A bank of cowslips is surely one of the glories of the British spring. The flower is seldom more than the height of a human hand, but each is topped with a panicle of up to 15 flowerheads, the latter comprising five lemon petals with five deeper saffron spots in the furthest recesses of the corolla.
They droop and nod in a breeze and the overall effect is a pool of gently dancing colour. However, I find their impact strongest when backlit by the morning sun, when every flower seems to hold the photons around it as an aura of secondary yellow. Should the dew not have dried then you can add a wider galaxy of shining droplets, and in these moments cowslips are completely captivating. I could just imagine the fuss made if they were rare.
Yet the species, Primula veris, has massively declined with the disappearance of flower-rich hay meadows, whose destruction last century is one of the most tragic losses to Britain’s environmental and cultural heritage. Here, at least, you can hold such thoughts at bay because Deep Dale, now a nature reserve owned by the charity Plantlife, is said to hold a million cowslips, and this morning I believe it.
They cover the whole eastern flank of the steep-sided limestone valley. Yet there is an odd element at work in the cowslip’s personality, which makes their superabundance difficult to detect from any distance. In fact, I tried scanning them from the opposite bank, whence they seemed just a grassy expanse devoid of colour. It’s because each plant seems cautious of intimacy and isolates a short distance from most neighbours. In this evenly spaced configuration, the floral abundance never shows as more than a fine lemon thread in a broader cloth of the palest, greyest of greens.
There was, however, a final element that made the sight of these cowslips more fulfilling than ever. It was a realisation, which was both troubling and wonderful, as I emerged at the dale top – at the point that it meets Great Shacklow Wood and where unfolded a panorama as sublime as any in the Peak District national park – that I was here with a million flowers and there was not another human being anywhere in this landscape.
Mark Cocker
