Читать книгу Country Rambles, and Manchester Walks and Wild Flowers - Leo H. Grindon - Страница 5

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SPRING VISIT.

O Proserpina,

For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall

From Dis’s wagon!

Pale primroses

That die unmarried, ere they can behold

Bright Phœbus in his strength.

SHAKSPEARE.

THE part of the country round Manchester which supplies the greatest number of different wild–flowers, and of rare kinds in particular, is unquestionably the neighbourhood of Bowdon. Next in botanical interest come the Reddish valley, extending from Stockport to near Hyde, the Disley hills, and the delightful woods in the neighbourhood of Marple; and next to these again, and perhaps equalling them, Worsley, Tyldesley, the northern side of Prestwich, and the vicinity of Clifton. Bowdon, however, with the adjacent districts of Lymm and Cotterill, stands ahead of all. It holds precedence, too, in respect of its early seasons. While other portions of our district are scarcely giving signs of vernal life, at Bowdon the spring flowers are often open and abundant, and this quite as markedly in the fields as in the gardens. The former is the more valuable and interesting part of the testimony thus borne to the mildness of Bowdon, since the life of cultivated plants is always in some measure artificial, or under the influence of human direction, whereas the occupants of the hedgerows are pure children of nature. In the pleasant little nook called Ashley meadows, lingering with its very latest campanula and crimsoned bramble–leaf, Autumn seems hardly gone before Spring prepares to change all again and once more to green. Dunham Park offers nothing important for several weeks after the Ashley meadows have flowers to show. The total, indeed, of the botanical productions of the former place is not a fifth of what may be found within a mile of Ashley Mill. It is well to note this, because many people suppose that a scene delightful in its picturesque is correspondingly rich in wild–flowers. Generally, no doubt, it is so, since the picturesque in scenery is almost always connected with great unevenness of surface, precipitous descents, rocks, and tumbling waters, these usually coming in turn, of geological conditions, such as are highly conducive to variety in the Flora. But when the charm of a scene depends, not on cliffs and cataracts, but simply on the agreeable intermixture of differently–tinted trees, a gently undulating surface, sweet vistas and arcades of meeting branches, and the allurements held out to the imagination by green forbidden paths and tangled thickets;—then, as in Dunham Park, the primitive causes of floral variety being absent, the flowers themselves, though they may be plentiful in their respective kinds, are necessarily few as to distinct species. It does not follow that where the variety is considerable we are to look below the turf for the explanation. Meadows and pastures are always more prolific than ground covered with forest–trees (except, perhaps, in the tropics), the reason being partly that such trees offer too much obstruction to the rays of the sun, and partly that their immense and spreading roots block up the soil and hinder the growth of smaller plants. The Ashley meadows, after all, like all other places abounding in wild–flowers, are the miniature of a romantic scene. For in landscape, as in history, wherever we go, we have only the same ideas on a larger or smaller scale, the great repeated in the little, the little repeated in the great. Here is the mighty forest, clinging to the mountain–side; here the extended plain, watered by its winding river; here the terrible chasm and deep ravine—all, however, in that delicate and reduced measure which, while it gives us the type of nature universally, enables us to see the whole at one view.

To get to the Ashley meadows, go by the railway to Bowdon, then along the “Ashley Road” for about a mile, and then down the lane on the left hand, which leads to Mr. Nield’s model farm. After passing through the field by the farm, there is seen a small wood upon the right, in which are many beautiful treasures, and descending a little, we are in the meadows, the Bollin flowing at the farther edge, and the mill, with its weir and water–wheel, at the extremity. The very earliest spring flowers to be gathered here are those of the hazel–nut, the willow, the alder, and the poplar. People unacquainted with botany often suppose that the latter and other timber–trees belong to the flowerless class of plants. They fancy that flowers occur only upon fruit–trees, and upon ornamental shrubs, such as the lilac and laburnum. The mistake is a perfectly natural and excusable one, seeing that the established idea of a flower is of something brilliant and highly coloured. A visit to the Ashley meadows in the month of April soon shows that there are other flowers than these. The hazel is by that time overblown, being in perfection about February; but the other trees mentioned above are covered with their curious blossoms, which in every case come out before the leaves. Those of the alder and poplar resemble pendent caterpillars, of a fine brownish red; the willow–blooms are in dense clusters, green or lively yellow, according to their sex. For plants, like animals, have sex, and though in most cases male and female co–exist in the same flower, it happens with some, especially with the timber–trees of northern latitudes, that the flowers are of only one sex, some of them being male and others female. Occasionally the entire tree is male only or female only—the condition of the willow and the poplar, the yellow flowers of the former of which are the male, and the greenish ones the female. On the hedge–banks below these trees may be gathered the dogs’ mercury, an herbaceous plant of distinct sexes, readily recognised by its dark green, oval, pointed leaves. Soon after the appearance of these, the banks and open sunny spots become decked with the glossy yellow blossoms of the celandine, a flower resembling a butter–cup, but with eight or nine long and narrow petals, instead of five rounded ones. Mingled with it here and there is the musk–root, a singular but unpretending little plant, green in every part, and with its blossoms collected into a cube–shaped cluster, a flower turned to each of the four points of the compass, and one looking right up to the zenith. The roots, as implied in the name, have the odour of musk. On the moister banks, such as those at the lower edge of the wood, grows also the golden saxifrage, a pretty little plant, with flat tufts of minute yellowish bloom. Yellow, in different shades, prevails to a remarkable extent among English wild–flowers, and especially those of spring. The rich living yellow of the coltsfoot is a conspicuous example. The coltsfoot flowers, like those of the poplar tree, open before the leaves, enlivening the bare waysides in the most beautiful manner, or at least when the sun shines; for so dependent are they upon the light, that it is only when the sun falls warm and animating that they expand their delicate rays, slender as the finest needle, and reminding us, in their elegant circle and luminous colour, of the aureola round the head of a saint in Catholic pictures. At first sight, the coltsfoot might be mistaken for a small dandelion. It is easily distinguishable from that despised, but useful plant, by the scales upon its stem, the stalk of the dandelion being perfectly smooth. The leaves and flowers of the dandelion open, moreover, simultaneously. The coltsfoot, like the flower it imitates, holds high repute among the “yarb–doctors,” who know more of the genuine properties of our native plants than it is common to give them credit for.

On the banks of the Bollin and its little tributaries grows also that curious plant, the butter–bur. Appearing first as an egg–shaped purple bud, by degrees a beautiful cone or pyramid of lilac blossoms is opened out, bearing no slight resemblance to a hyacinth. Here, again, as happens with many spring flowers, and, strange to say, with two or three autumnal ones, the blossoms are ready before the leaves, which do not attain their full size till after midsummer. Then they hide the river–banks everywhere about Manchester with a thick and deceitful jungle, often lifted on stalks a yard high, and in their vast circumference reminding one of rhubarb leaves. After these earlier visitants come the furze, the purple dead–nettle, and the primrose; and in the hedges, again without leaves, the sloe or black–thorn, its milk–white bloom conspicuous from a long distance. The name black–thorn, so oddly at variance with the pure white of the flowers, refers to the leaflessness of the plant when in bloom, the white–thorn, or “May,” being at the corresponding period covered with verdure. But it must not be imagined that these plants follow just in the order we have named them. To a certain extent, no doubt there is a sequence. Every one of the four seasons, whether spring, summer, autumn, or winter, resembles the total of the year as to the regularity in the order of its events. The glowing apple and the juicy pear follow the lily and the rose, and are followed in their turn, by the aster and the ivy–bloom. Similarly, in smaller compass, the crocus retires before the daffodil, and the daffodil before the auricula; to expect, however, that every particular kind of flower should open at some precise and undeviating point of time, even relative, would be to look for the very opposite of the delightful sportiveness so characteristic of the ever–youthful life of nature, which is as charming—not to say as great and glorious, in its play and freedom, as in its laws and inviolable order. The spring flowers arrive, not in single file, but in troops and companies, so that of these latter only can succession be rightly predicated, and even here it is greatly affected by differences of shelter, soil, and aspect. Nor are those we have enumerated the whole of what may be found. At least a dozen other species arrive with the earliest breath of spring, and with every week afterwards, up to midsummer, the beautiful stream quickens unabatingly. Thoroughly to master the botany even of so limited an area as that of Ashley, requires that it be made our almost daily haunt. It is proper to add, that none of the flowers named are rare about Manchester, or anywhere in England. Almost all our first comers are universally diffused.

The phenomena of spring, as regards the vegetable world, must not be viewed as beginning with the season in question. Spring, while the harbinger and preparation of the ensuing seasons, is itself the consummation of a long series of wonderful processes, wrought in the silence and darkness of winter, and largely beneath the surface of the earth. We never see the actual beginning of anything. Covered up though they be, by the cold snow, the artizans of leaf and flower are diligently at work even from the close of the preceding summer, and only wait the vernal sunbeam to unfold the delicate product of their labours. This is strikingly exemplified in “bulbous roots,” such as those of the tulip and crocus, in which the future flower may easily be made out by careful dissection with a penknife. The hazel puts forth its infant catkins as early as September, while the rich brown clusters of the same season are but ripening, and the autumn yellow of the leaves is in the distance. Soon after this it is quite easy to find the incipient female alder–bloom of the season to come, and the rudimentary golden catkins of the next year’s sallow. Thus is the history of the flower beautifully in keeping with that of its winged image—the butterfly, which, like the flower in the bud, has been forming all along, in the grub and chrysalis, the bud–state of the perfect insect.

The river approaches the Ashley meadows by an exceedingly pleasant route, generally known as the lower Bollin valley. The whole course of the stream, from beyond Macclesfield downwards, is interesting, and at Norcliffe it begins to meander through the prettiest rural scenery near Manchester. The gentle rise and fall of the ground on either side, the plentiful and comely trees, the innumerable windings and turnings that bring with every successive field a new and pretty prospect, the sound of the rushing water, the birds saturating every grove and little wood with their cheerful poor man’s music, the flowers no longer ambitious, for every bank and meadow is brimful and overflowing—really it almost makes one fancy, when down in this beautiful valley, that we have got into those happy regions old Homer tells of, where the nepenthe grows, and the lotus—that wonderful fruit which, when people had once tasted, they forgot their cares and troubles, and desired to remain there always, and ceased to remember even home. The difference is here, that after going thither, we love home all the better for our visit, since the heart, though it may be unconsciously, always grows into a resemblance of what it contemplates with interest and affection. No senseless fiction is it after all, about the lotus–fruit. Every man has his lotus–country somewhere; the poet has only turned into ingenious fable the experience of universal human nature.

The middle portion of the valley, or that which, ascending it, lies about half–way between Ashley and Wilmslow, is occupied by Cotterill Clough, a place of the highest celebrity with the old Lancashire botanists, being not only picturesque in every portion, but containing a great variety of curious and unusual wild–flowers. Many are found here that grow nowhere else in the neighbourhood, and the very commonest attain the highest state of perfection. Hobson, Crozier, Horsefield, and their companions above–named, used to come to Cotterill regularly, both in summer and winter, gathering flowers in the former season, mosses in the latter, and not more for the riches of the vegetation, than, as Crozier once told me, for the singing of the innumerable birds. The journey, both to and fro, was entirely upon foot, and the men were often here by breakfast time. Being a game preserve, there has always been some difficulty of access to the clough, and of late years this has been considerably increased. But gamekeepers, after all, are only men, and “a soft answer turneth away wrath,” so that none need despair if they will but act the part of wisdom.

The approach to this pretty valley is made in the first instance from Peel Causeway station, pursuing the lane for a little while, then electing whether to continue, past Bank Hall and its seventeen yew trees, or to strike through a field–path upon the left, thence along the crest of a gentle acclivity, from which is obtained the best view we are acquainted with, of Bowdon. Although requiring some watchfulness, so as not to go astray, the upper path is decidedly the best to take. One point alone needs specially careful observation, that is, after crossing the little ravine, and emerging into another lane, to turn down it to the right, and upon arriving at a cottage upon the left, to take the path immediately behind. This leads over the fields, Alderley Edge a few miles in front, and Cloud–end rising grandly upon the horizon, then down a steep rough lane into a dingle called Butts Clough, beyond which there is a green–floored lane, leading to Warburton’s farm, which being passed, we bear to the right, and in ten minutes more dip into the valley, and very soon tread the margin of the stream. About a mile and a half further up, we come to Castle Mill, an old–established and celebrated corn–grinding concern—and immediately opposite, the wooded slopes of Cotterill, entered by crossing a single field. The time to select for a first botanical visit to this charming spot should, if possible, be the end of April, or at least before the expiration of May. The chief rarities of the place belong to a somewhat later period, but there are several that grow here abundantly, and are in perfection at the time named, which, although less uncommon, it were a pity not to secure. Such are the goldilocks and the arum. The former, a very graceful kind of butter–cup, its name translated from the Latin one, auricomus, fringes the bank at the foot of the wood for a long distance with its light feathery herbage and shining yellow flowers; the other grows under the trees, and among the brushwood, and in the part of the clough through which the path leading to Ringway from Castle Mill makes its way, thus being reachable without more trespass than of twenty forgiven yards. Few persons fond of cultivating plants in their parlours are unacquainted with that truly splendid flower, the African lily, or Richardia Ethiopica, which, opening a great white vase on the summit of its stem, resembles an alabaster lamp with a pillar of flame burning in the centre; the leaves lifted on long stalks, and shaped like the head of an arrow. Keeping the figure of this noble plant before the mind’s eye, as the type for comparison, there is no difficulty in identifying the arum of Cotterill Wood. The latter is essentially the same in structure, but rises to the height of only some six or eight inches instead of thirty, with leaves proportionately smaller, and the flower, instead of white and vase–like, of a pale transparent green (though often mottled, like the leaves, with purple stains), and curving over the pillar in the centre like the cowl of a monk. The pillar is of a rich puce or claret colour, and occasionally of a delicate light amber. In the south of England, where the plant abounds, the dark ones are called “lords,” and the amber–coloured, “ladies.” Newbridge Hollow, the Ashley Woods, and several other places about Bowdon, share the possession of this remarkable plant, which is, without question, the most eccentrically formed of any that grow wild in the British Islands. It is found also near Pendlebury, at Barton, Reddish, and several other places, but very scantily, a circumstance worth notice, because illustrating so well what the learned call botanical topography. The floras of entire countries are often not more strongly marked by the presence or absence of certain species than the portions even of so limited an area as that of Manchester half–holiday excursions. Here, too, grows in profusion the sylvan forget–me–not, the flowers of an azure that seems sucked from heaven itself. People confound it sometimes with the germander–speedwell, another lovely flower of May and June. But the leaves of the speedwell are oval instead of long and narrow, like those of the forget–me–not; and the flowers are not only of quite a different shade of blue, but composed of four distinct pieces, the forget–me–not being five–lobed, and yellow in the centre. The consummate distinction of the forget–me–not is the mode in which the flowers expand, and which, along with its unique and celestial tint, is the true reason of its being used as the emblem of constancy. Possibly enough, the pathetic legend of the knight and the lady by the water–side may have had a fact for its basis, but the flower was representative of constancy long before the unlucky lover met his death. The world, truly seen and understood, is but another showing forth of human nature, an echo of its lord and master, reiterating in its various and beautiful structures, colours, and configurations, what in him are thoughts and passions, and in the forget–me–not we have one of the foremost witnesses. This is no loose and misty speculation; but to the earnest student of nature who looks below the surface of things, a determinate and palpable fact, the source of the most fascinating pleasures that connect themselves with the genuine knowledge of plants and flowers, and of the objects of nature universally. The peculiarity referred to consists principally in the curious spiral stalk, and the store of secret buds, a new flower opening fresh and fresh every day as the stalk uncoils. It may be added, as furnishing another example of the variety in the distribution of plants, that the forget–me–not, like the arum, is wanting on the Prestwich side of the town, while the sylvan horsetail, so abundant in Mere Clough, is comparatively a stranger to the valley of the Bollin. To young people who have the opportunity of exploring the respective places, independently of the large local knowledge they acquire, it is a most instructive employment to note these phenomena, for they are all more or less intimately connected with the grandest and widest laws of physical geography—the great, as we have shown before, represented in the little—and no science will be found in after life more thoroughly entertaining or more practically useful. Besides these more choice and remarkable flowers, there are in Cotterill Wood at this period anemones and bluebells without end; while in the upper part, accessible by the path before–mentioned, and which should on no account be left unvisited, the firs and larches are at the acme of their floral pride. The flowers of these trees, like those of the hazel and alder, are some of them only male, others only female. The female flowers in due time become the seed–cones, announcing them from afar; the male flowers likewise assume the cone form, but as soon as the purpose of their being is accomplished, they wither and drop off. In the larch, the females are of a delicate pink, contrasting exquisitely with the tender green of the young tufted leaves, and conspicuous from their large size, the males being comparatively small, though noticeable from their immense abundance. In the firs, on the other hand, we are attracted rather by the male flowers, which are of a beautiful reddish buff, and on the slightest blow being given to the branch, shed clouds of their fertilising dust.

The Cotterill portion of the Bollin valley, while the primroses are in bloom, has no parallel in our district. Certain distant places, no doubt, are equally rich in this general favourite—the Isle of Wight, for instance, and the same is said of the Isle of Man, but for Manchester lovers of primroses, Cotterill is a very paradise. All the woods and lanes are full, every bank and sheltered slope is yellow with them, everywhere primroses, primroses, primroses, great handfuls, and bunches, a score every time we pluck, till wonder is exhausted and out of breath, and primroses and nature seem to mean the same thing. Such was the spectacle on the 8th of May—when this was written—the glow of bloom, which lasts in the whole perhaps for a month, being then at its height. On one occasion it was as early as April 27th. We now come to 1882. So great has been the havoc made by collectors of roots for gardens, and for sale in the market–place, that except in forbidden parts, and somewhat higher up the valley, the primrose is now almost as scarce as at the time referred to it was plentiful. Great havoc has also been wrought during the last quarter of a century by the mattock of the farm–labourer, which has likewise diminished very considerably the ancient abundance of some of the less common plants, where exposed, such as the goldilocks and the forget–me–not, though higher up the valley, like the primroses, these are still to be found in fair quantity. Never mind: the anemones, the golden celandine, so glossy and so sensitive, the cuckoo–flowers, the marsh–marigold, and a score of others, are untouched, and will remain untouched. There is something a great deal better than simple possession of the rare and strange, and that is the happy faculty of appreciation of the lovely old and common—a faculty that needs only culture to become an inexhaustible mine of enjoyment. Every man finds himself richer than he imagines when he puts the real value upon what Providence has given him.

For the return, we may either mount the hill, and get into the lanes which pass through Hale or Ringway, and so to Altrincham; or we may follow the downward course of the stream, by the path enjoyed in coming, as far as Warburton’s farm, already mentioned. Arrived here, for variety sake, the better course is not by the tempting green lane, but through the fields below and to the left, which are full of every kind of rural beauty, and here and there gemmed with cowslips. Different paths take us either past the river again, and so by way of Ashley to Bowdon, or into the road that leads to the Downs. The latter is the shortest, but the Ashley way is the pleasanter. The distance in the whole is a trifle over that by the road, or, omitting fractions, four miles. All the way along the birds are in full trill; with this great charm in the sound, that independently of the music, the songs of birds are always songs of pleasure. We sing in many moods, and for many purposes, but the birds only when they are happy. No notes of birds have an undertone of sadness in them. Beautiful, too, in the early summer, is it to mark here the glow of the red horizontal sunlight, as it lies softly amid the branches of the golden–budded oak, and the milk–white blossoms of the tall wild cherries. Oh! how thoughtless is it of people to let themselves be scared away from Botany by its evil but undeserved reputation for “hard names,” when, with a tenth of the effort given to the study of chess or whist, they might master everything needful, and enter intelligently into this sweet and sacred Temple of Nature.

The interest of the Bollin valley is quite as great to the entomologist as to the botanist. By the kindness of my friend, Mr. Edleston, I am enabled here to add the following list of the Lepidoptera, which will be read with pleasure by every one acquainted with the exquisite forms and patrician dresses of English butterflies.

“The meadows,” he tells me, “near the river Bollin, from Bank Hall to Castle Mill, produce more diurnal Lepidoptera than any other locality in the Manchester district, as the following select list (1858) will suffice to prove”:—