Walk on the wild side
We are writing these jottings on 12 February, which means that our thoughts have turned to Valentine’s Day (14 February). It is just under 11 years since we last mused on this topic, alluding to the old belief that it was ‘the Birds' Wedding Day’.
Despite the foul weather, several female birds have jumped the gun, and are nesting already. On campus these foolhardy souls include some Blackbird, Feral Pigeon, Mistle Thrush, Robin and Song Thrush. In each case some slower females have yet to pair.
The lovelorn may need reminding that Valentine is the patron saint of those who have already found their soul mate. The day of unrequited and unspoken love was originally 12 March, the feast of Saint Gregory (the Pope who dispatched Saint Augustine to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxons).
By tradition, if a girl saw a flying Robin on Valentine’s Day, she would marry a sailor. If she saw a House Sparrow, she would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a Goldfinch, she would marry a rich man; cynics added she that risked feeling caged (an allusion to the popularity of Goldfinches as cage-birds). Anyone wishing to test this idea should note that all three species are present on campus.
Robins were popular on Victorian Valentine cards, because postmen wore bright red waistcoats rather than sailors being particularly fancied. Victorian Valentine cards were also often adorned with flowers, which - to the initiated - were heavy with secret and intimate meaning. Most were characteristic of summer days but one is a February flower, or to be even more precise Candlemas.
The Snowdrop (see photo) is the flower of hope. Tradition has it that an angel transformed a snowflake into the flower in order to cheer Eve following the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and to comfort her with the certainty that spring follows winter. Paradoxically, if brought into the house it is a plant of ill-omen - foretelling ill-luck and misfortune and even death.
Their alternative name of Candlemas bells helps to confirm the Snowdrop as the first flower of spring, and the drifts in the grass near the southern entrance to campus are indeed now at their best.
It is thought that monks probably first introduced them to monastery gardens from the continent in the 15th century and John Gerard described them in cultivation in his Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes of 1597.
They were not recorded from the wild until almost 200 years later, in 1778, and now they often appear as an escape from gardens.
The Latin name Galanthus nivalis was bestowed by Linnaeus in 1753. The word Galanthus comes from γάλα, ‘milk’ and ανθος, flower, nivalis means ‘growing in snow’, the only winter torment that the weather has yet to throw at us!