Species #1: Lesser celandine

It is spring again and much is (re)emerging. In ancient woodlands, variegated wildflowers bloom; wood anemones creep along the forest floor, enjoying the sunlight that soaks the exposed canopies, as dormant buds await patiently. These flowers, named after Greek wind gods and inspiring the name for sea anemones - subverting inveterate taxonomical zoo-centrism - are incredibly slow spreading, an embodiment of aeons passed. 

Often seen in tandem, the lesser celandine is a perennial burst of yellow amidst the prodigious green undergrowth of the forest floor. This flower can be seen as nature’s barometer, the folding of its petals indicating oncoming showers. Wordsworth observed this phenomenon in his titular poem 'The Small Celandine', expressing the beauty of its meteorological prophecy in the prose of both naturalist and poet alike:

There is a Flower, the Lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun itself, 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm,—
Or blasts the green field and the trees distress'd,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I pass'd,
And recognized it, though an alter'd Form,
Now standing forth an offering to the Blast,
And buffeted at will by Rain and Storm.

Wordsworth articulates what informs the aesthetic and perceptual sense of plant animacy through the simple ramble of a familiar walk. What movements are observable by the naked eye when it comes to the growth of flowers? If what is aesthetic, that is what is peculiar to the sense of our perception of plants is in fact reducible to its floral manifestation, then we are perhaps no less affected by the company of an artificial flower. But in this case, all such relationality which Wordsworth illustrates would be superfluous for aesthetic description. It wouldn't matter how the sun and rain affected the plant and in turn, how it responded. 

Yet the flower petals do respond, furling and unfurling, dependent on the element that they gracefully receive, 'standing forth' as they do. However, the lesser celandine’s movements are not merely a reaction, as if automatic; it is not the rain that causes its petals to close inwards. It is the anticipation of such phenomena, a detection of the contingent humidity, that leads to a nastic movement, the direction of which is independent of the source of the stimulus, turning away from the nascent rain. This is a manifestation of a plant’s capacity to withdraw, even in its most exuberant display. Protecting its pollen, the plant is future oriented, anticipating events to come and frugal in its willingness to preserve. Wordsworth’s  language plays around with our ordinary and normative tendencies to characterise plants as mere things, still and passive.

In another poem, this one called 'To the small celandine', Wordsworth celebrates the hardiness of the herbaceous plant.

Careless of thy neighbourhood,

Thou dost shew thy pleasant face

On the moor, and in the wood,

In the lane—there's not a place,

Howsoever mean it be,

But 'tis good enough for thee. 

 Ill befal the yellow Flowers,

Children of the flaring hours!

Buttercups, that will be seen,

Whether we will see or no;

Others, too, of lofty mien;

They have done as worldlings do,

Taken praise that should be thine,

Little, humble Celandine!

Conceding that we may even fail to notice the celandine, Wordsworth reveres the plant's subtle beauty, appearing amidst multifarious environments. Though this nastic phenomena is studied and inferred by biologists and botanists, the local parks and woodlands where such living things emerge, submerge and re-emerge, are milieus where such phenomena can be enacted, especially when this engagement is seasonal and recurring. This is how one notices and makes manifest what is animate about the beings that at first glance, appear still. 

As celandine petals enclose, we are warned of rain and equally we are reminded of our relative incapacity to sense what is sensed by the plant. Registering changes in humidity that even the riches of our own sense perception often fails to capture, the celandine is an intriguing barometer, a measure of weather that moves along to the silent rhythms of the elements.