Oh Veronica

Where have all the flowers gone? Where do all the flowers come from? We’re talking about men’s faithfulness here – we’ve got a birds eye view. It just doesn’t last so just leave it alone. We just need a bit of sunshine.

Veronica Chamaedrys – she sounds a bit like a foreigner doesn’t she? Like everything else, she is originally from Northern Turkey. Those early plant hunters must have ripped up every plant they could find and come rushing home with it. I think there was big money in plants in those days. You can’t imagine anyone being allowed to introduce a foreign plant into the country these days can you? And yet we owe so much of the colour that sprinkles our countryside to immigrants and imports.

Germander Speedwell (Bird’s Eye Speedwell) is what we believe is in this photo. Like the vetches that we’ve complained about previously, there are too many varieties that you need a microscope to tell apart for our taste. For goodness sake! If you can’t easily see the difference then it’s the same damn plant! We have enough trouble because people call the one flower by a load of different names – we don’t need all this complication.

Speedwell is not, as you may think, to do with parting, it’s because the flower wilts very quickly once it’s been plucked. Speed wilt – speed well. It’s not as hard to imagine that that’s the correct corruption as it is to believe some of the other reasons we’ve been given to explain flower names.

Männertreu it’s called in German – men’s faithfulness – a reference to the previous paragraph – probably been named this by a woman.