The Prince of Orange is on granny’s bonnet – too much lockdown linctus? Prince of Orange is another name for the orange tip, Anthocharis cardamines, a white butterfly of country lanes and woodland rides; the males have foxy-dabbed forewings, a spring-bringer. The second half of its scientific name comes from its food plant, Cardamine pratense, also called cuckooflower, because it appears when the cuckoo does (or did), but it has scores of other names; in Shropshire it is more commonly called lady’s smock.
The flower that this butterfly is drinking from also has many names. Because of its bird-like petals, it is called aquilegia, after aquila (eagle), or columbine, after columba (dove). Violence and peace, a yin-yang flower holding opposing forces in nature. But columbine, suggesting a ring of floral doves, is a name infected by the 1999 American high school massacre; the complementing cosmic energies are out of whack and its garden name of aquilegia or the old folk name of granny’s bonnet avoid the stigma (depending on your granny). Aquilegia vulgaris is a blue, purple, sometimes white, wildflower of woods, fens and damp grassland on calcareous soils, and a classic cottage garden plant.
Flowers have been grown in Britain since the middle ages, but in the 17th century the pastoral flora of waysides, meadows and woodland glades were shuffled with horticultural plants to create a proudly vernacular garden style. The wildflowers, culinary and medicinal herbs, together with ornamental exotics, created a gardening where nature is drawn into culture and culture leaks into nature.
Is this granny’s bonnet a garden variety that will escape into the surrounding landscape or a wildflower that colonised the garden? The orange tip doesn’t care either.
The butterfly’s wings reveal panels of squiggly green on white, like lichen on marble. This may be perfect camouflage against the white flowers and green leaves of hedge mustard, Sisymbrium officinale, and other hedgerow food plants, but against the purple-blue aquilegia, with the sunlight gilding his eye and wing veins, he becomes a kind of light – a spirit-lifting creature pausing in that space between flower and insect, and a wonderful tonic for our times.
