Few activities in urban life combine mental reprieve with repetitive, outdoor labor.  Middle-class city folk have long turned to the pastoral tradition to imagine an idyllic countryside populated with fresh-faced shepherdesses and singing harvesters unburdened by anxieties of the city grind.  Their innocent work in the fields was seen as an antidote to stress.  Indeed, …

Botanical accuracy should always be our aim, but if we fall short, there’s no real shame in it, well, only a little. When someone corrects us it’s important to show humility and thank them. They will feel good. Mis-identifying plants is very common because it’s difficult to know the names of 350,000 flowering plants in the …

Solid, strong, and enduring, the heroic oak spreads expansively in all directions, steadily growing an imperial command of the landscape. All the more sublime, then, when such a tree is struck by lightning. Stark in its isolation and bearing the deep scars of violence, the “blasted oak” evokes the melancholy of blighted glory and death. …

So much plant excitement this month, as spring flowers are arriving in greater numbers. Whatever the human defined start time for Spring is, the flowers have their own calendar, as soil temperatures rise we are seeing more and more bulbs and other plants erupting everywhere. A cold snap may slow them down, but not for …

Fiona McIntyre is a painter, drawer and printmaker. Her uplifting painting Greenish Deep is currently on show as part of the group exhibition Arboretum at the Royal West of England Academy, now entering its final week. Much of her work focuses on plants, often using vivid colour and flow to depict their great vitality. Artist’s website I …