Country diary: forget-me-nots have a heart of gold

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: These delicate flowers are the colour of the far blue yonder, blue remembered hills, into the blue, the beyond, a spiritual eternity

"Is love so prone to change and rot/ We are fain to rear forget-me-not/ By measure in a garden plot?" asked Christina Rossetti (A Bed of Forget-Me-Nots, 1856). The flowers of forget-me-not, Myosotis, may have been reared by measure in a garden plot here, before it was abandoned a hundred years ago and a wood of change, rot and indeed love took over.

Water, creeping, pale, tufted, Jersey, wood, alpine, field, changing and early " forget-me-nots are species of Myosotis belonging to the borage family, famous for their blue flowers; the delicate pale blue of forget-me-not is unique. Some flowers on this plant growing along the path are a brilliant white, too.