Another spring wildflower found in Bainton churchyard.  Usually flowers April to May.   Cowslips are mostly found on the north side of Bainton church, and are becoming established on the Pinfold and the Church Lane verge too.

Cowslips have clusters of lightly sweet-scented flowers, hanging more or less to one side on a straight upright stem.  There can be up to 30 flowers in each cluster.  The leaves narrow abruptly about half way down their length.  Compare with primrose leaves which taper all the way to the base.

Cowslips and Primroses can cross pollinate to produce False Oxslip Primula x polyantha.  False Oxslips are sometimes found in Bainton churchyard.

A place near here to see Cowslips are the wide Bainton Green Road County Wildlife Site verges between Bainton (Ufford Road junction) and Ashton.

In Helpston, during John Clare’s childhood, cowslips were an important part of May Day celebrations.  Children would pour into the fields to gather May Day Cowslips ‘as though there wasn’t a cows lap peep to spare’.  The flowers would be taken home for making tea and wine and to tie up in balls which would be hung out across the streets.  In the 2020’s it is hard to imagine that there were so many cowslip flowers in fields not far from here.  Would cowslips have been part of Bainton’s May Day celebrations too?

John Clare describes ‘freckt cowslip-peeps’ in one of his poems, freckt for the orange spot on the base of each cowslip petal.  The word ‘peeps’ is still used by growers for the individual flowers of polyanthas and auriculas.