, than to see piles of freshly gathered hyacinths or cowslips abandoned by the roadside; and many other flowers share the same fate, including, as I have noticed, the beautiful green-winged meadow orchis. Trippers and holiday-makers are often very mischievous: I have seen them, for instance, on the ramparts of Conway Castle, hooking and tearing the red valerian which is an ornament to the grey old walls. I was told by a friend who lives in a district where the rare meadow-sage (salvia pratensis) is native, that he is compelled to pluck the blue flowers just before the August bank-holiday, in order to save the plant itself from being up-rooted and carried off.
Primroses, abundant as they still are in many places, have nearly disappeared from others, in consequence of the depredations of flower-vendors; and there was a time when they were seriously threatened in the neighbourhood of London because a certain fashionable cult was at its height. Witness the following "Idyll of Primrose Day" by some unknown versifier:
How blest was dull old Peter Bell,
Whom Wordsworth sung in days of yore!
A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
Alas! 'tis something more to us;
No longer Nature's meekest flower,
But symbol of consummate Quack,
Who by tall talk and knavish knack
Could plant himself in power.
For his sweet sake we mourn, each spring,
Our lanes and hedgerows robbed and bare,
Our woods despoiled by clumsy clown,
That primrose-tufts may come to town
For tuft-hunters to wear.
And so, on snobbish Primrose Day,
We envy Peter's simple lore:
A primrose, worn with fulsome fuss,
A yellow primrose is to us,
Alas! and something more.
The nurseryman and the professional gardener have also much to answer for in the destruction of wildflowers. Take the following instance, quoted from the Flora of Kent, with reference to the cyclamen: "Towards the end of August, 1861, I was shown the native station of this plant. . . . The people in those parts had found out it was in request, and had almost entirely extirpated it, digging up the roots, and selling them for transplantation into shrubberies." In the same work it is recorded that, when the frog orchis was found in some abundance near Canterbury, "in a wonderfully short space of time the whole of this charming colony was dug and extirpated."
Again, if it be permissible to call a spade a spade, what shall be said of those roving knights of the trowel, the unconscionable rock-gardeners who ride abroad in search of some new specimen for their collections? A late writer of very charming books on the subject has feelingly described how, after the discovery of some long-sought treasure, he craved a brief spell of repose, a sort of holy calm, before commencing operations. "We blessed ones," he said, referring to botanists as contrasted with ornithologists, "may sit down calmly, philosophically, beside our success, and gently savour all its sweetness, until it is time to take out the trowel after half an hour of restful rapture in our laurels."[9]
Other flower-fanciers there are who show much less circumspection. In Upper Teesdale, where the rare blue gentian (gentiana verna) is found on the upland pastures, I was told that a "gentleman" had come with two gardeners in a motor, and departed laden with a number of these beautiful Alpine flowers for transplantation to his private rockery. The nation which permits such a theft—far worse than stealing from a private garden—deserves to possess no wildflowers at all; and such a botanist, if botanist he can be called, deserves to be himself transplanted, or transported—to Botany Bay.