For years, I didn’t know about celandines. And yet at this time of year, in March, they are everywhere in Shropshire, tiny treasures of sunlight-yellow, joyfully announcing the spring.

The poet William Wordsworth wrote about these beautiful gems:

There is a Flower, the Lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, ’tis out again!

Fittingly, he himself was born in the spring, 7th April 1770.

The photograph is of a patch of celandines on the banks of the River Severn – the sunlight bringing out the beautiful blues, greens and yellows.

Keep your eyes open for them!