The Dominance of White.

I’ve lived in the English countryside for about 40% of my life, and yet there’s something about it I’ve never fully noticed until this year – the fact that the colour white dominates and decorates all expressions of the landscape from late winter until the end of summer.

It starts with the regiments of snowdrops which remind you that the darkness and drabness of winter is beginning to lift and the season will end as all seasons do. And as they return to the earth and sleep, copious white blossom clothes the blackthorn trees in March. As that fades in April, the even more copious hawthorn blossom begins to show itself, soon leaving the landscape dotted with giant ice cream cones as the world grows white with May.

The white umbrellas of the cow parsley come next, competing with the wild garlic flowers to ensure that white is never out of sight on the field margins and embankments of our precious piece of earth. They don’t last long, but before they fade away the cow parsley’s more robust cousin, the even bigger umbrellas topping the hogweed plants, take over the duty. And they have a competitor, too. As the sharp-white hogweed blooms strut their presence in the fields and lane verges, the creamy elder flowers display their more sedate presence from the hedgerows bordering every field, copse, and wood. And as their presence becomes more pronounced, the furry, white, and highly scented flowers of meadowsweet open to join them.

It doesn’t end there, either. Convolvulus – the bane of gardeners everywhere in its feral state – shows scant regard for prissy human concerns. They colonise hedgerows at the edges of fields and produce the biggest white flowers of all. They’re bell shaped, and almost as big as a hand bell. They’re prolific too, and last until nearly everything else is preparing for its winter sleep in the autumn.

All these years and I never noticed, but now I have.