It’s not just trees (We can’t chop down all these trees and not harm ourselves, 15 May). The railway ecosystem includes many other types of plant. On my trips from Winchester to Waterloo in the 1960s, I saw everlasting peas (Lathyrus latifolius) in full flower, cascading down the banks. There are still pockets of plant diversity on the route between Cambridge and King’s Cross, thanks to Margaret Fuller, wife of the crossing keeper at Shepreth, as recorded in The Illustrated Virago Book of Women Gardeners (ed Deborah Kellaway; 1995).
Margaret Waddy
Cambridge
• David Cox offers some good advice (Seven ways to deal with hay fever, G2, 14 May) but misses out the real game-changer. Hay fever sufferers must not blow their noses. Everyone seems to know not to rub an irritated eye, but not that blowing has much the same effect on the nasal passages – congestion, irritation, and more discharge.
Dr Stuart Handysides
(Retired GP), Ware, Hertfordshire
• Woody Guthrie’s words of long ago apply: Some rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen (Carillion fall blamed on hubris and greed, 16 May). Why no prosecutions?
Huw Kyffin
Canterbury
• Is it my imagination or is the royal romance, and lead-up to the wedding, beginning to sound a little like the plot of Notting Hill Part II (Markle’s father ‘may miss her wedding after surgery’, 16 May)?
Tony Hart
Formby, Merseyside
• Who is giving Prince Harry away?
Marion McNaughton
Warburton, Cheshire
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