If you’re lucky you might still see in some sheltered spot around the village, lingering into winter, the cheerful Herb Robert, a member of the crane’s bill family.  You’ll be familiar with its five bright pink petals and it’s so widespread that there are over a hundred folk names for it, including robin’s eye, stinking bob, red shanks, fox geranium, granny thread the needle, candlesticks, kiss-me-love-at-the-garden-gate, red robin, dragon’s blood, bachelor’s butons, and dolly’s nightcap.

Robert Bridges mentions it in his long poem, The Idle Flowers which reads like an ecological Cook’s Tour of the English countryside.  This is how it begins:

I have sown upon the fields
Eyebright and Pimpernel,
And Pansy and Poppy-seed
Ripen’d and scatter’d well,
And silver Lady-smock
The meads with light to fill,
Cowslip and Buttercup,
Daisy and Daffodil;

…

High on the downs so bare,
Where thou dost love to climb,
Pink Thrift and Milkwort are,
Lotus and scented Thyme;
And in the shady lanes
Bold Arum’s hood of green,
Herb Robert, Violet,
Starwort and Celandine;

…

And ends:

Let Oak and Ash grow strong,
Let Beech her branches spread;
Let Grass and Barley throng
And waving Wheat for bread;

Be share and sickle bright
To labour at all hours;
For thee and thy delight
I have made the idle flowers.
But now ’tis Winter, child,
And bitter northwinds blow,
The ways are wet and wild,
The land is laid in snow.