I only have eyes for Blue

9:47am Saturday 10th May 2008

FAL Sarker is so excited she kisses me. This is my heaven, she enthuses.

Here wild and wonderful things are happening. The air is full of the eerie cry of the curlew and the gentle wash of Langdon Beck. Lapwings dive, housemartins glide, and the grey-brown hulk of Cronkley Scar dominates the distance.

Fal only has eyes for the fell at our feet. It rises steeply, terraced by sheep and trampled C ever so gently C by botanists.

At first, we think there are only one or two growing on it, but, just like your eyes become accustomed to the dark, soon we spot tens of them.

Then dozens of them. Scores of them.

With growing wonder, hundreds of them.

The fellside is full of freshly-opened Spring Gentians.

They are the North-Easts most famous flower.

They are County Durhams wildflower emblem.

Due to a collision of accidents of geology, geography and climate, they grow only in upper Teesdale.

They are the most vivid, the most vibrant, the most brilliant blue. They bathe in the warmth of the sun on this heart-leapingly beautiful day.

Azure blue. Aquamarine blue. Gentian blue.

They glow in the light, although soon the jealous sun takes its toll. The first Gentians have been out a week (a fortnight later than last year due to the cold spring) and have faded to an insipid Manchester City blue.

The Gentians, pictured, exist because, 295 million years ago, magma from the centre of the earth was forced upwards.

It spread through the fissures and strata of earlier carboniferous limestone, cooking it until it became sugar limestone (it crumbles like sugar). The magma then cooled to form the Whin Sill over which High Force tumbles.

About 10,000 years ago, the last Ice Age melted away. It left behind the dalescape gouged out by its glaciers, and the Teesdale Assemblage C 150 plants that should really be up the Alps or Himalayas but which thrive on cold and sugar limestone of upper Teesdale.

The rarest of the Assemblage is the Spring Gentian.

It is named after Gentius, the last king of the Illyrians. Gentius discovered that the cringingly bitter root of the Gentian had medicinal powers.

In Teesdale in 1797, leadminer John Binks identified the uniqueness of the Spring Gentian. Leadminers were good botanists as lead-loving plants were a telltale of the minerals that lay beneath their roots. The leadminers were so taken by the strange blue flower that they would stick it to a ball of clay and display it on their windowsills.

Binks discovery brought botanists flocking.

Then the railway arrived, bringing day-trippers and Sunday School parties armed with flower presses which enabled everyone to go home with a souvenir.

Some of the Teesdale Assemblage became extinct.

The Spring Gentian was severely curtailed, but all seven centimetres of it bravely clung on in secluded corners.

On Thursday, beside the Langdon Beck Hotel, pilgrims came to pay homage to its brilliance, thrilling to its beauty and hoping not to tread on its head.

In 1906, the Journal of Botany described Teesdales Spring Gentian as the queen of all known alpine plants in the world. It is the only known flower in existence that exhilarates the heart and mind of the fair sex.

As the kiss from Fal proved.

ö Fal Sarker is a member of the Darlington and Teesdale Naturalists Field Club which is leading an expedition to see the Spring Gentian (and more), leaving Abbey Road sports ground, Darlington, at 10am today. All are welcome.

Please tread carefully.

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