Flowering Rarity Amongst Dreamy Spires
- Written by Stephan Drew
Flowers often evoke nostalgia, and bring back past memories, to such an extent that they become adopted as an emblem of a town or area. In the case of one flower that is grown widely in UK gardens it has been chosen as the county flower of Oxfordshire.
That plant is Fritillaria meleagris, the Snakes head fritillary, which used to be widespread in the wild but is now only found in a few favoured rural locations … and one in a city centre.
The Snake’s head fritillary or chequered lily as it is often called occurs in the wild from the UK and central Russia south to the southern Alps and western Balkans, but it is endangered in the wild due to the “improvement” of the wet pastures that it favours.
Now naturalised in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and the Baltic region it favours damp areas that often flood in the winter but are well drained as well as neutral grasslands, especially those that are traditionally managed for hay with some late summer grazing. These areas are rare, not many places that are damp are also well drained, and you are more likely to see these fritillary in a garden than in the wild. In my own garden it seeds freely and we now have seventeen flowering plants where just two were planted five years ago. Each plant carries several flowers and they look magnificent.
The Snakes head fritillary flower is normally purple with a checked pattern. Rarely a white flower appears and even the white form has a faint checked “watermark” pattern.
Garden plants are excellent, but to really see this plant in its natural glory one has to search out wet meadows in southern or eastern England during April.
Only a few such sites exist and the majority of them are in Oxfordshire. The best site is arguably the most unusual. It is in the centre of Oxford itself, on the banks of the Cherwell, at Magdalen College. The photographs show the frequency of the white or alba form at Magdalen.
Access is via the Porter’s Lodge and across the quad to the meadows beyond where a plethora of chequered beauties abound. Go beyond the fritillary meadow and you come across the Fellows Garden where these beautiful flowers mingle with cultivated daffodils and the wild anemone, Anemone nemorosa or windflower.
Every region has a flower that can be described as emblematic of the area.
Which flower would you choose for your own area? Would it be the lavender, or perhaps the symbolic carnation that came to symbolise 1974 Carnation Revolution … or something entirely different? Do let us know.
Stefan@StefanDrew.com
www.StefanDrew.com
+44 (0) 1926 632 794
