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Picking wild flowers
Palustris
Posts: 4,307
I was rather disturbed to watch a man showing vases full of wild flowers
he had picked, (legally of course) on Breakfast TV this morning.
Pick the flowers and leave nothing for the early bees and consequently no seeds either. Not eco-friendly to me at all.
The lane on which we live has primroses virtually the full 2 mile length now. Why? I have carefully collected and sown seeds from the few clumps which survived the weed killer sprays of the past. Now any passing walker/cyclist/motorist is being encouraged to pick them.
Take nothing but photos and memories and leave nothing but foot prints.
I think it was a very ill-considered item by the BBC.
Pick the flowers and leave nothing for the early bees and consequently no seeds either. Not eco-friendly to me at all.
The lane on which we live has primroses virtually the full 2 mile length now. Why? I have carefully collected and sown seeds from the few clumps which survived the weed killer sprays of the past. Now any passing walker/cyclist/motorist is being encouraged to pick them.
Take nothing but photos and memories and leave nothing but foot prints.
I think it was a very ill-considered item by the BBC.
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Posts
However, I do take issue with the adults who pick the daffodils the council has planted on grass verges. That to me is a form of vandalism or theft.
My father taught me the names of wild flowers and their growing conditions when we were out walking......no need to pick them.
These are planted for the enjoyment of everyone not so they can help themselves. When I was a child the park warden would be having words but now they are gone and it is a free for all.
For the BBC to encourage picking any flowers which were not planted by them on their own land is pretty irresponsible.
I think if kids are given the impression that the countryside is a no-touching zone and dont get the pleasure of interacting with it that many of us had as kids, they wont learn to love it in adulthood.
If the flowers were endangered or there was only one in the whole hedgerow then I would discourage it, but ordinarily I see it as a good thing myself
They're publishing a guide showing which ones it's ok to pick a few of and take home to put in a jamjar for their mums, and which ones to leave alone; not to pick very many and never to uproot them.
I thought it sounded a really good idea
https://www.plantlife.org.uk/wildflowerhunt/
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Most land belongs to someone. Even if it's a wildflower 'planted' by a bird it belongs to the landowner.
I guess cow parsley on the verges and blackberries and sloes in the hedgerows are fairer game - but surely it's better to leave the more ornamental flowers for the mass to enjoy rather than picking to provide a fleeting pleasure for one person. As kids we were not allowed to pick any wildflowers except daisies and dandelions.
When I was a child, me and my friends would roam miles from home to the woods or the river. We always picked a bunch of snowdrops or bluebells or whatever else was in flower, to take home to our mums. It's part of growing up and not something I would like to see stopped. In the same vein we took jars of tadpoles home every year from the laird's loch. And brambles from his woods. We knew better then not to take flowers that were obviously 'someone's' but it still didn't stop us scrumping for apples from someone's trees! In school we all had a wildflower book where we had pressed wild flowers and there was a prize every year for the best one.
Children these days seem to have such a restricted childhood that I would hate to see these small pleasures stopped.
If the countryside was awash with wild flowers then maybe, but after years of weed killing sprays and poor verge maintenance the number of flowers round here is severely reduced.
Children can be taught to enjoy the countryside without encouraging them to pick flowers and leave none for the next set of people to come along.
If you take the flowers from Orchids for example, they do not produce another. that is it for the year.
Yes, we picked flowers for the Nature table and pressed them in books in our youth, but in my youth there were plenty of flowers to choose from. Alas not any more.
One year Ma and I spent a long time planting daffodils down the sides of the driveway to our farm and every spring they looked lovely ... but one day we came home to find a car parked halfway down the drive and a family, both parents and two children, picking all Ma's daffodils ... when Pa asked they what they thought they were doing they said that they'd come out from the town twelve miles away were only picking wild flowers ... apart from the fact that they'd driven through a gateway and down our drive, they couldn't recognise that the 'King Alfred' type daffs were cultivated garden types, not wild. Country people knew what was wild and what was cultivated, but how are people who grow up in towns to know these things unless they are taught about them?
I say again, please listen to the broadcast programme and read the link https://www.plantlife.org.uk/wildflowerhunt/ ... the whole scheme is to educate, as well as to count and map Britain's wildflowers. Sometimes the programmes accentuate a possibly contentious angle in order to get people to prick up their ears ... I think this is what happened this morning.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.