Above: The dropping bell-shaped Snowdrop is a typical shape of a bee-pollinated flower

David Harper and David Streeter, BIOLS

Last week, the feast of Saint Valentine of Rome dawned bright and frosty - hardly appropriate weather for the date long reputed to be the day when birds choose their mates. In reality, most birds either spend the winter in pairs (e.g. Mistle Thrushes) or pair later in the spring.

The famous poet Geoffrey Chaucer may be to blame for the confusion. He wrote: "For this was on Saint Valentine's Day, When every fowl comes to choose his mate". But this poem - The Parliament of Fowls - was not a commentary on natural history in February, but a fawning celebration of the engagement of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia on 3 May 1381. This was the feast day of another Valentine, bishop of Genoa about a century after Valentine of Rome was beheaded (traditionally on 14 February 269 AD).

The switch in dates from May to the less plausible February was swift: Margery Brews wrote to John Paston in February 1477 that "upon Monday is Saint Valentine's Day and every bird chooses himself a mate".

In addition to his association with lovers, Saint Valentine of Rome is one of the three patron saints of bee-keepers. It was therefore appropriate that we saw our first wild bee of the year on his feast day: a queen Buff-tailed Bumble Bee, Bombus terrestris, the largest of our British species at 16 mm long.

The first bumble-bees coincide with the first flowers of the year, which they will be urgently seeking in order to 'fuel-up' with energy-rich nectar and pollen.

On campus, the most obvious 'bee-flowers' at the moment are the Snowdrops that are brightening up the grass near the west entrance. The drooping bell-shaped flower is a typical shape of a bee-pollinated flower.

We mentioned a couple of years ago that there was debate as to whether Snowdrops were truly wild anywhere in Britain. Since then the 'experts' have finally decided that it isn't native. It has been known as a garden plant since 1597 but was not recorded in the wild until the end of the 18th century.

Another familiar flower that is just beginning to appear is the familiar Daisy. Like all 'composites', the 'flower' is actually a tight head of lots of small individual flowers or 'florets'. The single ring of white outer flowers, which look like the petals of a conventional flower, are all female, while the yellow flowers in the centre are hermaphrodite with both stamens and stigmas.

The intriguing question is: where were the Daisies before there were lawns? The tight rosette of leaves that closely hugs the ground is not an adaptation to lawn mowers! In nature Daisies are plants of close grazed grassland, so the ancestors of our campus Daisies were probably in forest clearings being munched by deer and Aurochsen (wild cattle)!