cowslip / Richard Cobden

‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip’s bell I lie,
There I couch when owls do cry,
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.’

Ariel’s song in the Tempest conjures up images of warm, indolent summer days with the hum of bees, gentle breezes, and the fragrance of flowers. So after the long, cold spring we have had, it was good to walk up onto the top of the Downs overlooking the Cuckmere valley, and find the south facing slope covered in the pale-yellow drooping trumpets of cowslips lifting their heads above the grass that rolls away across the hillside here.

This is an inhospitable place to live; it is exposed to the wind from the sea, the chalky soil, which drains freely, lacks moisture and nutrients and this is well- cropped sheep and rabbit country. But cowslips are tenacious and although these are smaller than their rich cousins, who luxuriate in lush meadows on lower ground, they thrive on this sunny hillside.

The delicately perfumed green umbels with their fringe of pale yellow petals rise in clusters from wrinkled, toothed leaves during April and May and if you look carefully at the individual flowers you can see there are two forms which differ in the length of their styles (female parts) and stamens (male parts), an adaptation that helps cross pollination by the insects that visit them. They attract insects with long tongues like bees, butterflies and moths which seek out nectar from the base of the petal tube. Ripe seed capsules form by early July but the seeds remain dormant over the dry summer months, until the autumn when germination takes place. As the flower dies, the green rosette of leaves enables the plant to photosynthesis and build up a store of energy for the moment it flowers again the following spring.

Like so many of our native flowers the cowslip is known by many names, the cuy lippe, herb peter, paigle, peggle, fairy cups, petty mullein, crewel, buckles, palsywort which suggest it was once used medicinally to treat the palsy, plumrocks and tittypines. Its name derives from the Old English word cu-sloppe meaning cow pat which harks back to the days when it grew in meadows grazed by cattle.

They were my grandmother’s favourite flower and she called them the ‘Keys of Heaven’ because legend has it that butter-fingered St Peter dropped the keys of heaven and where they fell to earth the cow-slip grew.

In her days they were abundant and were used to make wine and vinegar and eaten in salads. Sadly, the intensification of farming and the wide spread use of herbicides and artificial fertilizers, led to the decline of cowslips between the 1940s and 1980s and cowslip meadows are a dream of the past but one can look for them in open fields, on coastal dunes and cliff tops. Their seed is often included in wildflower mixes used to landscape motorways and other major roads and along the A27 between Shoreham and Falmer they are growing on the sunny banks beside the road. Hopefully, their seed will spread and once more cowslips will herald in the summer and those lazy, hazy days with the hum of bees and the scent of flowers.

cowslips / Neil Fletcher