Cicely Mary Barker, an English illustrator, was best known for her series of fantasy books depicting fairies and flowers. When I first learnt to read my parents gave me some of her Flower Fairy books, which I now believe may have been partly reponsible for my love of flowers. I remember that the letter "R" in her alphabet book did not stand for my namesake or even a Rose, but for a rather obscure flower called Ragged-Robin. The flower was unknown to me at that time, but her illustration made me determined to discover them growing in the wild. I found the clues to Ragged Robin's location in her poem.
The Ragged Robin Fairy
In wet marshy meadows
A tattered piper strays -
Ragged, ragged Robin;
On thin reeds he plays.
He asks for no payment;
He plays, for delight,
A tune for the fairies,
To dance to, at night.
They nod and they whisper,
And say, looking wise,
"A princeling is Robin,
For all his disguise!"
Some of the flowers currently catching our eye in the garden are the many free Foxgloves that simply turn up, from who knows where, to visit us?
Bumble bees love foxgloves, this one was enjoying an early morning forage. It has an incredibly tousled fluffy head - I name him "Boris". He is probably a male Bombus humilis, Brown-banded carder bumblebee, but if you know better, please let me know.
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