Funding Flower Power
Climbing over fences, through saltmarshes and down ditches; into the Lammermuirs, around North Berwick Law and up Arthurs Seat, has all been part of an amazing mission undertaken by one of the Scottish Seabird Centre’s longest standing volunteers, to raise funds for the charity.
Mary Tebble, who is in her 80s, has had a lifelong passion for wild plants and in March this year she set off on a quest to find and record as many wild flowers as possible – and by her deadline of 31 October she has uncovered a very impressive 840 different species!
Mary followed the rules of the Wild Flower Society, which dictates that she could only count flowers that are genuinely wild (ie not planted or cultivated); count each plant only once; only plants that are numbered in Stace’s New Flora of the British Isles; and only plants which have at least one fully developed flower.
For a full list of her amazing discoveries view the current list of flowers recorded with locations.
If you would like to make a donation you can do this at the Scottish Seabird Centre Admissions Desk; by posting a cheque made out to the ‘Scottish Seabird Centre’, The Harbour, North Berwick, EH39 4SS; or by visiting Mary’s Just Giving page.
Please show your support!
The wonderful Elizabeth Burns has written a poem about Mary's hunt - commissed by Tailormade Poems.
Wildflower hunt
for Mary Tebble
This hunt begins in the spring of your eighty-third year,
as the land thaws and plants start to quicken.
Then the equinox, and that luscious rush of early summer,
its flourish of green, and lit petals, light evenings.
All through the long summer months, into the short days
of autumn, your keen eyes are noticing, searching,
and each new flower you find is a gift, an achievement,
sometimes a rarity; and once – the secret plant – a first.
You hunt on the shore, on dune slacks and marshland,
in the city, the town, their pavements and walls;
you hunt by the railway, the roadside, the cycle track,
roundabouts, carparks, landfill, canal bank,
you hunt quarries and bings, woodlands and wasteground,
by rubbish dumps and sewage works, a stagnant pond.
Wildflowers are everywhere – here, ‘amongst heather tufts’,
‘by a puddle on a wet track’, ‘on a tangled grassy slope’.
And now, as the year turns to winter – leaves falling,
flowers fading – and all that you’ve found is hidden again,
the hunt is over, your treasure gathered in.
Yet there’s nothing to hold in your hand –
all of it’s conjured, imagined, remembered
in your vast list of names and locations., The hunt
is over, and you’ve discovered that this place you live in
is richer than you’d ever dreamed: bountiful wildflowers.
The hunt is over and here’s the treasure trove: your knowledge,
flying out like windblown seeds, and taking root in all of us
who’ve watched you observing and recording;
bearing witness to what’s growing all around us.
