COUNTRY DIARY WARDLOW

Given a treasure map, you feel some obligation to follow it – especially when the treasure is a rare flower and the map’s clues are so beguiling. That’s how I found myself, in the fresh early morning, following a dry valley uphill, ignoring a cart track as advised, stepping across a broken fence and passing through a thick stand of hawthorn, where I paused at a wooden step in a dry-stone wall.

Between me and a cliff was a rich bank of flowers: St John’s wort and sweetbriar roses, knapweed, spear thistle, meadow pea and the deep pink of oregano. A treasure chest, but not the jewel I was looking for.

A grasshopper crouched in a clump of heath bedstraw at my feet. The low sun picked out its head and the pronotum, the plate-like structure behind the head. It was the colour of limes, with a paler border along its keel, and chocolate stripes running towards the rear. The whole arrangement was faceted, like a gem. Grasshoppers are cold-blooded, so perhaps this one was warming up for the day. But then it was gone.

I stood up to stretch and saw what I’d come for: a low plant with unmistakable flowers on the edge of the precipice.