On Being a Botanical Pedant

Over New Year I went to the Stanley Spencer exhibition ‘Heaven in a Hell of a War’ at Somerset House and found it extraordinarily beautiful despite the depictions of  both the brutality and banality of war.  I would recommend that anyone who is in London makes the time to visit it – it’s on until January 26^th and admission is free.  But – here is where the pedantry comes in – as a gardener I always make a point of examining the botanical content of paintings very closely – there’s many a Madonna that gets overlooked as I focus on the detail of the flowery mead at her feet, and portraits of noblemen and women take second place to the views of their gardens that form the background.  In the Stanley Spencer exhibition there were two wrongly identified plants  – a  beautiful vibrant portrait of Papaver orientale was labelled as Papaver rhoeas. P.rhoeas is the field poppy, symbol of fallen soldiers, while the oriental poppy is a blowsy, gorgeous border flower and oddly out of place in this exhibition.

Then there was a painting called the ‘Map Reading’ where the label describes the soldiers in the background gathering bilberries, when they are blackberries. I find myself struggling between telling myself to get a grip and just absorb the impact of the paintings and irritation that no one involved in mounting the exhibition has checked these details.  If they have got these things wrong are there other mistakes as well?  Rant over – Happy New Year.