Village Country Diary February landscape


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any more, so you could dedicate a few in church to mark the returning light. It was when you could feed animals by daylight again, another reminder of how the farming year is matched by the traditional and religious rhythms of the year’s festivals. So when the green-and-white


snowdrops appear, it is a good time to look for other signs of spring. Another early green leaf is dog’s mercury, growing at the bottom of hedges. This even has a green flower, not very noticeable or pretty. As I mentioned last month, there are still few insects about so plants don’t bother to have


Churchyard cherry plum


much colour in their flowers. Dog’s mercury is poisonous but is worth looking out for as a marker of old woodland as well as a sign of spring. If the year has not been too cold, some white blossoms should have ap- peared on trees. The first is the cherry plum, which usually begins to flower in February. Last year the weather was so mild that it began at Christmas, but in some colder recent years it hasn’t appeared until March. The best place to catch it here is in the lower end of St Laurence churchyard in Alvechurch, where there is plenty in the hedge. It also grows well in Alvechurch along Old Rectory Lane, and on the


Birmingham Road beyond Hopwood, off Birches Lane, and, of course, round the Redditch Ring Road, my favourite site for spring tree blossoms. Last year cherry plum didn’t set


fruit very well in some places, because it flowered too early and then got caught by frost. So I hope it is only just coming out in February this year. For such a common tree, it is remarkably little known, but you will have seen it! It can grow quite tall, a graceful tree with starry, thinly-spread white flow- ers. The leaves follow the flowers, so you begin to get some green soon. One reason for the lack of recogni- tion of cherry plum is that people confuse it with blackthorn. This was flowering in February last year, though you sometimes have to wait till March. It is quite different from cherry plum. It is a small, dark, very prickly bush, often clipped back in hedges. The white flowers grow very thickly and are smaller than cherry plum. They grow on the bare branches and the leaves come later, so this one is very black-and-white. If we’re lucky, by the end of February the landscape will be transformed by lines of white blackthorn along the hedges and canalsides. However, we will need to watch


Snowdrops breaking through


Hawthorn 44 The Village February 2017 Alder catkins


out for the phenomenon called the “blackthorn winter.” This is a period of cold, frosty or even snowy weather that comes after the mild spring-like


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