June 2026 Ramsbury Nature Notes by Peter Marren

Red Campion

May - or Floreal in the old French Republican calendar - is the floweriest month. What other wildflowers provide such sheets of colour as bluebells in our woods or buttercups in our meadows? The verges are livened by the froth of cow parsley, which some people know better by its folknames, Queen Anne's lace or 'keck'. One of the brightest of our Maytime flowers is red campion. Though 'shocking pink' rather than pure red, the flowers mass together on verges, accompany bluebells in the woods, and even invade my garden - where it is made welcome (by not weeding), not least because the bees like it. Red campion is quite a complex plant. For a start it has separate male and female flowers. The male one bears a clump of yellow stamens in the middle, while the female one is slightly larger with five colourless styles. Only the latter produce seeds, of course, and plenty of them. Where red campion grows with the related white campion, you often find their hybrid, a paler pink campion. And there's yet another kind that has purple instead of yellow stamens. These are plants that have been infected by a fungus called campion smut, and their stamens contain not pollen but fungal spores.

Campion is a very old name which probably means 'of the field'. Being red, our campion is also known by folknames like 'robin' and 'soldiers'. It is said to be a favourite flower of that little devil, Robin Goodfellow ('Puck' in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream), for that reason, picking it brings bad luck. Do we still call familiar flowers by their local names? In our county they used to call bluebells 'griggles'. and cowslip 'paigles'. Speedwell, I know, is still called 'blrd's-eve' by some. As for stitchwort, another common wayside blossom, its old county name was 'nightingales'. Alas, it's the only nightingale we have left; the real thing has abandoned us.

Peter Marren's latest book, The Devil's Garden, is now in the shops. It's about the plants you would least like to see in your garden!