NATURE COLUMN: Bill Cawley

IT WAS the sort of day that the Scots call “dreich” – slate grey skies with clouds scurrying in the breeze.

The Leek Footpaths Group was walking the perimeter of Cheadle on a drab Sunday in January.

The walk took us into a church yard.

We did not stop – a pity as I would have liked to tarry and read some of the headstones.

Gravestones can tell you a great deal of the social history of a town, the occupations of the inhabitants, the instances of epidemics, the waves of migrants to a place, etc.

I saw one 18th century memorial which mentioned “a member of the community of Dublin”.

Soon the group were climbing past the “Casa de Daisy” on to an edge.

Low ridges surround Cheadle with its the most prominent building – the gothic needle of Pugin’s magnificent St Giles Church piercing the heavens.

The ridge walk took us into trees mainly birch. Greens and browns predominated and the only sound was the regular thud of clay pigeon shooting from a place close by. Suddenly a bright yellow from the gorse bushes came into view. ‘When gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of fashion,’ goes the country saying.

However gloomy the winter days, its prickly mounds sprinkled with golden flowers are an important source of nectar for insects even this early in the year.

It is perhaps the most typical British flower of all, because of its sturdy character and its capability as a coloniser, even of unfavourable places.

From its root upwards it is the story of getting the best from adversity. The soil where it grows is thin, but the tiny tubulars in its roots secure for it the maximum of nitrogenous plant food.

I wondered whether the early scientist Sir Joseph Banks, who lived at Cheadle Manor in the 1790s, explored these places collecting examples of local fauna and flora?

Banks’s career was dominated with a passion for science. He was a brilliant propagandist for progressive knowledge and exploration of the world around him. As a young man he collected species of plant in Greenland and Iceland.

However it was his decision to accompany Captain Cook on an expedition to the Pacific islands in 1767 which established his reputation.

The expedition, to Tahiti, was to take astronomical observations and Banks assisted in the experiments as well as collecting plants.

He bought home 17,000 specimens. While in Tahiti he was one of the few who bothered to learn the language, noting native words for plants and animals.

The nobleman established daily contact with the natives and became an early ethnographer, communicating their customs and traditions to an outside world.

He devoted his wealth to advancing knowledge and scientific endeavour throughout his long and eventful life and was in every sense a true cosmopolitan.