Weaving Gently

Nature is always a mixture of ingredients, like colours combining on an artist’s brush. I sometimes feel that this reality is lost in zoos; a lion or even a tree neatly separated from its ecosystem and labelled within a cage is out of context and makes very limited sense. But it does not take much exploring of the unhuman world to see subtle links.

Spider and rain, perhaps – quiet evidence of how this summer has seesawed between sun and cloud.

Then there is agrimony, the clock that strikes yellow at midsummer. It links physically to animals, its softly barbed seeds latching onto fur and travelling miles – I remove many each year from my dog. Perhaps this one is growing where a fox once stopped to pull agrimony seeds from its brush.

Its peers are often pinkish at this season. Pyramidal orchids, like all of this glorious family, have a secret: their seeds have no energy, and are dependent on fungi to germinate. These fungi form lifelong symbiotic relationships with orchids, are still little understood – we just know where there are thriving, because there the grasslands are bright.

Meanwhile field scabious, the graceful queen of old meadows, supports everything that requires nectar.

And poppies thrive best where the land is disturbed.

Everything is a map to everything else.