Monthly Archives: November 2025

The Collared Dove – Revisit

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Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto)

Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto)

Bug Woman is away, but here is a celebration of this most overlooked of birds….

This graceful, cloud-coloured bird is a familiar visitor in the gardens and parks of the suburbs of London, including East Finchley, where they regularly visit my bird feeder.

Chaffinches and Frogs 016In the photo above, the two birds seemed to get along quite amiably, rather than attempting to stab one another. However, they can be surprisingly assertive, especially in the breeding season – I have seen a male pursue a female from chimney to roof to tree for over an hour, making its high-pitched, rather demented call for the whole time (to listen to this, find the audio section here ).  On landing, the male  often gives what Dominic Couzens describes as ‘several triumphant nasal calls – rather like those children’s trumpets that unroll when you blow them and tickle people’s faces’.

Although there are nearly a million pairs of these birds in the UK, they only arrived here in the 1950’s, with the first successful London chicks raised  in 1961. The record for Collared Dove breeding is five broods in a single year, and as with all pigeons and doves the youngsters are fed on ‘pigeon milk’, a crop secretion that is produced when the adult birds have adequate food. Their rise has been truly astonishing.

Collared Dove and Baby ( © Copyright sylvia duckworth and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

Collared Dove and Baby ( © Copyright sylvia duckworth and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

Sadly, the increase in the numbers of Collared Doves might have come as Turtle Dove territories were vacated – this bird was common in the 1930’s, but is now more or less extinct as a breeding bird in London. The Turtle Dove’s decline has been attributed to the desertification of Sahelian Africa, where the birds spend much of their lives, and also the brutal persecution of migratory birds in the Mediterranean, with the hunters of Malta bearing a great deal of the responsibility for the birds’ demise in Western Europe. The final straw may be the increased intensification of agriculture, with much less spilled seed and fewer weedy patches available for the migrants who do arrive. This beautiful bird, memorialised in The Twelve Days of Christmas, has lost three-quarters of its population and a quarter of its range in the past three decades.

Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur) By Andrej Chudy (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur) By Andrej Chudy (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

As usual, Birds Britannica by Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey is a source of many fascinating facts about the Collared Dove. For example, in Germany, the bird is known by the name Die Fernsehtaube, ‘the television dove’, because it often calls from the aerial on the roof.

Woodpigeon plus Collared Doves living up to their German name....

Woodpigeon plus Collared Doves living up to their German name….

The book also includes the explanation for the Collared Dove’s Latin name, ‘decaocto’:

‘A poor maid was servant to a very hard-hearted lady, who gave her as wages no more than eighteen pieces a year. The maid prayed to the Gods that she would like it to be known to the world how miserably she was paid by her mistress. Thereupon Zeus created this Dove which proclaims an audible ‘deca-octo’ to all the world to this very day’.

Collared Doves Garden Centre 012I have to say that I am very fond of Collared Doves. They have a sleek elegance compared to the rather fluffier, plumper appearance of the Woodpigeon, and they are confiding birds, only flying off at the last possible moment when I approach and then hanging around to see if any more seed is going to appear. They mate for life, and seem to do everything together – when I see one bird, I can be sure that the other is not far away. Sometimes, I spot them sitting in the whitebeam preening one another, the preenee closing his or her eyes in obvious bliss. They are another one of those peripheral birds, going about their business with little fuss and attracting no notice. But the garden would be much the poorer without their gentle presence.

Collared Doves Garden Centre 016

 

 

 

The Cup of Gold – Revisit

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The Cup of Gold 002

Bug Woman is away, but I love this celebration of Coldfall Wood, and the unlikely people that you meet there…..

During the past week, my husband John and I have been going for a walk around Coldfall Wood after dinner every night. We can both sense that the darkness comes a little earlier with every passing day, and soon, it will be night time before he gets home.

When I open the gate to the wood, it’s as if I’ve entered another world. The branches of the oak and hornbeam meet overhead, so the area underneath is still and dark, the only sounds the chippy calls of robins sorting out their territories. These are ancient, twisted trees that look as if they’ve been caught out in the middle of a dance, and will start to gyrate again once we’ve moved on.

The wood is only a few hundred metres deep at this point. As we follow the path, we can see the sun setting, the space between the trees glowing copper-red, an abstract painting of molten light and matt black. As the path turns right, we are right up against the fence that separates the wood from the allotments. And there, in the fork of a small tree, I see something that makes me catch my breath.

The Cup of Gold 005

It looks as if someone has woven a delicate cup out of strands of caramel. In fact, it’s a spider’s web, layer on layer of threads twisted around and around the twigs. Beautiful in itself, it’s now backlit by the sunset. And to complete the illusion of something supernatural, every individual silken hair is moving gently in the whispering breeze.

Such moments, when we see something as if we’ve never seen it before, feel sacred to me, as if for a few moments we’ve been granted a view of the innate beauty and perfection of everything on this earth. It makes me wonder what I miss every day as I go about my business, oblivious.

In a few minutes, the sun has disappeared and the web returns to invisibility. We walk on, loop up onto the playing fields. There are dozens of crows here, digging at the turf, chatting away, walking around with their feet turned inwards and what looks like their hands behind their backs. They always remind me a little of Prince Charles – it must be that slightly self-conscious gait. Crows have such a variety of cackles and coughs and giggles and caws, and as they fly backwards and forwards from the trees to the football field, they use them all. This is a big crow community, and I wonder what they talk about.

Hitchcockian Crow

We turn back into the darkness of the wood, turn right over a tiny muddy brook, one of several that criss-cross between the trees. Towards the road, a big bed of reeds is growing, planted deliberately to try to reduce the polluted water that comes from the road above. There is a small scuffling noise in the brambles, and a rat appears. I’ve seen one here everytime I’ve taken this walk, but I have no way of knowing if it’s the same one, or if there’s a family. They seem to be especially common this year – maybe the warm weather has meant more picnics, and hence more food-waste, although the wood is normally very unlittered. The rat sits up on his haunches, gnawing at something that he holds between his little pink hands. He is surprisingly tame, and lets us approach to within ten feet before he scuttles off into the undergrowth.

The Cup of Gold 012We turn the final corner to head home. A young man wearing a beret and glasses is there with a small hairy dog. We say good evening, pass him by, go on a little further, and stop. There, amongst the dead leaves, is one of the biggest cats I’ve ever seen.

‘Hello!’ I say.  The cat looks a little unnerved, but comes forward all the same. It has a mass of long hair, in cream and tabby and swirls of grey. Its ears have little tufts on them, as if were a lynx.

‘He looks like a Norwegian Forest Cat’, I say to John. ‘What a beautiful cat’.

The young man turns.

‘Yes’, he says, “He is a Norwegian Forest Cat. He sometimes comes for a walk with us when I bring the dog out’.

The little dog rushes up to us, jumps up for a sniff and a lick and a scratch on the head

‘Careful’, says the young man, ‘He’ll cover you in mud’.

But it’s a dry evening, and so the damage is minimal.

‘It’s a bit of a pain when the cat comes out, actually’, says the young man. ‘I have to watch out for all the other dogs in case they chase him. He might be big, but he’s really soft’.

The dog runs up to the cat, who head butts him. They are obviously good friends.

And so, that finishes off a fairy-tale evening. We’ve had cups of gold, talking crows, tame rats and cats that go out for a walk with their dog and human friends. Coldfall Wood really is a magical place.

The Beauty of Weeds – Revisit

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The tatty passageway by the side of my house

The tatty passageway by the side of my house

Dear Readers, Bug Woman is away, but here I think I set out my gardening ‘philosophy’. I can only say that my side-return ‘garden’ gets more varied by the year….

Dear reader, please ignore the hosepipe, the bags of compost and the other paraphenalia that are cluttering up the side of my house. In the photo above, Greater Celandine and Yellow Corydalis grow, along with a couple of intrepid Buddleia, in conditions of near total darkness, and the scrappiest, most impoverished soil that you can imagine. They have appeared without any help from me, and have thrived where nothing I’ve ever planted has lasted more than a few weeks . So, what’s the story with weeds?

Many of the weeds in London are ‘aliens’.  Just as London  attracts people from all over the world, so it has a plant population that comes from many countries. Some plants have ‘escaped’ from gardens that they were planted in. Some have survived as seeds in shipping containers full of fruit or in the bellies of airplanes carrying goods from overseas. Some are not just tough but beautiful, and many of them have contributed greatly to the biodiversity of our city streets. I decided to take a walk around the block, to see what was growing in my half-mile territory.

Greater Celandine - a cure for warts?

Greater Celandine – a cure for warts?

Greater Celandine flowers early, with flowers that remind me of a buttercup, even though it is in fact a member of the poppy family. It is  thought to have been introduced by the Romans, who thought of it as a medicinal plant – the orange sap is said to be a cure for warts. It was also said to be a cure for eye infections, but actually it was a surefire way of giving the patient conjunctivitis or worse.

Another great survivor is the Yellow Corydalis.

A Yellow Corydalis surviving in a tiny nook in the wall

A Yellow Corydalis surviving in a tiny nook in the wall

It came originally from the central and eastern Alps, so it isn’t surprising that it is comfortable in a rocky, nutrient-poor home. It was imported as a cottage garden plant, because it has a very long flowering period, but it has jumped over the wall and headed off into the big city. One survey in South Essex found it in eighteen percent of all the walls in that part of the country. And how pretty it is, with its clusters of elongated yellow flowers.

The long, bell-shaped flowers of the Yellow Corydalis

The long, bell-shaped flowers of the Yellow Corydalis

I like to think that maybe the graffiti artist on this wall chose his colour palette to complement the blossoms….

Yellow flowers, yellow graffiti

Yellow flowers, yellow graffiti

Enough of all these yellow flowers! As I approached East Finchley library, I discovered this little beauty growing against the entrance to the car park

Common Field-speedwell

Common Field-speedwell

The Common Field-speedwell is also known as the Persian Speedwell, and it originated in the mountains of the Caucasus and Northern Iran. I am starting to sense a theme – many of the plants that live on our streets were originally from mountainous areas. This makes perfect sense. Mountain soils are impoverished, thin, and subject to extremes of weather – lots of bright sunlight in the short summer, cold and rain for the rest of the year. As far as these plants are concerned, a little crack between paving stones is perfect.

Now, here’s another blue flower.

Green Alkanet - a cheap henna substitute

Green Alkanet – a cheap henna substitute

This is a Mediterranean plant, tough, hairy-leaved and prolific. It produces a red dye from its roots, which is used in southern Europe to colour oil and to deepen the colour of cheap red wine.  It is now one of the commonest ‘weeds’ in my little half-mile patch, but I don’t remember it at all from my childhood in East London – a possible indication of the local nature of many plants, and also the way that plant populations change over time.

I can’t talk about alien plants without giving a nod to the greatest of them all.

Buddleia - a 'Harbourage of Tigers'

Buddleia – a ‘Harbourage of Tigers’

Buddleia is another mountain plant, from the scree slopes of the Himalayas. An early visitor to China reported that the buddleia thickets on shingle beside the Satani river was ‘a famous harbourage for tigers’.I have sometimes passed areas of wasteland where the buddleia has formed honey-scented forests, full of the lazy buzzing of bees. These are unique urban woodlands, magical places. Furthermore, they provide a rich source of nectar, and Buddleia may well be responsible for the survival of many insect species in urban areas

Buddleia was introduced into Europe in the 1890’s by the French missionary Pere David, and imported into the UK a few years later. It has light, airborne seed, and quickly escaped, colonising wasteland and, more particularly, railway lines. Every passing train helped to waft the seeds a little further along the line and the clinker that the railways lines rested on was a perfectly acceptable replacement for the mountain slopes of home. I have seen an eight foot tall buddleia growing from a crack in the soot-soiled walls of Liverpool Street Station, where there could not possibly have been more than a few spoonfuls of soil.

My attitude to any plant that appears in the garden is to let it be, at least initially. I have been blessed with all the plants described here, plus comfrey and elecampane, ivy and dandelion, forget-me-not and great willowherb. It seems to me that the division between weeds and ‘proper’ plants is a purely arbitrary one. If a plant is favoured by wildlife, if it is pretty or interesting, I am happy for it to stay. On a grey drizzly spring morning  the unexpected sight of a butter-bright Celandine can seem like a kind of grace.

 

The Perils of a Mild Winter – Revisit

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Blog Post One 002

Dear Readers, I am off on an adventure, and may or may not be able to share it with you ‘live’. So, just in case, I am sharing some of my favourite posts from the last 11 years of blogging (gulp, where does the time go?) First up, this is my first ever post, from 2014.

When I got off the tube train at East Finchley Station this afternoon, I noticed a small, hunched shape on the platform. As I bent over for a closer look, I realised that it was a bumblebee, lying motionless on her back. As everybody else piled past on their way home, I wondered what to do. I couldn’t bear to think of people treading on her. What if she was still alive? So I picked her up and rested her in the palm of my hand. She looked substantial, but her weight barely registered. And then she moved, one of her legs groping into the air as if looking for something, anything to cling on to.

My bumblebee is a Queen, who has come out of hibernation too early because the weather has been so unseasonably mild. She has been unable to find any flowers to feed from, and has used up her last energy searching the desert of the station platforms for something to eat.

I cradle her in my hand all the way home. Once there, I put her onto a plate, and position her so that she can drink from a spoon filled with sugar-water, the closest substitute for nectar that I can make. I watch as her leg twitches, but gradually the movement becomes weaker. I fear that there is no hope for her.

The bee will not be the only creature to die – she has some ‘hangers-on’. I count four mites crawling through her fur, each the size and shape of a flaxseed. That’s a heavy burden for an insect to be flying around with. The mites live in bumblebee nests, and will attach themselves to the young queens, like this one. When an infested bumblebee lands on a flower, some of the mites will get off and wait for another bee to latch onto, as if changing buses. However, without the bee the mites won’t survive either.

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Looking at the bumblebee closely, in a way that she would never allow if she was healthy, is both a privilege and a kind of impertinence. I notice, as I never did before, that her wings are like smoked glass, the ridged veins standing out and catching the light from my angle-poise lamp.  Her eyes are black, like twin coals in her alien face. She has little hooks on the end of each leg, rather than feet. There are bands of dirty yellow fur behind her wings but just behind her head there is the faintest shadow of gold, only discernible from a very particular angle.

As I watch, she is curling up, her antennae covering her face, her legs crumpled under her. I will leave her for a while, but I am sure that she is dead.

The other casualties, apart from the bee herself and her little team of parasites, are the eggs that she carries. She will have mated once last summer, when she first emerged from the nest as a fresh young queen. I imagine her flying to meet the male bees at the top of the lime trees where they leave their pheromones, a kind of sexual perfume, so that she can find them. Inside her will be the first of her fertilised eggs that, if things had been different, would have hatched into the first workers to support her nest. From this one female up to four hundred and fifty bumblebees would have been born, going on to pollinate countless thousands of plants. When any creature dies, however humble, however common, there is a ripple effect that spreads much wider than that little death.

Thursday Poem – When The Year Grows Old by Edna St Vincent Millay

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Photo By Blerimuka – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24161316

I am something of a hot water bottle and good book person myself….

When The Year Grows Old by Edna St Vincent Millay

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old—
October—November—
How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
Made a melancholy sound

She had a look about her
That I wish I could forget—
The look of a scared thing
Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old —
October — November —
How she disliked the cold!

Wednesday Weed – Liquidamber/Sweetgum

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Dear Readers, I’ve mentioned before that the street trees here in East Finchley are becoming more and more exotic, but yesterday I was really stunned by the foliage on this Liquidamber or Sweetgum tree. The leaves vary from purple-brown through scarlet, gold and green, and it really is  the most magnificent little tree.

I think this is an American Sweetgum (Liquidamber styraciflua) – it’s found in the south-eastern United States, and it gets its name not from those golden leaves, but from its golden sap. Paul Wood (author of ‘London’s Street Trees) remarks that there has been a positive flurry of Sweetgum planting over the past decade. Sweetgums can reach a height of 45 metres (even the largest Plane trees only reach about 40 metres), and so these could be very impressive indeed, though presumably the one in the photo, close to the corner of Creighton Avenue, won’t be allowed to reach such giddy heights. The trees should be able to deal happily with our warming winters, and seem to be happy as street trees in their native USA, so fingers crossed that they’ll thrive.

Sweetgum in New Jersey (Photo By Famartin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36997397)

To return to the sap: it can be chewed like chewing gum, but is also believed to have medicinal properties, particularly for treating sciatica, diarrhoea and ‘weakness of the nerves’. In Louisiana, a sharpened stick from the Sweetgum can be used to fend off a parlangua, a human/alligator hybrid, should you stumble across one. Should I meet such a creature while staggering home from a glass of wine too many at the local pub, I shall now know where to find a suitable weapon. However, the legend of the parlangua is thought to have originated because Louisiana mothers didn’t want their offspring wandering off into the swamps and drowning. Very sensible too.

Whilst superficially the Sweetgum might look like a maple, it’s actually most closely related to the Witch Hazels. The seed pods look like little medieval maces, and, where there is a large tree, they can be a bit of a problem  for pedestrians as they litter the pavement and present a trip hazard.

Photo By Dan Murtha – Flickr: IMG_3532, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12440516

However, the unripe seeds of the Sweetgum are a source of shikimic acid, which is a base ingredient for Tamiflu, a key treatment for influenza – normally the acid is sourced from the Star Anise tree, but a shortage encouraged scientists to look elsewhere. Cherokee people have long used Sweetgum as a herbal treatment for flu, and it seems they may have been onto something, as is so often the case.

And here’s a poem, by Ada Limón. Here’s what she says about it:

“There is so much to worry about. All the time, so much worry. Here, I wanted to take all the worry as far out as I could and then stamp it out under the heavy black boot of love.”
—Ada Limón

See what you think.

The Conditional

Ada Limón
1976 –

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

 

Shark Kitten Update

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Dear Readers, we are still fostering the Shark kitties for a few more days, but midweek they head off to another foster carer so we can go on our Big Adventure. What delightful kitties they are! I have never known such lap cats – they literally fight one another to get  on my lap if I’m on my own, or grab a lap each if my husband is around.

They also get on very well together….

They are both boisterous and laid-back.

Kitties ‘helping’ in the office

 We have had to shut them out of the dining room during mealtimes, as otherwise they exercise a pincer attack. But they aren’t that impressed….

Anyway, if you think these are the boys for you, do get in touch with the RSPCA at Friern Barnet – the link is here. They will need a garden, and are too boisterous for very young children.

Nature-Connectedness – What’s That All About?

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Dear Readers, I knew that the UK was one of the most  nature-depleted countries in Europe, but I was somewhat surprised by a recent study, widely reported in the  press, which suggested that we were also towards the bottom of the nature-connectedness league too, way behind Nigeria, Nepal, and Bangladesh, and only slightly ahead of Canada, the Netherlands and Germany.

What the hecky-decky is going on? I asked myself. This seems like some kind of social science mash-up with no rhyme or reason. So I had to have a look for myself.

First up, what is nature-connectedness? There are various definitions, including a sense of oneness with nature, or the overlap between self and nature. It would certainly be true that lots of people no longer regard themselves as part of nature, but as something altogether different. This is clearly a dangerous perspective – as extreme weather events occur in larger swathes of the world, and with more frequency, it should act as a reminder that good old Mother Nature is more than capable of sweeping us away if the mood takes her, plus it wasn’t so long ago that all of our lives were upended by a tiny virus. Nature-connectedness seems to enhance how we feel, and also how we act, so for me it’s a good thing – you’re never alone with a plant, or an insect, and caring about the little things close to home can help build care for the wider world.

So far, so good. But how did the authors of the report come up with this league table of countries? Interestingly, I can’t see it in the actual paper (you can read it for free here) and it seems to have been concocted by the Guardian from one of the tables. However, the method involved taking both objective criteria for each country, such as the degree of urbanisation and the business culture, and subjective criteria, such as social behaviours and attitudes.

The objective criteria that seemed to make the most difference were the percentage of older adults (but does that suggest that younger adults have a better relationship with nature? I hope so, but I’m scratching my head a bit), the percentage of the population on the internet, and a ‘business-friendly environment’ (i.e. where regulation favoured business rather than the environment). Where a country scored high on these criteria, it was felt to show less ‘nature-connectedness’.

The subjective criteria that seemed to indicate nature-connectedness included spirituality and a belief in religion over science.

And at this point, I lost all faith in the whole thing. There are many kinds of spirituality, some of which can lead to the idea of ‘dominion’ over the natural world, and some of which can lead to wanting to protect it. Scientists are both at the forefront of climate science and biodiversity research, and are also working for fossil fuel companies. What the countries that lead the table share is that they are all developing countries, while the ones at the bottom are all industrialised. I suspect that the degree of urbanisation, ageing population and ‘business-friendly’ environments of these countries are what has put them at the bottom of the table, rather than the actual attitudes of the people who live there. The UK has the largest membership of environmental organisations of any country in Europe, which must stand for something.

I feel as if this paper is a great effort at wrestling the beast of the data of 61 countries to the ground, but I find it difficult to understand in its current state. What it might be is a great starting point for future, more focussed research.

Spider Thought Extinct is Rediscovered

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Male White-Knuckled Wolf Spider (Aulonia albimana) Photo by By Ludivine Lamare – https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/377920543, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=177591874

Dear Readers, I do love a happy story, what with all the misery that’s about at the moment, and so I’m pleased to report the rediscovery of this little spider on the Isle of Wight. Last seen in 1985, and thought to be extinct, the White-knuckled Wolf Spider was so named because of those white patches on the pedipalps (the ‘boxing gloves’ at the front of the head). However, the re-discovery was also something of a white-knuckled ride – it was found in the very last minutes of a time-limited boat trip to an otherwise inaccessible part of a nature reserve. Any of us who have run to a ferry station just as the gangplank is about to be pulled up can relate, I’m sure. But here we are, and this little chap(pess) is being described as ‘one of the lost species rediscoveries of the century’ by the British Arachnological Society.

The Newtown reserve, where the spider was found, is being restored by the National Trust – over time it had become overgrown with heather, but the Trust had imported some Hebridean sheep, who restore the short-cropped, open, sunlit spots that the spider likes. And it seems to have worked. And what very fine animals these are, though I wouldn’t want  to mess with them if they were in a bad mood.

Hebridean rams (Photo By TMallinson – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125301377)

We don’t know much about the White-knuckled Wolf Spider’s life: most wolf spiders are agile hunters of other invertebrates, but this species also spins a web. But it’s great to know that it’s still around, and that the measures undertaken by the National Trust are having an effect. The entomologists (or should that be arachnologists?) who found it, Mark Telfer and Graeme Lyons, were delighted – Graeme Lyons said that he’d seen 559 species of spider in the British Isles, and this was his most exciting find. So it just goes to show that there are probably more species out there than we know, and that a little attention and knowledge can reveal the most fascinating things.

Female White-knuckled Spider (Photo  By Emanuele Santarelli – https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/129316865, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=177591975)

Tattoos

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Dear Readers, the main article in my RHS magazine this month is about botanical tattoos. What a journey tattoos have had! They are an important part of many cultures (the Maori people spring immediately to mind,) and there are many other places where tattoos are markers of status, or personal history. Plant dyes have been the main way of creating the tattoos, with everything from the sap of the bloodwood tree to pigments derived from black nightshade being used. But when I was growing up, the only people you’d see with tattoos were sailors, dodgy characters of different kinds (one of the guys in the night shelter that I worked in had ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ tattooed on each knuckle) or people from alternative cultures, especially Goths who had a great love for black rose tattoos. It was certainly a way of announcing your individuality, but you had to brave.

Nowadays, there’s nothing unusual about having a tattoo, though people will still sometimes be surprised by them. The people in the RHS article had tattoos for a variety of reasons. One person had chosen the birth flowers for herself and her sister. Some had chosen the favourite flowers of family or friends who had died. Some were embracing the spirituality of plants, especially their resilience. Some chose flowers that reflected where they were from – I loved that one woman had chosen a tattoo of ‘apples and pears, and oranges and lemons,’ to reflect cockney rhyming slang and her family history as an East Londoner. And some just chose designs because they were beautiful.

So it got me thinking about what I would have as a tattoo. After my mother died, my brother had a Buddhist mantra tattooed on his arm (he’s Buddhist), and I think that the pain of the process, coupled with his loss, was a way of healing. I might have had a freesia, as my mother’s favourite flower. If it was just about me, I would definitely have a jumping spider, and to my astonishment it appears that I would be in good company.

But I suppose the problem is choosing something that you know is going to be a constant throughout the rest of your life. I see people who have tattooed the name of their partner, only to get divorced, or who impetuously tattoo something that means a lot to them in their youth, only to ‘go off it’ as they get older.

I do remember an unfortunate Masterchef candidate who had had Gregg Wallace tattooed on his arm. I imagine he’s trying to work out how to turn the face into Marcus Wareing.

Also, I imagine that tattoos change shape as you get older and more wrinkly/saggy. But then, if it’s something that represents what you care about, I’m sure it doesn’t matter. But I am curious. Who has tattoos? Are you planning to get more? Do you love them, or is there anything that you regret? Any advice?