Walking into Birkdale’s Green Beach on a grey but warm summer’s day felt like entering a Paul Klee painting. The profusion of colour, pattern and texture was overwhelming. Fleabane, evening primrose and meadowsweet tussled alongside red clover, common centaury and common restharrow. Peacock, gatekeeper and common blue butterflies pirouetted haphazardly. Walking on the Sefton coast, I headed south towards Ainsdale. I was on a quest.
Slacks, those areas closer to the water table, were my target habitat. Plants there require more water than in the arid conditions of the coastal dunes. My quarry was grass of Parnassus – not a nationally rare flower, but one that, especially in this location, has a lot of resonance for me.
The name is a misnomer if ever there was one. Grass of Parnassus is not a grass, nor is it confined to Mount Parnassus. I first met it in the final year of my undergraduate studies when I was investigating soil formation on this very coast. I have never forgotten its beauty. Today, grasshoppers pogoed along the path, dragonfly minicopters darted and bramble grabbed my feet. Walking through sand tested muscles. Progress was slow. Several slacks were visited, rich in flora, but no grass of Parnassus.
Hot, tired and despondent, I thought my efforts were in vain. I’d have to make the 30-mile journey again the following day. I decided to take the detour, one last try, along a path that led to the sea. Suddenly, near the slack margins, a vision, a celestial array! The impact was visceral; I even exclaimed aloud. Before me lay a wealth of grass of Parnassus, flower heads trembling in the breeze, a cohort of giggling dancers. They were more beautiful than I remembered. I was compelled to sit among them, to become their neighbour, past and present merging.
The flowers themselves have five ivory petals, etched with green veins, with a lone leaf at their base. The main companion for these ones was creeping willow, just as it had been all those decades ago. Recent dry conditions had robbed them of the damp conditions they need, yet still they gleamed. Drought is the enemy of this plant; I can only hope that climate change doesn’t deny its existence.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
