The Gentian Mystery

Back in 2020 the links at Littleferry at this time of year were home to a mass of gentians, about which I was very excited because, instead of being the usual rich purple colour, the flowers were an unusal white.

Some purple flowers did appear but they were few, rather stunted, and pale in colour.

Then, last year, we found few gentians, none was purple, and all looked brown and dried out. Some research suggested that gentians are frequently biennial, that is, they only flower once every two years, which seemed to explain what we had noticed.

This year started better with some fresh-looking white gentians but matters quickly went downhill. We only found them in two closely-spread locations and, as time passed, they looked more and more unhappy - the above shows the best gentian we found on Friday.

Many of these plants are either skipping two years, perhaps looking for the perfect conditions in which to grow and flower, or the local population is in trouble.