The first snowdrops

click photo to enlarge
As a child I always looked for the first snowdrops that make an appearance in early January, and I continue to do so as an adult. When I was younger the small white flowers signified the first noticeable appearance of new life in the new year. I now know that other plants such as winter flowering heather and winter jasmine produce flowers before the snowdrops open their petals, but I still see them as the first step in the long march out of winter into spring. To a child the name is appealing and prompts the comparison of the crowded banks of flower heads with the way large flakes settle on the grass at the beginning of a fall of snow. To my adult mind the English name is so much more decorative, descriptive and appealing than the Latin Galanthus nivalis.

The first snowdrops have appeared in my part of the world, next to the foundations of a sheltered old house wall where they grew last year, perhaps benefiting from the leakage of warmth into the nearby soil. In a couple of weeks large drifts of the flowers will fleck garden borders, the churchyard, the sparse grass under the trees, and the banks of the stream that meanders through the village, giving me the opportunity for a wide-angle, contextual photograph. In the meantime here's a hand-held close-up of some of the "early birds."

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/30 seconds
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Kill or cure!

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It's January and Helleborus orientalis, the hellebore, is in full bloom under a large willow tree by the stream in my garden. Now I know that aspirin originally came from a chemical in the bark of the willow, but I only recently discovered that hellebores were once considered a great cure for worms in children. Though since it tended to kill more people than it cured I wonder why its efficacy wasn't challenged sooner!

In fact, hellebore was considered to be a purgative by Hippocrates, so its medicinal use is of long standing. Some believe it caused the death of Alexander the Great when he took it as a medicine. In 585BC the Greeks, in the siege of Kirrha, used hellebore to poison the city's water supply. The defenders weren't killed, but they were so weakened by diarrhoea that they were unable to resist the final onslaught. In medieval times people believed witches used the plant to summon demons, and over the years its ingestion has been thought to cause tinnitus, vertigo, swelling of the tongue and throat, slowing of the pulse and death by cardiac arrest. So this is a plant that requires careful handling, and one that should never pass your lips.

Discovering all this I now look at the subdued flowers of the plant with fresh eyes. I imagine it resting on a Victorian coffin in a glass-sided hearse, pulled by jet black horses with nodding plumes, led by a black clad undertaker in a top hat, under a leaden sky! Or is that a bit fanciful? Whatever the case, the history of the hellebore certainly caused me to use a black background when I photographed it, and I chose the shots made with the natural light of an overcast day rather than the more upbeat versions I took using bounced flash!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 1.0
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: Off