Heroes Not Zombies

What I love about discovery and exploration is that you can do it right on your own doorstep. Our garden here in the Charente Maritime was largely abandoned for a few years before we bought the house. We’ve been working on a bit at a time over the last three years. There’s an area where we had giant brambles, overgrown nettles and fallen trees cleared away and seeded grass where it had until then been impenetrable but we left all the healthy trees which surrounded that area. I made a few paths amongst the trees and it feels like a little forest walk.

One of the things I love about this garden is that so many plants grow here after having found their own way here. I think there’s very little which has been deliberately planted (until we arrived!). So, the other day, the sun lit these lovely yellow flowers and I thought, what on earth are these? These days it’s dead easy to find out. I took a photo with my phone, pressed the “info” button and it told me this is Calendula arvensis. I only knew Calendula officinalis, so I then searched online and found a research article on PubMed Central about traditional uses of this particular plant. Wow, was I amazed! The researchers say it has “anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antimutagenic, antimicrobial, insecticidal, antioxidant, and immunomodulatory activities” – well, that sounds a lot! They list about 45 different areas of the world where there are recorded traditional uses of this plant, describing in each instance what parts of the plant are used and what they are used for.

I find all that absolutely fascinating, and it reminds me how much we limit our knowledge and therapeutic skills when we ignore how populations around the world have used particular plants over millennia. Surely we shouldn’t dismiss all this information just because we haven’t studied them the same we study our manufactured, artificial drugs?

While I was admiring this little flower I was aware of how much bird song I could hear, so I fired up another app on my phone, “Merlin”, which is a kind of Shazam for birdsong, and it found and identified seven different species of birds all singing like mad. I don’t think I’ve ever lived somewhere where there were so many birds around every single day.

I like how modern technology helps be to recognise plants and birds and how easy it is now to discover so much about them. It makes me aware of how little I know and how I’ll never stop discovering and exploring.