The Wonder of Wild Flowers

Last year wild flowers captured my heart. For many years, their presence in the world had
largely gone unnoticed by me but once they began to catch my attention they caught it more and more. I became addicted to the joy of seeing the latest wild flower emerge as the spring and summer progressed, and I can’t wait to go through that cycle again. It has become obvious to me that I had good company in terms of fellow wild flower lovers and this made me wonder what the root of their attraction was. This little article is a brief collection of my thoughts on that topic along with wild flower photos that I lovingly took last year.

Are wild flowers loved because of their appearance? They are beautiful, small and delicate; it’s hard to imagine that that wouldn’t help their popularity.  They also appear in a vast variety of colour and shape so there are types to suit all tastes.

Wild flowers are free and uncontrolled – they delightfully pop up here, there and everywhere. Do we covet their status in this respect?

There is an unknown story attached to why a wild flower has popped up in a particular place. Has the wind blown a seed to that position? Has a bird carried it there? Where are its parent plants? There are many things to wonder about and to exercise our imagination.

Because wild flowers pop up in unexpected places, they are a delightful surprise! I don’t know whether I should have been surprised or not when I went to Austria last year (see my Zell am See and Grossglockner articles) and I saw many of the wild flowers that I had been seeing in England. Standing in view of the highest mountain in Austria, I delighted in seeing all of the wild flowers that I’d been seeing around the village that I live in back in England.

When I started really noticing each new wild flower emerge, I began remembering childhood memories associated with many of them. Making daisy chains, telling the time and making wishes with dandelion seed heads, seeing if people liked butter with buttercups, playing ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ and hearing that if you got dandelion sap on you then you’ll wet the bed! As we see with music, there is something especially powerful about things that link us back to that carefree time when we were young.

Bluebells deserve a special mention I think as many people look forward to May and their yearly trip to a bluebell wood to be awe-struck by a carpet of blue under beautiful trees.

Whatever the reason that wild flowers have claimed a spot in my heart, I am really looking forward to again seeing the flowers that I carefully researched last year. They will appear to me like old friends as I take their photos again. I’ll look harder to find new additions to add to my list of ‘wild flowers that I know’ and I will find out more and more about them all. Whatever the reason, they are worth it I feel. 🙂
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