Spring's Vibrant Return to the Tamar Valley
As the wet months recede, the Tamar Valley in St Dominic is experiencing a dramatic transformation. Brilliant yellow daffodils and the delicate pale foam of cherry plum blossom now dominate the landscape, shifting focus from the lichens and mosses that thrived in winter's mild gloom. This wooded enclave is alive once more, with bursting magnolia and questing bumblebees adding to the seasonal spectacle.
A Historical Orchard Reawakens
In this steep orchard and encroaching woodland, which served as a market garden until the 1950s, hardy old-fashioned narcissi continue to flower, many still arranged in their original rows and plots. The earliest to emerge include the double Van Sion, known locally as the Lent lily, along with Henry Irving, Princep, Helios, and Carlton varieties. These are gradually succeeded by Victoria daffodils, marking the progression of spring.
The soundscape has also shifted with the seasons. A woodpecker has been drumming persistently for weeks, while the cheerful call of a chiffchaff signals its return to this partially wooded area. On rare sunny days, bumblebees are drawn to the blue flowers of rosemary, and a brimstone butterfly flits across the bright green leaves of poisonous monkshood and day lilies, the latter nibbled by rabbits.
Sunlight and Shadows Paint the Landscape
The increasing warmth and height of the sun are startlingly evident. A tracery of tree shadows now stretches across the southern slope, and an old magnolia tree, recently pruned by a local tree surgeon after winter gales split a large mossy branch, is thick with purple-flushed goblets of light. As evening falls, the sun sets in a dramatic orange sky almost due west, beyond a clothes line that has been out of use throughout the wet months.
Lanes and Valleys Teem with Life
Narrow lanes are adorned with masses of primroses, although many plants along hedge bottoms have been eroded or splattered with mud by passing tractors and trailers. Downhill, in the sheltered valley of the Radland millstream, tattered blooms of Fortune daffodils—an orange-cupped variety—mingle with dog's mercury, arum (lords-and-ladies), and tarnished hart's tongue fern.
Bluebell leaves and ramsons are creeping in from old hedge-banks beneath a tangle of slumped branches and uprooted trees, all coated in mosses, polypody ferns, and pennywort. This area is gradually reverting from previous intensive cultivation, perhaps becoming akin to a temperate rainforest as nature reclaims the land.
Commercial Shifts in Daffodil Cultivation
Outdoor daffodils are no longer grown commercially in the parish. However, overlooking the tidal Tamar, the roadside towards Cotehele Quay is edged with sprawling daffodils, discarded by growers who now specialise in eucalyptus foliage for florists and the production of strawberries, raspberries, and cut flowers in polytunnels. This shift highlights changing agricultural practices in the region.
