The River Labe rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northern
Czech Republic and flows south for about a hundred miles before turning west
and north and flowing through the Czech Republic and Germany, where it is known
as the Elbe, to its mouth at Cuxhaven on the North Sea. Over its 1,100 kilometre
length it drains 148,000 square kilometres of industrial central Europe, the
fourth largest catchment on the continent.
Some stretches of the river are flanked by floodplains
several to tens of miles wide formed of a series of sedimentary terraces, all
recent in geological terms. Deposition of the oldest, most elevated terrace,
which lies between 4 and 4.5 metres above current river level, began only 9,500
years ago and the lowest terrace was deposited during the Little Ice Age of the
16th century. Buried tree trunks provide evidence of occasional
catastrophic flooding, interspersed with periods when the river was at
equilibrium, meandering across a stable floodplain. We live in such a time
today (the evidence for these claims is presented in this interesting paper).
Human settlement of the floodplain has waxed and waned since
Neolithic times, when humans started developing agriculture. Deciduous forests,
dominated by oak, have reclaimed the deep, fertile soil whenever man has been
driven from the floodplain by periods of severe flooding. At Mělník, north west of Prague,
where the Labe and the Vltava meet, the river is a fat, lazy, silt-laden
waterway, navigable by the huge barges that once carried most of the trade in
and out of central Europe but which have now all but vanished from the rivers
and canals. Human engineering has erased the river’s meanders, reinforced its
banks and contained its flow within a dependable channel.
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| The River Labe near Mělník, Czech Republic |
Here and there, however, small patches of woodland remain
alongside the Labe. They are currently protected from brassica encroachment by
the same people whose election prospects depend upon their standing with
cabbage farmers. In mid March each year these little patches of woodland light
up with millions-upon-millions of snowdrops. I’ve seen some extraordinary
floral spectacles in my time but I think that March in the woods flanking the
Labe is up there with South Africa’s Cape Province in spring for sheer
jaw-dropping awesomeness. The fact that a single plant species – Galanthus nivalis – is responsible for
the spectacle somehow makes it more, not less, impressive. Astonishingly, at
least to me, this annual extravaganza seems to come and go almost un-observed
by human eyes. I was there for three days at peak flowering this year and, other
than a few dog walkers, I did not see another soul in the woods.
So far as I could tell, the Galanthus colonies are all on the lowest, most recently deposited terrace of the Labe floodplain. An interesting implication of this is that the populations are, at most, 500 years old. Conservationists - I consider myself one but disown the tainted label - often claim to be attempting to save 'natural' habitats from destruction but it is rare to hear the youth or transience of some of these habitats discussed. Especially in the temperate northern hemisphere, where cycles of glaciation dramatically alter the natural vegetation at a particular site over periods of a few millennia, attempting to conserve a natural habitat is like trying to find the east pole.
A galanthophile in paradise immediately notices a problem. Life (even in paradise) is too short to examine every plant. The only possible solution is to stumble, drunk on the beauty of the plants one is crushing underfoot, on a random walk through the colonies. The snowdrop colonies along the Labe are the most variable so far discovered. Every aspect of the plants’ morphology varies wildly. Stature, flower size, pedicel length, the shape and size of the outer segments, the size and shape of the marking on the inner segments, the presence or absence of virescence, the occurrence of poculiforms, the colour of the ovary and the occasional outright freak.
A galanthophile in paradise immediately notices a problem. Life (even in paradise) is too short to examine every plant. The only possible solution is to stumble, drunk on the beauty of the plants one is crushing underfoot, on a random walk through the colonies. The snowdrop colonies along the Labe are the most variable so far discovered. Every aspect of the plants’ morphology varies wildly. Stature, flower size, pedicel length, the shape and size of the outer segments, the size and shape of the marking on the inner segments, the presence or absence of virescence, the occurrence of poculiforms, the colour of the ovary and the occasional outright freak.
Each colony is slightly different from its neighbours. Two
in particular stand out for the superabundance of unusual varieties. In one of
these colonies plants with green marks on the outer segments are particularly
common (perhaps one in 1,000 plants is marked in this way) and in the other poculiforms
are similarly abundant. The images below give an impression of the diversity present in
the populations.
Although I have seen snowdrop colonies elsewhere in Europe,
for example in Montenegro, with a small proportion of unusual plants, I have
never encountered variation on anything like the scale of the populations in the Czech
Republic. The question arises why these colonies are so variable. An obvious
explanation presents itself, namely that the floodplain of the Labe has been
inundated repeatedly in recent decades with water laced with a cocktail of
various industrial effluents. It is quite conceivable that some of these
pollutants are mutagenic and are responsible for many of the oddities but this hypothesis needs careful testing. Alternatively, or as well, founder effects may have had a role to play.
It quickly becomes clear, when walking through these woods,
that the unusual traits that galanthophiles admire are heritable. This is
particularly clear in the case of virescent snowdrops. If one’s eye is caught
by a particularly fine virescent plant, the natural tendency is to squat on
one’s haunches and look more closely. It soon becomes apparent that several of
the clones within a few yards of the central plant are also virescent, to a
greater or lesser extent. I tried to photograph this phenomenon but could not
achieve sufficient depth of field to illustrate it well. The same is true of
poculiforms. One ‘purple patch’ I encountered must have contained a hundred or
more different poculiform clones within an area of about half an acre.
As any fule kno, the self-appointed guardians of wildlife
conservation have arranged for trade in Galanthus
to be regulated by CITES, thereby driving the international trade in
horticulturally desirable snowdrops underground while making no difference
whatsoever to the fate of wild populations, which is determined by the unholy
alliance between developers and politicians, not by plant enthusiasts. How,
then, is one to rescue some of this genetic goldmine before it is turned over
to cabbage cultivation or, on a slightly longer timescale, inundated in a new
period of catastrophic flooding?
Seed. I think the answer must be to collect and sow an enormous quantity
of seed. It is not currently illegal to send Galanthus seed outside the EU from within it. Of course, as soon as
the relevant bureaucrats spot this loophole, they’ll close it, thereby sealing
the fate of the species they will loudly proclaim they are trying to save.
[1]
It has been noted that, whereas the ten commandments contain 179 words and the
US declaration of independence 1300, EU cabbage legislation runs to nearly
27,000. I need hardly add that although the first two tracts are also horseshit of
the stinkiest variety, at least they are concise horseshit.
