dreaming spires inspiration

Where do the days go? It is February already, the birds are singing, snowdrops are flowering in the garden, catkins shake and shimmer in  every hedgerow hereabouts. Yep, Spring is in the air. At least here, today.

Saturday, however, was decidedly wintry, as VP and I visited Oxford, Matthew Arnold’s “city of dreaming spires”, to listen to a talk given by Paolo Arriga entitled “From seed to plate.” The author has an Italian heritage and his talk extolled the variety of regional vegetables grown in Italy, leading to the variety in Italian cooking. Paola is an enthusiastic cook and runs Seeds of Italy. I can recommend them heartily, and if you haven’t tried any of their varieties, it might well be the season to give them a go. Franchi seeds are widely available and the website is well illustrated.

Part of the talk consisted of the author making pesto from scratch. Inspired by the smell (as well as the delicious flavour-we all got to try the pesto) I made some in my heavy granite pestle and mortar this evening for supper.  It was lovely.

After the talk we walked in the Botanic Gardens where the snowdrops are coming into full bloom, especially in the shelter of the old walls where they are planted in large drifts. It was a cheerless afternoon with a biting wind coming over the river, but on this my first visit to Oxford Botanic gardens, I was immensely cheered by the sight of this magnificent Pinus Nigra, an Austrian pine planted in 1800 and in the full glory of its maturity.

I thought the tree was one of the finest specimens I have seen in a long time, with textured bark and sinuous limbs and following a little research it seems it was a favourite of the author JRR Tolkien who was at college nearby. Tempting to think of it being an inspiration behind ents, isn’t it? There is a lovely picture, faded but eloquent, here of JRR himself in old age beneath this very tree. I feel proud to be in such good company in liking it.

unfinished business

We are in a quiet break between two Arctic air streams-most unusual for this early in a Wiltshire winter. On Sunday we took a walk in thawing woods and were intrigued by the number of trees seemingly caught by the fierce approach of winter, before autumn had packed its bags and left. Many of the oaks are left carrying the desiccated brown remnants of their summer canopies, a phenomenon I am familiar with in beeches, but have seldom observed so widely on the oaks hereabouts. I have not been able to find reference to why this has happened this year in particular but seems not to be exclusive to Wiltshire. Travelling up and down the M5 to Devon recently has shown many other trees in the same state across Somerset and Devon,  suggesting the rapid fall in temperature and prolonged cold spell are important factors. Has anyone else noticed this?

Further on our walk I was captivated by the distant sight of poplars. I had read a very interesting post about Black poplars (Populus nigra ssp. betulifolia) here and had my eyes open for them. The ones in this picture are almost certainly Lombardy poplars, of tall and fastigiate habit. They are also  Populus  nigra, but ssp. Italica, introduced into the Uk in the 1750s. The native Black poplar is one of Britain’s rarest trees and as they hybridise freely, pure specimens are hard to find and require DNA fingerprinting 1. to identify with certainty. I read that North Wiltshire has a high proportion of female trees *2 so I will be continuing to look for them. Inspired by the sight, I painted them. You can see here.

References

1.The role of DNA finger-printing in the conservation of the native black poplar. Stuart A’Hara, Sam Samuel and Joan Cottrell British Wildlife Dec. 2009.

2. Vascular plants in Wiltshire 2009, Sharon Pilkington, County Recorder for VC7 and VC8