Gardens
In pursuit of Daphne
Ursula Buchan
Iusually come across it at the beginning of the fifth drive, when we have finished beating the fields and just gone into the wood. As we spread ourselves out in a line to wait for the whistle, 1 am careful where I tread, for this is the only place in the whole vast wood where Daphne laureola grows.
On each of the many Boxing Days when I have stood here, waiting for the 'guns' to reunite themselves with disobedient labradors, stop arguing about the tactics employed by Robert E. Lee at the Second Battle of Bull Run and get themselves into position, some early flowers on these gaunt evergreen sub-shrubs have gleamed dully in the subdued light. The warmth and shelter of the woods, which lure the pheasants in from the windy fields, must coax these plants into precocious flower. At the time of the last shoot of the season in very late January, the clusters of yellow-green, four- lobed tubular flowers are showing fully from the circlets of glossy, dark green leaves, grouped at the top of almost leaf- less three-foot stems.
The other beaters tease me for my inter- est in these obviously dull plants, although they also avoid wantonly. treading on them. They call them `rhododendrums' for, like many countrymen, they are rather better at naming animals than flowers. (The same cannot be said of the 'guns', who not only rarely know hellebore from bugle but sometimes have difficulty telling flying hen and cock pheasant apart.) It would be strange indeed to find rhodies growing on the edge of the chalk Chilterns in Oxford- shire but this deciduous, predominantly beech woodland provides just the condi- tions the `spurge laurel' seems to require.
It is one of those plants referred to by the wild-flower books as 'widespread and common in southern calcareous woods', which means you can count yourself very lucky to find it. It is, incidentally, neither spurge nor laurel, although I suppose if the wood spurge could breed with the cherry laurel the result would look very similar.
It is not its uncommonness which appeals particularly, however, but the fact that it flowers so soon after the shortest day. When you are leaning against a leafless tree, sucking a humbug, talking to the dogs and waiting for something to happen, even the unfolding leaves of the honeysuckle will catch the eye, so a flowering shrub is an event to be remarked upon. Like most winter-flowering plants, it is scented; the pity is that the fragrance' is strongest in the evening, when we have hushed our rude noise and agitation and the woods have once more fallen silent, save for the croak and clatter of returning pheasants.
I have long since given up looking for the other native daphne, Daphne mezereum, in that wood. Even the books admit that the mezereon is now rare and confined to a very few calcareous woods, the where- abouts of which they are coy about reveal- ing. However, it is common enough in commerce and grows easily in the garden. It comes in two flower forms: unsubtle purple-pink and paper-white. It is decidu- ous, unlike the spurge laurel, and the scent- ed flowers are borne in late January, tight against the naked, upright branches. This aspect moved William Cowper to write of it:
Though leafless, well attired and thick beset, With blushing wreaths investing every spray.
The pink form bears spherical red berries, while the harder-to-find white form, `Album', has yellow ones. All these berries are poisonous. It has an irritating habit of dying suddenly, after just a few years, but there are usually one or two seedlings growing in the garden from seed spread about by the birds.
The spurge laurel is one of the few plants which will happily stand the drip from trees, and it lives longer than the mezere- on. It is unusual amongst daphnes in hav- ing black, rather than red, berries. Daphne laureola philippi is the best form to grow because it is shorter, so lacks the gauntness of the usual one.
It is one of those plants, and they are surprisingly common, which are fussy as to their circumstances in the wild but adapt to a variety of soil conditions in the garden. I cannot pretend that the flowers are showy, but this daphne deserves notice (as does the mezereon) for daring to flower in the middle of winter — and for providing something to look at while we wait for the hunter-gatherers-for-the-day to stop gos- siping and find their pegs.
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