Planting Evidence

Like all hayfever sufferers, I've long objected to my reluctant role in the sex life of plants.  I am not a bee.  Nevertheless, like thousands of miserable pollen sniffers, I am a martyr to my role in the horticultural seraglio.  And while my generous sneezes may assist in the creation of a new generation of trees, I have not overlooked the irony that a considerable number of them will have to be chopped down and turned into paper in order to feed my seasonal Kleenex habit.

So forgive me if I am not moved by the plight of the lesser spotted meadow thistles of Tycroes.  Apparently these plucky little chaps have endured a century of unnatural and unwanted celibacy.  Every summer, just when things started to suggest it was time to lock the bedroom door, they were trampled underfoot by boisterous primary school children.  While this may be a situation familiar to anyone who owns one or more primary school child, the lesser spotted meadow thistle had had enough after a hundred years; the school playing field was dug up and moved to Waun Las Nature Reserve near the National Botanic Garden of Wales.  The smokily named Natasha de Vere, head of conservation at the Garden, reports that the thistles have exhausted their frustration, and that they have been blooming profusely.

As, it seems, has the profligacy of the Welsh Assembly Government.  Darren Millar - the AM, not the Eastenders character - has obtained figures which show that, in the last five years, £195,000 was spent on maintaining plants sited in WAG administrative offices. 

That's a lot of care and attention for leafy decoration.  But then, maybe these are the famous trees that Labour and Plaid think the money grows on.