The soundtrack to my day is the calls of siskins, blackcaps, willow warblers, coal tits and tree pipits, the drumming of a great spotted woodpecker and an occasional cuckoo. But this morning my gaze is aimed downwards. I’m walking slowly, gingerly, looking for a colony of twinflowers that I know I’ve seen around here before.
They’re one of my favourite flowers and a sign for me that summer is here. Standing just 10cm in height, their stems form a delicate Y with two, tiny, beautiful pale pinkish-white bell‑shaped flowers that hang from each of the tops.
A member of the honeysuckle family, in UK terms they’re almost unique to some of our Scots pinewoods. But they’re also a casualty of deforestation (even now) and habitat loss, overgrazing too, with numbers declining by 44% in the last half century, enough to put them on the red list as a vulnerable species.
Our remaining colonies are also isolated, too far from each other for cross-pollination by insects, and the shallow gene pool only exacerbates its vulnerability. There are at least attempts in Cairngorms national park to broaden the genetic diversity of our colonies, and establish new ones including a new twinflower nursery near here in Abernethy.
It takes a while to get my eye in; to adjust to looking at such small scale, especially before they flower. If you’re lucky, you might first spot a trail of their tiny oval leaves, usually only 5mm to 8mm in length, paired along the stolons that intertwine to form a carpet, weaving among the blaeberry leaves and pine needles. When in bloom, if you kneel down to look, you’ll see a tiny forest of flowers that shimmer in the dappled sunlight filtering through the treetops. Each one shivers in the very slightest breath of wind.
As summer goes on, the flowers will fade and fall, and the plants will disappear once more into the green of the forest. But it’s such a lovely exercise to slow and look down for the tiny tendrils of their stems and leaves, the remains of their Ys, and know – just about – where to look when summer comes around again.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com
