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The Lent Lily

February 17 2015 - 11:56

The season of Lent is upon us, and whilst there are a few things we'd recommend giving up (peat compost, for example, or mowing a patch of your lawn) looking out for wild flowers is not among them. 

In fact, there has never been a better time to start looking for signs of spring. The first blooms are already beginning to appear including one particularly pertinent to Lent: the wild daffodil.

Smaller and paler than many garden varieties, our native daffodil is often called the "Lent Lily" as it blooms and dies away between Ash Wednesday and Easter. It used to be a relatively common wild flower until it mysteriously declined in Victorian times (a fall in cash crops, advancements in agriculture and poor management of habitats have all been blamed) but you can still find it scattered in places, particularly in the west. One of the most famous areas is the ‘golden triangle' around the Gloucestershire villages of Newent and Dymock and you can even take a walk along The Daffodil Way. If you see any wild daffodils this Lent, we’d love to see pictures - you can tweet them as part of our Twitter bloomwatch (follow us via @Love_plants).

We'll leave you with this poem by A. E. Housman, who encapsulates its symbolism all too well:

'Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
About the hollow ground
The primroses are found.

And there's the windflower chilly
With all the winds at play,
And there's the Lenten lily
That has not long to stay
And dies on Easter day.

And since till girls go maying
You find the primrose still,
And find the windflower playing
With every wind at will,
But not the daffodil,

Bring baskets now, and sally
Upon the spring's array,
And bear from hill and valley
The daffodil away
That dies on Easter day.

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