The odd thing is that they also appear in the middle of fields. Little clumps of snowdrops, far from the main herd, like scouts thrown ahead by an inquisitive general.
The milk-white flower resembling snow.
That's the translation of its part-Greek, part-Latin scientific name, Galanthus nivalis.
Fair enough, but its more traditional nickname, 'the flower of hope', gets closer to why it means so much to me.
First seeing their bobbing white blooms always cheers me up, and I've long looked out for them at the beginning of each year - this year even more than ever.
And I first spotted them next to a busy Morecambe road less than a week after New Year's Day, and have been obsessing about them ever since.
(Obsessing even more than about BBC bias? Probably not).
First seeing their bobbing white blooms always cheers me up, and I've long looked out for them at the beginning of each year - this year even more than ever.
And I first spotted them next to a busy Morecambe road less than a week after New Year's Day, and have been obsessing about them ever since.
(Obsessing even more than about BBC bias? Probably not).
As the BBC would be the first to tell you though, the snowdrop isn't an English native (it was first recorded as naturalised in the UK in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire in 1770), and if you eat it you could end up spending a huge amount of time fearing to stray too far from your toilet lest its consequences manifest themselves in unfortunate eruptions from your stomach via either your upper mouth or your much lower rear mouth, so to speak.
But aren't they beautiful? And now, alas, they're leaving us for another year.
The deeply unfashionable (though beloved of In Our Time's Lord Wig of Braggton) poet William Wordsworth wrote a poem about them. (Yes, WW wasn't just some pro-daffodil bigot, whatever David Lammy MP might say about him):
But aren't they beautiful? And now, alas, they're leaving us for another year.
The deeply unfashionable (though beloved of In Our Time's Lord Wig of Braggton) poet William Wordsworth wrote a poem about them. (Yes, WW wasn't just some pro-daffodil bigot, whatever David Lammy MP might say about him):
LONE Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as theyThe late Miles Kington once compared them to a demented little white corps de ballet that dances out along the roadside, through fences, coyly back into woods, everywhere you go.
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend:
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!
Cue Tchaikovsky, who made them represent April in his The Seasons.
Eat your heart out, Sarah Sands of Today!
