I have been doing my best to research the preferences of wild flowers over the last couple of weeks, although writing deadlines have made it something of a sporadic affair. Mad dashes for fresh air and flowers, before it is time to confront the silver tyranny of the MacBook Pro once more.
I have not visited the area of wild flowers for a long time and it has been great fun to garner a few new observations. However, there will always remain hundreds of fascinating habits out there, waiting for the right moment to overcome their shyness and reveal all.
I have noticed that Speedwells, the blue four-petal flowers from the Veronica family, seem to have a preference for the west-facing and north-facing sides of paths in this part of the world. That is they can be found more commonly on the southern side of W-E paths and the eastern…
… or a clue to direction. One of the challenges in natural navigation that never goes away is the need to constantly change our focus. Our eyes have a tendency to drift towards a middle-distance focus. This can mean that clues in the background and the foreground can be easily overlooked. The first photo of a field on the lower slopes of a volcano in La Palma is a good example of this. There is a temptation to look to the trees for help, and they do offer some, but better help can be found much closer as the second picture shows. The southern side of these flowers is opening up before any other side. When seen close up like this it is hard to miss, but we all walk past clues like this everyday and our eyes are so often drawn elsewhere. 
