Botany is sexy. To prove it, Bernard and Cerinthe by Linda France has won the National Poetry Competition in the UK.

The Guardian reports the poet saying:

It was the end of August and there was a plant I’d never seen before – Cerinthe major Purpurascens – and I was just astonished by it. It’s a very intense blue and the leaves are a silvery green … they’re quite thick, almost waxy, fleshy. That’s one of the things I’m drawn to about plants – they express this tremendous ‘otherness’, but they just stay there and let you respond to them, unlike a bird or animal that disappears. A plant remains for you to give your attention to.

You can read the poem, or hear Linda France recite it at the National Poetry Society’s page.

You can also read more about her work at Botanical: Poetry and Plants.

Image

Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’ by gnomicscience / Flickr. This image licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc licence.