Linnaeus Reconsidered

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Nature is just about tolerable provided that it doesn’t do anything too gross and knows its place. Indeed, although there is a bit too much of it in Dorset, it isn’t all that intrusive and thus far hasn’t proved particularly aggressive, although occasionally it does make slightly unpleasant mooing sounds. Granted an arid Southern Mediterranean landscape with a few picturesque Corinthian temples scattered about the place would be immensely preferable, but until we manage to get global warming to really kick in, we are stuck with it.

As far as coping with the green stuff, the best strategy is to protect oneself with a shell of utterly blissful ignorance. That way, nature remains quietly inconspicuous and on reasonably warm days can even provide a gentle contemplative background for a none too vigorous stroll. Of course one misses the soothing sounds of busy streets, the comforting hustle and bustle of the city and the sublime beauty of its buildings, but one can always recollect these things in a state approaching tranquillity. It is when you show too great an interest in it that nature gets decidedly uppity.

Absolute purity of heart or mind is a difficult thing to preserve, and a few years ago mine was contaminated by the slightly depressing knowledge that amongst the green stuff out there could be found things called Scots Pines. I even discovered what the bastards looked like. Fortunately, my ‘education’ stopped at that point and after the initial shock I was able to adapt my system to cover this intrusion. Admittedly, there was no going back, as I now knew that the green blur could be classified into two distinct orders: there were things that were Scots Pines and things that weren’t.

Moreover, as non-Scot’s Pines by far outnumber Scot’s Pines and as the latter are rather large, one can be reasonably certain that a small messy bluish thing protruding from the general blur is a not-Scots-Pine. As another example, Scots Pines tend to be relatively quiet so a whitish, incessantly bleating thing would not fall under the classification either. At the risk of upsetting your sensibilities, allow me to offer an illustration of my extraordinarily elegant binary taxonomy:

Although ostensibly simple, it took some years to gain sufficient equilibrium to formulate this system. And it has served me very well indeed.

Unfortunately I made a devastating error of judgement recently and all is thrown into nightmarish disorder. Deciding to venture into the hills in search of traces of early civilisation - it can’t always have been this bad - I decided that my best bet as a companion would be a local farmer. This might seem a perverse choice – and indeed it proved completely disastrous – but my reasoning seemed sound. Surely, anyone working all day with nature would be heartedly sick of the whole vile business and would willingly discuss the latest metropolitan trends.

My intentions were not entirely unselfish. Doubtless the poor benighted wretch would benefit immensely from my sophisticated erudition. I was ready to wax lyrical on the works of Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers. I intended to instruct him in literary forms and the latest novels. The poor fool would have benefited immensely. A flood of culture would have irrigated the arid desert of his non-urban soul. On the other hand, I had every intention of placing him between myself and danger should any particularly fierce examples of flora or fauna emerge. I should have known better.

Obviously driven to distraction by years outside the wholesome, nurturing environment of a large city, the poor fellow simply issued a veritable torrent of profanities: “The flower over there is a Field Scabius … this is a Ragwort.” The torment went on and on and my peace of mind was shattered – possibly forever. I believe he actually went on to describe some of the things he was pointing out as ‘pretty’. He also appeared to harbour the grotesque belief that the various lumps of organic matter he dug up from the earth had some form of nutritional benefit. Even my patient explanation that vegetables were things that one bought from Waitrose failed to displace this idée fixe. I fled before the twisted swine got going on the subject of extracting some kind of juice from cows.

Now a few weeks on I still haven’t got up the nerve to consult a therapist. It is the thought of the waiting room that scares me most. They often put bits of nature in vases and my horror is that I might start wondering if a particular yellowish not-Scots-Pine was a ragwort.