The Call of the Wildflower

by Henry S. Salt

But the flower which I best love is one which grows by the streamside—in Wye Dale it is in profusion—the modest water-avens, often strangely undervalued by writers who describe it as "dingy." Thus in Delamer's The Flower Garden it is stated that this avens "is more remarkable for having been one of the favourites, the whims, the caprices of the great Linnæus, than for anything else: it is hard to say what, in a British meadow-weed, could so take the fancy of the Master." Was ever such blindness of eye, such hardness of heart? And the wiseacre goes on to say that "it is impossible to account, logically, for attachments and sympathies."

Logic, truly, would be out of place in such a connection; but it is not difficult to understand Linnæus's feelings towards the water-avens. There is a rare beauty in the droop of its bell-like head, and in its soft and subdued tints—the deep rufous brown of the long sepals, through which peep the silky petals in hues that range from creamy white to vinous red, and all steeped in a quiet radiance as of some old stained glass. I must own to thinking it the most tenderly beautiful of all English wildflowers. The hybrid between the water-avens and the common avens is occasionally found by the Wye: one which I saw in Miller's Dale had green sepals and petals of pale yellow.

The Alpine penny-cress (thlaspi alpestre), a crucifer native on limestone rocks, may be seen on the High Tor at Matlock, where it grows with the vernal sandwort on débris at the mouth of caves; a graceful little plant with white flowers and a smooth unbranched stem so closely clasped by the narrow leaves as to give it the look of a perfoliate.

One other limestone district shall be mentioned; the hills round Castleton. Cave Dale, approached by a narrow gorge close to the village, is well worth the flower-lover's attention; for bleak and bare as it is, its slippery sides harbour some interesting plants, such as the mountain rue (thalictrum minus), and the scurvy-grass (cochlearia alpina), both in considerable quantity. In the Winnatts, too, the steep ravine which overhangs the road from Castleton to Chapel-en-le-Frith, one may find Jacob's-ladder and other rarities on the rocks; and the gorgeous mountain pansy (viola lutea) is not far distant on the upland heaths and pastures.

The list is far from being exhausted; but enough has been said to show that there is no lack of entertainment among these limestone dales. To enter one of them, after crossing the moorland from the dreary coal district of east Derbyshire, is like stepping from penury to plenty, from wilderness to paradise: there is a change of colouring that instantly attracts the eye. Even in early spring the little shining crane's-bill decks the walls and lower rocks with its rose-petaled flowers; and at midsummer the more showy stonecrop flings a veritable cloth of gold over the crags and lawns. Few localities present so many charming flowers in so limited a space.

And now let us turn from the limestone valleys to those of the millstone grit.

The controversy as to which part of Derbyshire best deserves the name of "The Peak" has always seemed a vain one, not merely because there is no peak in the county at all, but because no connoisseur can doubt for a moment that the district which alone has the true characteristics of a mountain is the great triangular plateau of gritstone known as Kinderscout. Less beautiful than the limestone dales, with their beetling crags and wealth of flowers, the wilder region surrounding "the Scout" has the advantage of being a real bit of mountain scenery, topped as it is with black "tors" and "towers" that rise out of the heather, and flanked with rocky "edges" from which its steep "cloughs" descend into the valleys below.

Unfortunately, this great rocky tableland has of late years become almost a terra incognita to the nature-lover, as a result of the agreement which was made, after prolonged controversy, between the Peak District Society and the grouse-shooting landlords, inasmuch as, while permitting the traveller to skirt the shoulders of the hill, it excluded him wholly from its summit.

With the exception of the heather, the bilberry, and a few kindred species, the plants of the gritstone hills are sparse; but there is one, the cloudberry—so-called, according to Gerarde's rather magniloquent description, because "it groweth naturally upon the tops of high mountains ... where the clouds are lower than the tops of the same all winter long"—which well repays a pilgrimage. It is a prostrate and spineless bramble (rubus chamæmorus), highly valued in northern countries for its rich orange-coloured fruit. It grows thickly on the ground, making a dark-green patch in marked contrast to the coarse herbage; and towards the end of June one may see a profusion of the large white blossoms and a few early formed berries at the same time. There is a good-sized plot of it near the summit of the pass that crosses the shoulder of Kinderscout from Edale Head.

But of the plants that grow on the Scout itself I am unable to speak; for my only visit to it—not reckoning an unsuccessful attempt when I was turned back by a keeper—took place in the depth of a very snowy winter. It was on the afternoon of a frosty January day, when the sun was already low, that in the company of my friend Bertram Lloyd, and armed with a passport, in the form of a letter of permission, given us by the courtesy of one of the owners of the shooting, I climbed from Edale, through the region of right-of-way into that of flagrant trespass. We felt an unusual sense of legality, as we passed a weather-beaten notice-board, with a half-obliterated threat that trespassers would be "—cuted," whether executed, electrocuted, or prosecuted was left to the imagination of the offender; and I think the strangeness of his position was rather embarrassing to my companion, who is such a confirmed trespasser that he feels as if something must be amiss unless there is a gamekeeper to be reckoned with—like the mountain ram, in Thompson-Seton's story, who was so accustomed to be hunted that he became moody and restless when his pursuer was not in sight.