Blackthorn

Across the district this thorny bush has been coming into bloom, transforming wayside places and patches of thicket with masses of white blossoms.

Where it occurs in abundance the white blossom looks like a surreal covering of snow. There is an old wives' tale which says it is sure to be cold when the blackthorn blooms. This was certainly true for this year.

With the blackthorn out I always like to start my new year's wild flower vigil.

This is something I have now been doing for many years.

When I first got interested in learning more about the wild flowers, identifying and learning about them seemed a rather daunting uphill battle, as there are many hundreds of distinct species which you could encounter, and many of these have sub-species or very similar looking species, bringing the total into thousands.

So the approach I took was to start now as the blackthorn flowered and to keep an eye out for wild flowers as they start coming into bloom.

If you have a regular walk you take, or a nature reserve that you pass through frequently, keep your vigil there.

Virtually every day I would take a stroll and look for the first patch of colour to bloom.

Once I had found a bloom I would spend a few moments looking it up.

I feel it is essential to get a good field guide and to take this with you, so that when you make a discovery you have the book there to make the identification.

If you rely on trying to remember what it was like, then look it up when you get home, you will inevitably end up making some pretty wild guesses.

Many wild flowers will often look basically similar to the beginner, the most obvious difference being that, for instance, it is covered in hair or has a strong smell, a fact that could easily be overlooked when trying to remember back at home.

Another practice a few people still carry out is to pick the plant with the idea of looking it up when they get home. This is probably the worst idea.

Firstly, that wonderful wild flower you were interested in is now dead and imagine how bad you would feel if after looking it up it turned out to be exceedingly rare.

Occasionally I will get presented with bits of rotting plants and asked "what's this?", and unless it is really obvious it is often quite difficult to uncurl the squashed remains to identify it.

The field guide I have used for years, as you can tell by its slightly dog-earned corners and well-thumbed pages despite it being my second copy, is published by Collins.

Things start easy enough at this time of year, with just the odd one to identify, but things start hotting up once you get into April and may, but you will have learnt the basics by then and be ready for this influx.

After a year or two you soon become very familiar with your local wild flowers and this is when holidays and trips to new areas get a bit more interesting and you start to appreciate the diversity of wild flowers. Even now I get a thrill identifying a wild flower that is new to me.