Spring on Widdybank Fell

Today's Guardian Country Diary is about the botanical jewels that grow in one of the last places that spring reaches in the North Pennines. This part of Upper Teesdale is an almost treeless landscape and even in mid-May the grass has only just begun to grow, but tucked down amongst the heather there are tough little flowers that survive in one of the harshest landscapes in England.

This is the view from Widdybank fell, one of the 'hot-spots' for these rare wild flowers. In the distance, across Cow Green reservoir, you can see (l-r) Great Dun fell, Little Dun fell and Cross fell. The vegetation across much of the landscape that you can see here is less that knee-high, frozen in winter, windswept and subject to high rainfall.

Nestling on the ground around me, when I took this photograph, there were .....

.... hundreds of bird's-eye primroses Primula farinosa .....

.... along with the intensely blue blooms of spring gentian Gentiana verna

You really need to get down on your hands and knees to appreciate these tiny but tough little plants. They draw visitors back to this bleak spot in May every year, to appreciate their extraordinary beauty.

Blues That Lift the Spirits ...

I thought we might be too early for the spring gentians Gentiana verna when we visited Widdybank Fell in Teesdale on Friday - a rare day with some sunshine - but a few of these botanical jewels were just coming into flower in some of the more sheltered spots. At times the sky was almost as blue as the gentian petals, during a welcome break between days of heavy rain.

Spring gentians

We headed off into the high Pennines this morning and on the way home called in at the Moor House-Upper Teesdale National Nation Reserve to pay our respects to the spring gentians. In early May this little plant, which is Durham's county flower, produces one of the most astonishing floral spectacles in Britain. If you stand on the edge of Widdybank Fell, on the road that runs down to the waterfall at Cauldron Snout, and then turn through 360 degrees, withered, windswept ankle-high grasses and sedges stretch all the way to the horizon in every direction. But there at your feet, nestled down amongst amongst them, are the intensely blue, star-shaped flowers of spring gentians. In a good year there are thousands, and for a couple of weeks this becomes a place of pilgrimage for botanists. Even for those who are not botanically inclined, the sight of something so exquisite and fragile in such bleak, harsh surroundings is a deeply memorable experience. It's an extraordinary combination of plant and place.