Lost flower rediscovered in Cornwall
The long-lost perennial Centaury has been found in Cornwall after going missing for 50 years.
The Daily Telegraph even has an editorial celebrating its find:
More bright news from Cornwall: a flower not seen there since 1962 has been rediscovered flourishing near the coastal path. It is astonishing that the shocking pink blooms of the perennial centaury should have gone unnoticed all these years, for it is not as if the plant shyly runs away and hides in a hole when walkers pass by.
Still, stranger things have been believed of the centaury. It takes its name, of course, from Achilles’s tutor, the healer and astrologer Chiron, a centaur (extinct even in Cornwall). The Petit Albert, a grimoire or magic book falsely attributed to Albertus Magnus, says that centaury with plover’s blood added to lamp-oil will make all upon whom it shines think they are witches and can fly. Quite apart from the harm to plovers, it is a rash ambition. No wonder the Cornish authorities are keeping the site of the plant a secret.
And so say some of us. Welcome back!
