“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”—Rachel Carson
The visit had a rough start. On the morning of our departure, when we expected an email containing our boarding passes, there were no emails. After a few stressful hours, we realized that our downloaded movies had eaten up our computer storage space. That was fixed and we headed off to Logan Airport and a flight to Paris and onward to Toulouse. Unfortunately, Air France booked the two flights too close together and we missed our connection. Another freak out, but a new flight was boarded within an hour and we were collected and driven into the French countryside. The roads were flanked with massive plane trees, red poppies dotted the roadsides, golden broom covered hillsides, and ancient stone walls were populated by plants sprouting from the crevasses.
The plane trees of France, or les platanes, (Platanus orientalis), are native to Persia. Pliny the Elder imported them to Rome and the infamous Trojan Horse was carved from the wood of a plane tree. In France they are ubiquitous; flanking roads, canals, and in town squares. Napoleon is the reason. He ordered trees to be transplanted by the thousands throughout the country to shade his troops and travelers. Even earlier, while Catherine the Great was visiting Nostradamus in the town of Lamanon, she planted a tree which is now twenty meters tall. The trees can live for 4000 years but there is a fungal disease, originated from munition boxes made from the American plane, brought into France during the Second World War, that is attacking the iconic trees of France.
One feature of the French treatment of the trees that always amazes me is the annual pollarding, a cutting back of all branches to a central hub. The new growth then forms a contained sphere atop a widening trunk. Sometimes the branches are then squared off, creating a cube. It seems so brutal but, in fact, it prolongs the life of the tree. Very curious, and very French.
“Saving plane trees planted along the roadsides is essential for the beauty of our country, for the protection of nature, and for the safety of our human environment.”—Georges Pompidou
While driving from Toulouse there were often splashes of red along the roadside, the corn poppy, les coquelicots, (Papaver rhoeas). They are native wild flowers that used to grow in profusion in cultivated fields, along with blue cornflowers, aka bachelor buttons, les bleuets, (Centaurea cyanus). Modern herbacides have decimated their populations, but as we approached our destination of the village of Brassac I spied a field full of poppies, and when we returned for a closer look I found blue cornflowers amongst the red poppies. I was in heaven on our first day in France. In England the poppy is a reminder of the horrors of the First World War. It is often called the Flanders poppy after the town whose fields were blood red with flowers after they were bombed. In France it is les bleuets that signify the losses of war. A symbol of innocence, delicacy, and hope, the blue of the flowers was also the color of the new uniforms of the young soldiers. In 1925 Charlotte Malleterre and Suzanne Leenhardt proposed the creation and sale of cloth and paper cornflowers to benefit the soldiers, widows, and orphans of the war. They are now used on the 11 of November and the 8 of May to commemorate the surrender of the Nazis in France. The nicknames, bachelor button and bouttonierre flower, are from Victorian times when they were worn in the button holes of young men.
“Here they are, these little bleuets
These bleuets the color of the sky…
Little bleuet, you are our hope.”—Georges Bourgoin
After the red and blue, the yellow hillsides completed the show of primary colors. Masses of golden flowers were from broom or genet (Genista monspessuiana), which blanketed the dry slopes. On the hot, sunny day when we arrived the sweet scent wafted down from the mountain sides and when we walked by the yellow, pea-like blooms we were surrounded by a honeyed cloud. Genet is a native to the dry soils around the Mediterranean and has long been used in weaving, basketry, and to create brooms, hence the English name.
The French like to mark boundaries and have done so for centuries, often with stone walls, which have become miniature gardens. Many native plants seed themselves in the crevasses and often people add others. There is a small fern, a spleenwort, that is very happy growing from the stone and small, fleshy sedums, and semperviviums or hens-and-chicks. My favorite bit was over the Agout River, on the Vieux Pont built in the twelfth century, where a Campanula, a purple bellflower, bloomed and gently swayed in the wind.
La belle France! It is a joy and comfort to begin to know this corner of the world, with its differences and similarities to ours. In the vegetable gardens, les potagers, there are the familiar lettuce and tomatoes, but also perennial artichokes and rosemary shrubs. And in the wild, it is wonderful to see some garden favorites in their native lands. The field of poppies and cornflowers was a high point of my trip. The bread and cheese and wine were mighty good too.
“I survived, carried on, glad to be like a weed, a wild red poppy, rooted in life.”—Marilyn Buck
May 28, France