The fairest floo-er

Fancy using binoculars to find flowers. The Scottish Primrose is so tiny that its five petals, together, are smaller than my smallest fingernail. Seeing them is an occasion as the species is rare and confined to the north coast of Scotland and Orkney. A lass I met on Papa Westray showed me where they were, on an exposed sea-facing hill a short distance from the sea-cliffs. Once we’d seen one we could see several, though not easily with the naked eye, so we lay on the hill taking turns with my binoculars, exclaiming at the numbers of them hidden in the grass. Then a foreign man with a large hat appeared at our feet. I asked him if he wanted to see the flowers through my binoculars and he declined, saying he was looking for puffins, and puffins only. [Puffins don’t stray far from the sea-cliffs, and during the day they’re fishing.] ‘Don’t think you’ll find them up here,’ I said, ‘so mind the floo-ers’!