May 2025 Ramsbury Nature Notes by Peter Marren

We deserved this. After one of the wettest autumns, followed by yet another dull grey winter, we have been able to enjoy one of the sunniest, warmest early springs in living memory. At the time of writing (12th April) there have been three weeks of almost unbroken sunshine, at the time of year when it really matters. Bushes and trees have sprung into leaf while the great roar of lawnmowers heard at the start has diminished until the grass receives some rain. Blackthorn blossom has produced snowy billows along roadsides and a veritable wall of white on the track at West Lodge, where the year’s first white butterflies – green-veined white and orange-tip - were busy. After last year’s disastrously wet spring, it is relief to see plenty of butterflies and bees (and bee-flies and beetles) that have made it through regardless – not as many as normal, perhaps, but with at least the makings of a recovery.

The sunny spring has also brought forth primroses, wood anemones and celandines at their very best, and, more recently, more-than-usual numbers of common dog-violet, spurts of bright blue among the yellow and white. No wonder we love the earliest wild flowers, and have given them such beautiful names: primrose, from Latin, prima rosa, in effect ‘first flower’; celandine from the Greek word for swallow, chelidon, in effect ‘swallow flower’; and anemone also from the Greek, anemos, meaning ‘wind’ – in effect, ‘daughter of the wind’. As for violet, it derives from the Latin viola via the Norman French violete. It is a colour transferred to a flower. And the name dog violet indicates that this violet has no scent. Or may be a scent that only a dog could pick up. And all this under a sky that deserves another Old French name, one that we in England so seldom need to use: azure, the purest of sky-blues.

Note – Peter has recently published a new book - Rare Plants. Available in hardback and kindle.