10 spring flowers to lift your spirits

The bravest of flowers are already poking their heads through the cold soil, so here are the top ten wild spring flowers to look for when you’re out on a bracing walk in the early months of the year.

Please remember, don’t pick flowers that are growing in the wild. Leave them to cover the ground with colour for everyone to enjoy. However, most are readily available to buy as bulbs which can be planted in your own garden for an early spirit-lifting display, year after year.

1. Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis)

Usually the first flowerhead you’ll see poking through the cold soil towards the end of winter, snowdrops are a real sign that spring is not far away. With their long, upright leaves and bent white heads, snowdrops have been known since early times, and were described by the fourth century BC classical Greek author Theophrastus in his book ‘Historia plantarum’, Enquiry into Plants.

2. Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

This delicate, native beauty is found in swathes on the woodland floor where they produce carpets of violet–blue flowers, and is a vivid reminder that spring has arrived. With their drooping bell-like heads and up-rolled petal-ends, bluebells are still common in the British Isles but are under threat from the invasion of their cultivated Spanish cousins. However, the UK is still home to about half of the world’s bluebell population.

3. Lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis)

A very popular addition to bridal bouquets, and an inspiration to perfumiers for centuries, lily-of-the-valley is most prominent from the month of May. In France, May Day is traditionally marked by the giving of posies of theses deliciously fragrant muguets des bois as love tokens. Another white, bell-headed flower, with long, smooth fresh green leaves that turn a glorious gold in autumn.

4. Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

The bright, buttery, multi-petalled flowers, poking through the roughly heart-shaped leaves, are a cheering sight in the middle of a frosty February, growing happily in hedgerows and woodlands alike. Living up to their local name ‘spring messenger’, lesser celandine is one of the first flowers of the year. An alternative name, pilewort, derives from the appearance of the knobbly root-tubers, and their general similarity to haemorrhoids led to the plant being widely used to treat this condition

5. Wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella)

Accused of being a weed (or just a plant in the wrong place?), this is a wild, edible, plant whose flowers can be used to obtain yellow, orange, and red to brown dyes. The leaves roughly resemble a shamrock, and is widely considered to be the plant that St. Patrick used to demonstrate the Trinity to the ancient Irish. The buttercup-like flower boast five yellow petals, ten stamens and an erect, pencil-like pistil, with seed pods growing out at a 90-degree angle from the stalks.

6. Primrose (Primula vulgaris)

This is a versatile little plant, growing close to the ground, whose flowers generally vary in colour from pale cream to deep yellow. Good places to find them are hedgebanks, woods, road-side verges, railway embankments and churchyards. In the early days of medicine, the Primrose was considered an important remedy in muscular rheumatism, paralysis and gout, while in ancient cookery, the flowers were ground and added to rice, almonds, honey, saffron. Infusing the flowers used to be thought of as an excellent remedy for nervous hysterical disorders. 'Primrose Tea,' says Gerard (Gerard’s Herbal), 'drunk in the month of May is famous for curing the phrensie.'

7. Wild daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus subsp pseudonarcissus)

With the cultivated varieties already making an appearance at the tills in the supermarkets, the vibrant yellow trumpets brighten any garden, roadside or windowsill. Although most daffodils are now mass-market, planted varieties, you can still spot the rarer wild ones on the cool, shaded floor of ancient woodland. The two-tone look of a pale yellow ‘skirt’ of petals surrounding a darker trumpet, is the most obvious difference between the wild and garden varieties.

8. Wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa)

A pretty, solitary white flowers that will cover ancient woodland floors like a galaxy of stars. The Chinese call it "the Flower of Death" because of its pale, ghostly appearance. The plant contains poisonous chemicals that are toxic to animals including humans, but might only be consumed by animals if there is nothing else. A dull day is not the friend of the anemone when the flowers remain closed and the heads hang. Come the sunshine, the stems straighten, the flowers open, and the heads turn upwards, following the progress of the sun across the sky.

9. Ramsons (Allium ursinum)

A beautiful, delicate rival to the bluebell for its spectacular display in woodland, colonies growing quickly in spring to make the most of the full light before the canopy closes overhead. Sporting broad, fleshy leaves that release a strong garlic aroma when crushed, and which can be used in cooking, they display wonderful globes of starry, six-petalled flowers. However, mistaking them in the wild for the similar lily-of-the-valley or colchicum autumnale can lead to instances of poisoning. Where they grow abundantly in the wild, it is a good indicator of ancient woodland, as seeds don’t readily disperse to new sites.

10. Crocus

Creating a carpet of colour, these are a favourite of local councils for decorating roundabouts and roadsides in an early riot of cup-shaped lilac, mauve, yellow, and white blooms. The flowers close at night and in dull weather. The spice, saffron, is obtained from the stigmas of Crocus sativus, an autumn-blooming species, but it takes thousands of flowers to get an ounce of saffron. There are a couple of Classical myths about the crocus, in one variation of which, Crocus was said to be a companion of Hermes and was accidentally killed by the god in a game of discus. In his distress, Hermes transformed Crocus' body into a flower.