Last week I saw my first celandine in the lane and I am scanning the wet woods and banks for more. Celandines used to invade the damp lawns of our southern customers and for that reason were called a weed but for me they are a sure sign of warmer days. This humble flower was a feature of our childhood walks where we were encouraged recognise and appreciate the flora and fauna (with optional Latin names).
My favourite childhood early spring flower was the coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara - I confess I had to check that in Wildflowers in Colour, 1958); my mother's was the celandine. She played on the banks of the River Bollin when the runways of Manchester Airport were still farmland and I imagine that the Cheshire ditches were full of them.
Wordsworth also celebrated the small celandine in a poem of 1803. The verse is somewhat jog-trot but the sentiments are those of heartfelt relief at the promise of sunnier weather that the bright yellow celandine presages:
Telling tales about the sun,
When we've little warmth, or none.
Wordsworth concludes his first stanza in a couplet that my mother used to quote and in affectionate memory of all her subsequent botanizing I finish with these lines:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine."
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