FEBRUARY used to be snowdrops; March, daffodils. Now, the defining bloom of both is – litter.

Its varied forms and colours can be seen everywhere – town centres, public parks, children’s play areas. But its chief showcase is on our roadsides, where it presents a truly impressive sight. The predominantly chocolate colour of discarded coffee cups contrasts with the bright glitter of plastic water bottles. The steely glint of drinks cans outdoes both. There’s scarcely a yard of road verge lacking such adornment.

I speak here of what’s on the ground. Then there are the pendulous blooms of dog-poo bags, hanging from bushes. They bravely compete with the fluttering flags of plastic bags. Some, a thorn bush variety, appear in shredded form, all the more eye-catching for it.

As letters to this newspaper show, the spectacle reaches its peak in late winter – February and March. Though every kind of litter actually flowers all year round, summer growth of grass and leaves masks a good deal.

Come winter, however, the blooms re-emerge and multiply. In February and March, with the roadsides blackened by almost six months of traffic dirt, they enjoy their best conditions to get themselves noticed. Plastic, metal or card (did I mention cigarette packets and pizza boxes?) they all strive not to disappoint.

The year-round everywhere presence of litter is earning us distinction. We are Europe’s dirtiest nation.

No doubt overseas visitor marvel at our capacity to make litter bloom in every environment and condition. If they rarely say so, we can attribute that to envy. Few other nations have mastered the technique of paving town footpaths with chewing gum – the lowest-growing species of litter, particularly tenacious.

Sadly, the Government fails to recognise the glory of our unsurpassed, multi-faceted litter display. Rather than praise its unique density and ubiquity, it dubs it “an endemic problem”, against which it intends to “get tough”.

Well, that’s what the newspapers say.

But the Government’s proposed mattock and hoe of more anti-litter labelling on products, requiring takeaways to clean up outside their premises and possibly taxing tobacco companies to pay for more outside ash trays, looks a bit like setting a five-year-old on with a trowel to tidy up a seriously overgrown garden.

Though the Government would like to uproot that chewing gum, it’s shied off a tax to pay for it. The litter looks likely to flourish and spread.

We’ll all be pleased. Why? Because who plants the litter? We do – every last bus ticket and sweet wrapper. We’ve been busy at it since at least 1956, when the Keep Britain Tidy group first lined up to stop us.

We’ve routed them, scattered more litter, in more places, each year. If, as those newspaper letters suggest, we are finally sated with the results of our handiwork, then we can stop. Within a year or two, the last discarded Costa coffee cup, on a remote verge somewhere, might find itself a protected species.

POISED to leave the Commons, Richmond MP William Hague has accepted an invitation by Prince William to chair a task force on international wildlife poaching. He could well lend his high profile to battling wildlife crime much closer to home – challenging the chronic persecution of birds of prey in his beloved North Yorkshire.