Sweet Cardamine

Day 167: It was one of the few things on my list of goals which actually worked out according to plan during my hike in the Cowlitz Wildlife area near Mossyrock a few days ago, although I was an hour and a half into the walk before I spotted the first ones. Cardamine (Cardamine nuttallii) is one of our earliest flowering species, and for years, I served it badly by never being able to remember its name. Eventually, I struck upon the idea that "it's something to do with 'heart' and it starts with a C...cardio-, carda-...cardamine!" and now the common name is firmly cemented in my brain (or perhaps it's my brain which is cement). In any case, I believe it is at its prettiest when the flowers are still nodding, before they open out into the four distinct petals which are characteristic of crucifers. At this stage, one can imagine them as the skirts of faeries, an interpretation influenced by one of my favourite books from childhood, Elizabeth Gordon's "Flower Children." The book has nothing to do with hippies, having been published first in 1910, long before the psychedelic generation was born, and illustrates common garden flowers as flapper-style garments worn by humanesque figures. It was through that book that I learned at a very early age to identify columbine and buttercup. In fact, I would say it seeded my interest in botany even before I could read the words of the poems which accompany each drawing. Even today, I see faeries in the skirts of hollyhocks, old men in bearded corn, dancers in the iris' ballroom gowns, and tiny sprites in the dainty bells of Cardamine.