Simplicity and symbolism in flowers and poems

Wenlock Edge Daisy –daes eage, day’s-eye – a wonderfully simple poetry that has become a complicated symbolic chain-link of love, innocence and death

Hazel catkins are limp, in a still brightness they hang fire, waiting. After the thrashing they got from Storm Doris it’s a wonder they survived, let alone have any pollen left, but from woods and hedges, unimpeded by leaves, the magic dust cloud drifts for wider fertilisation. The pollen record found in peat bogs shows an expansion of hazel during the Mesolithic, 11,000 – 6,000 years ago and the speculation is that travelling people transported hazel nuts, so that now, catkins dangle from here to the Caucasus and Algeria.

Related: Country diary: Wenlock Edge: The lesser celandine, the voice of spring