Country diary: a crawling, sprawling floral underclass

Spetisbury, Dorset: Though a frowned-upon weed, blooming speedwells provide colour in a locked-down gardenMy lockdown love story began when my glance fell on deep blue eyes. In a sunny glade, the spotlight fell momentarily on the searing blue micro-blooms of germander speedwell, Veronica chamaedrys, each 10mm across, and I was hooked.Speedwells are a group of flowers with three same-sized top petals bullying a much smaller fourth, as if six o'clock was the least important time of day. I've known of them for years without paying much attention. V chamaedrys, also known as "bird's eye", is relatively tall at 40cm; most of the others are in the floral underclass, crawling and sprawling, without blooms so much as "bloomlets". I searched my garden and, to my delight, found several other species within metres of each other, with definite and satisfying differences. Continue reading...