Pearlwort

In springtime, the island used to turn pink from the thrift or sea pink flowers that provided ground cover across the island. Some survive on rock faces and a couple of large clumps are growing out of the ruins of the abbot’s house (often mistaken for the church, as it’s the largest surviving medieval building); most provided food for the island’s rabbits, introduced by the monks and having no natural predators, except for a couple of birds of prey, have multiplied ever since, except when culled by humans or disease. Fortunately, the thrift has been replaced by sea campion, which isn’t to the rabbits’ taste, so the island isn’t reduced to bare rock. The pathways that wind around between the great banks of sea campion are surfaced with small star-shaped plants, easily confused with grass, called procumbent pearlwort, mixed with moss. This makes for an extraordinarily comfortable walking surface, softer and lighter than the most expensively underlaid carpeting, the next best thing to walking on air: as you put your foot down it feels as if you are in fact being lifted up rather than pressing against the ground. The first time I visited the island, several years ago, I felt that there was something almost spiritual about this, perhaps because it seems a rare welcoming gift to humankind from this otherwise inhospitable rock. I’m not the only one to have thought this. In some legends, pearlwort is said to be the first plant that Christ ever walked on, or, alternatively, that it was the first plant he walked on after he rose from the dead. In Scotland in particular it is said to have been blessed by Christ himself and/or St Columba. It could also protect against fairies and bring luck in love. Myths, of course, but a beautiful and deeply appreciative way of rendering the sense such felt affinities between our human world and our environment engender: a moment of grace amidst the storm and fog.