Early morning and we eat breakfast part-hidden by Wild Carrot and Field Scabious on Saltbox Hill where Darwin reportedly walked and picnicked too.

Like a number of other botanists I know of, I’m mesmerised by the beauty of the central red flower or umbellet on many Wild Carrot flowering heads,  This year I’ve been photographing them obsessively, these tiny crimson cricketers’ caps on beds of flannel white.

Darwin was curious about this coloration and wrote in 1888 that, “That the modified central flower is of no functional importance to the plant is almost certain”. This was perhaps a surprising conclusion from the father of evolutionary theory given that there’s likely a cost to the plant in producing the red pigment.

A number of ecologists have investigated its function experimentally over the last twenty years and evidence has been found for its role in attracting Varied Carpet Beetles as well as repelling gall midges.  Given how this plant lends itself to elegant experimentation I expect there will be more revelations on functionality to come.

In the meantime, I’ll just delight in finding the different variations of red on white.