WENLOCK EDGE, SHROPSHIRE These shocking pink perennials are an antidote to a kind of sobriety that prevails in much writing about the natural world There’s a flash of naughtiness in the hedgerows. We never talk of shocking blue or shocking green, but shocking pink seems fitting for the red campions. Their colours are so vivid that they appear like garden plants in the waysides, an unfeasible pink that ranges from screaming princess to rose blush. _Silene dioica_ is a largely perennial herb. _Silene_ is a feminine form of Silenus, who was the old, drunken tutor of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and wildness, and given to antinatalist prophecy – which basically claims we’re better off dead. This seems totally at odds with the brightly camp campions and the note of exuberant joy they start summer with. Continue reading...
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