Botany

I enjoy growing flowers in my garden but I especially love discovering flowers growing in their wild habitat. My interest in flowers was first kindled as a six year old when my parents bought me the Flower Fairy Alphabet book written by Cicely Mary Barker.

The girl's school that I attended had a very enthusiastic botany teacher - Miss Hunter. I wonder, is botany still taught at school? She would take us out for the whole day into the Derbyshire Dales once or twice a year. She carried a large biscuit tin in which one of us would place one specimen of each wild flower that we discovered. The following day all of the flowers would be laid out, dissected, drawn and labelled. She taught us both their scientific names and their common names. Their different growing habitats, how they distributed their seeds, but above all gave us all a real love of wild flowers. 

I want to tell you about a very remarkable lady, Dr. Margaret Bradshaw, MBE, who has written her very first book at the grand age of 97years. The book, which is due out next month in the UK, is called Teesdale's Special Flora - Places, plants and people, pubished by Princeton University Press. The subject is the unique wild flowers that grow in Upper Teesdale, Co Durham, many of which date back to the Ice Age, a subject that has consumed Maragret for much of her life.

She hopes that her book gets the message out that there are many special plants in Teesdale that should be treasured and their habitats conserved. 

When asked about her great age she said that genetics played a part. Her twin brother lived to 93, her mother and grandmother both to 95, but the key, she said, was to get yourself a hobby - something you enjoy doing and become an expert. Remarkably she enjoys horse riding having only taken it up just three years ago. Last year she rode 55miles over ten weeks to raise money for the conservation charity she set up. 

Margaret out riding on Queenie in Upper Teesdale

The following photographs are a few of the beautiful wildflowers to be found growing in Upper Teesdale

spring gentian - Gentiana verna 

birdseye primrose - Primila farinosa

common cow-wheat - Melampyrum pratense

montane eyebright - Euphrasia officinalis subsp. monticola

This plant is a very special rare plant that only grows in species-rich upland hay meadow vegetation. It is a Nationally Scarce species and listed as Vulnerable on the UK Red List. 

marsh lousewort - pedicularis-palustris

alpine bartsia  - Bartsia alpina

This is another of Upper Teesdale's special plants, It is Nationally Rare - it's main British distribution being in the Breadalbanes, Scotland. It is very rare in England and it too is listed as Vunerable on the English Red List. 

It is semi-parasitic because the plants are parasitic on the roots of other species, but they also have chlorophyll, so they don't totally rely on their host plants. 

I am very gratefully to Botanist John O'Reilly, who was chosen by Margaret to be the main botanist recording the plants recently. All of these photos are his, apart from the last one which was taken by Margaret.