Walking through the Forest this morning I noticed these fresh, scalloped leaves pushing confidently through the fallen beech and oak. A time when the drama is passing and we witness the shape of things to come, the continuation of nature's cycle. Things which are only now becoming apparent. A reminder that not everything dies back when autumn falls. This is Greater Celandine, known in French as Chélidoine and in Dutch as Stinkende gouwe. A plant of old paths, monastery walls, and forgotten corners, already green now as if winter does not quite apply to it.
Greater Celandine is part of the poppy family, and if you gently snap a leaf stem you will see a vivid yellow sap. Old herbals praised it for treating warts and eye complaints, although best admired today for its stubborn green presence rather than tried in the home apothecary.
It is easy to confuse its name with Lesser Celandine, Ficaria verna, known in French as Ficaire and in Dutch as Speenkruid. Yet the two are not close relatives at all. Lesser Celandine belongs to the buttercup family and in spring it throws up glossy heart-shaped leaves and bright star-yellow flowers that hug the damp forest floor. Greater Celandine waits until later, offering four-petalled yellow blooms on taller stems near walls and hedges. So why do they share a name? The old language of springtime linked them to the season when the swallows returned, from the Greek chelidon for swallow. A name drifting across species in the way folklore often does, fascinated more by arrival and renewal than botany.
Only Greater Celandine is seen here today, but its smaller namesake is also beginning to stir in shaded hollows across the Forest. These winter-green rosettes seem to offer tiny sheltered pockets beneath their leaves, a quiet refuge for things that wait out the cold.
Even now, beneath chill air and last year’s fallen canopy, spring is practising its lines, preparing for its entrance while we walk above, thinking of the winter to come.