Keeping it real

Now, I’m not much used to posting subversive material on this blog, but here goes.  I may be about to cause some offence to certain readers, perhaps those of delicate disposition.  If I do, I apologise, but some things one just has to get off one’s chest!

I don’t get double flowers!  There, I’ve said it.  You know the ones I mean.  Those plants with beautiful blooms – beautiful in their simplicity – which in the hands of some mischievous plant breeder come to yield flowers with twice the number of petals it should have, or sometimes even more.  Okay, I would admit that there are some beautiful roses out there, whose fineries have been bought about through horticultural tinkering and, I expect other odd examples of other plants.  But I would still say that the Field Rose are the Dog Rose have a beauty of their own that is absent from the cultivars.  A moot point indeed, but there are some flowers that should never be tampered with, but which on occasion have.  Surely the simple wonder of spring-white Wood Anemone cannot be improved upon (compare the double-flower here with the normal flower here) and so too the already ornate blooms of the Aquilegia (or Columbine).

As a further case in point, I leave you with one 2014’s early Lesser Celandine.   I’ll be expecting the comments board to be red-hot with angry bloggers…….

Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria). Copyright 2014 Ross Gardner