“Daisies are our silver,
Buttercups our gold:
This is all the treasure
We can have or hold.”
Thus runs a children’s hymn I remember from Sunday School in the 50s and early 60s. Innocent and charming, it was written by Jan Struther, to be sung to the tune ‘Glenfinlas’.
I imagine it was probably written about common daisy and creeping buttercup, both of which grow widely on garden lawns, as does the speedwell referenced in a later verse. My image is of the roadside verge on the Charmouth Bypass, which, since the determined intervention of local woodsman and environmentalist John Calder, has been managed more sympathetically for wildflowers. As well as the ox-eye daisies and field buttercups you see here, there were lots of other flowers in the sward, including the pink flowers of grass vetchling, which was a new one for me.
Charmouth, England, United Kingdom