And just like that, it snowed again. Covering the Hellebores, the bamboo, the whole of the backyard. I am very fond of Hellebores, also known as Christmas or Lenten Roses, their origins explained by lots of different folk tales.

A different take on them can be found in Darwin’s writings. No, not that Darwin, but his grandfather (as well as Francis Galton’s), Erasmus. Erasmus Darwin was an English physician, one of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, a natural philosopher, physiologist, abolitionist, inventor and poet in the late 1700s. He was beyond fascinated with the newly revealed research and subsequent taxonomy of plants devised by Linnaeus.

Darwin wrote The Loves of the Plants, a long – eternally long – poem, which was a popular rendering of Linnaeus’ works, as well as the Economy of Vegetation, and together the two were published as The Botanic Garden.

Finally a way to talk about sex! Even if in the disguise of the propagation amongst plants. So many poetic possibilities!

Here is the bit about Hellebores:

And here are some of his explanatory notes:

Clearly he anticipated natural selection in ways to be explored and confirmed by his grandson 60 years later. And the colors now vary, from white, to pink, to the deepest of purples. Which is not true for snowdrops, which have stayed in their wintry camouflage forever.

I’m throwing some other garden sights in for good measure. It’s all too beautiful!

Music today two lesser known but distinct recordings of Schubert’s Winterreise. One from the 1950s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMImz94Lb78

And a newer one from some years back:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh1Ky7gj4vw