Plants Are Allowed Lives Apart From The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

Summary: Plants are allowed lives apart from The Winter Ghosts, historical fiction novel by Kate Mosse about Good Christians in 14th-century southwestern France.

"God talks to human beings through many vectors: through each other, through organized religion, through the great books of those religions, through wise people, through art and music and literature and poetry, but nowhere with such detail and grace and color and joy as through creation. When we destroy a species, when we destroy a special place, we're diminishing our capacity to sense the divine, understand who God is and what our own potential is." Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., April 19, 2023, Boston Park Plaza Hotel, Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts.

“And there’s many people out there who want us to move to the next planet already and I’m like, hang on, let’s not give up on this planet yet," William, Prince of Wales, July 31, 2023, Sorted Food food truck, London, England, United Kingdom.

Blue-flowering flax (Linum narbonense) always adds beautiful blue to Ax, Foix, Tarason and Toulouse areas of southwest France; illustration in blue-flowering flax, also known as French flax (Linum narbonense), drawn and engraved from living specimen by English engraver and botanical illustrator William Clark in Richard Morris, Flora Conspicua (1826), Plate 14: Biodiversity Heritage Library (BioDivLibrary), Public Domain, via Flickr

Plants are allowed lives apart from The Winter Ghosts, historical fiction novel by Kate Mosse about Good Christians, acknowledged as Albigensians and Cathars (from Greek καθαροί, “pure ones”), in 14th-century southwest France.

Les châteaux cathares (from French les châteaux cathares, “the castles cathar”) bore wild plants in hilly, mountaintop woodlands bordered by bird- and livestock-bearing cultivated crop lands. Ax-, Foix-, Tarascon-, Toulouse-area farms contain as comestible-product woody plants olive trees (Olea europaea) even as cuisine-caused cultivation and cultivation-caused cuisine perhaps configure other comestible-product trees. They perhaps domicile respectively cassis drink-, coffee drink-, dessert-, jam-delivering blackcurrant (Ribes nigrum), coffee (Coffea arabica), medlar (Mespilus germanica) and plum (Prunus brigantina, Prunus domestica) trees.

Farm, field, woodland expanses entertain black- and silver-marked silver birch (Betula pendula), box (Buxus sempervirens), fir (Abies spp), laurel (Prunus nobilis?) and oak (Quercus spp) trees.

Ax-, Foix-, Tarascon-, Toulouse-area farms, fields, woodlands feature native purple-leaved copper beech (Fagus sylvatica purpurea), native silver-barked plane (Platanus orientalis), non-native black pine (Pinus thunbergii) trees.

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Cathar-guided grounds perhaps guard non-native rattan palm (Calamus rotang) for cane seats that native reed (Poales order) and willow (Salix spp) generate as cane-like wickered weaving. They have white wine-honing green, red wine-honing red grapevines (Vitis sylvestris, V. vinifera) even as they perhaps house champagne-honing Chardonnay, Meunier, Pinot noir varieties (V. vinifera). They include aniseed (Pimpinella anisum) for pastis (from Occitan pastis, “mashed”) liqueur-making and barley (Hordeum vulgare) for bread- and cake-making and for malt-grinding chicory (Cichorium intybus).

Barley and wheat (Triticum spp) plants journey as respective brown-grained and white-floured ingredients in breakfast breads and crumbled cakes in The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse.

Broom (Genisteae tribe) non-woody and woody plants perhaps kindle pickled or raw flower-bud and flower salads even as cigarettes perhaps kindle keeping tobacco (Nicotiana spp) plants.

Dyed cotton, albeit blue not broom plant-died yellow, perhaps links to non-native cotton (Gossypium arboretum?) plants lodged in Ax-, Foix-, Tarascon-, Toulouse-area farm and field lands. Broom plants perhaps manage ornamentally as landscape architecture alongside ground-maintaining mosses (Bryophyta division) and tree trunk-maintaining lichens (crustose, foliose, fruticose partners of Ascomycota and Basidiomycota fungi). They number among the yellow niches that nudge other meadow- and woodland-flowering non-woody plants that nestle among the deep green notes of farm-, field-, mountain-healthy grasses.

Cathar culture-organized Ax-, Foix-, Tarascon-, Toulouse-area farms, fields, woodlands offer flowering plants and green grasses soil food web-optimized occupancies in The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse.

Farmed places possess as green, green-white plants beans, cabbages and leeks even as permanent fields present as brown plants rushes and green plants grasses and reeds.

Some poppies (Papaver spp) qualify as auburn red-flowering plants even as all sunflowers (Helianthus spp) quarter brown like rushes, green like grasses and yellow like broom. Regional plants regale their rural residences with rosy realizations as pink roses even as they reward them with pink and white results with their flowering geraniums. Blue and pink shades settle in as soon as meadow plants send forth their flowers even as mountain plants show off blue, pink and yellow flowers.

Blue-flowering flax plants in The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse, copper beeches-, jack pines-, planetrees-, silver birches-like through thoroughest common name, transmit their taxonomy, Linum narbonense.

Blue-flowering flax (Linum narbonense) aestheticizes as a blue beauty Cathar culture-archived areas of southwest France; illustration of blue-flowering flax, also known as Narbonne flax (Linum narbonense), drawn by Margaret Lace Roscoe and engraved by Robert Havell Jr., in Mrs. Edward Roscoe, Floral Illustrations of the Seasons (1831); Plate 32: Biodiversity Heritage Library (BioDivLibrary), Public Domain, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Blue-flowering flax (Linum narbonense) always adds beautiful blue to Ax, Foix, Tarason and Toulouse areas of southwest France; illustration in blue-flowering flax, also known as French flax (Linum narbonense), drawn and engraved from living specimen by English engraver and botanical illustrator William Clark in Richard Morris, Flora Conspicua (1826), Plate 14: Biodiversity Heritage Library (BioDivLibrary), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/6046338205; Not in copyright, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/7372062; CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flora_conspicua_(Pl._14)_(6046338205).jpg

Blue-flowering flax (Linum narbonense) aestheticizes as a blue beauty Cathar culture-archived areas of southwest France; illustration of blue-flowering flax, also known as Narbonne flax (Linum narbonense), drawn by Margaret Lace Roscoe and engraved by Robert Havell Jr., in Mrs. Edward Roscoe, Floral Illustrations of the Seasons (1831); Plate 32: Biodiversity Heritage Library (BioDivLibrary), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/61021753@N02/6049530564/; Not in cop,right, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/7436338; CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Floral_illustrations_of_the_seasons_(Plate_32)_(6049530564).jpg

For further information:

Dictionnaire de l’Occitan Médiéval. DOM en ligne. Munich, Germany: Bavarian Academy of Sciences..
Available @ https://dom-en-ligne.de/dom.php?lhid=4dqN83calp4xbiz5Nsx8Wu

Lepage, Denis. 2024. Avibase – Bird Checklists of the World France.” Avibase – The World Bird Database > Checklists > Avibase – Bird Checklists of the World > Europe > France.
Available @ https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=FR

Marriner, Derdriu. 2 February 2024. "Brian Gallagher Adds Graphic Art to The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2024/02/brian-gallagher-adds-graphic-art-to.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 26 January 2024. "Kate Mosse Adds A Fictitious Place to Real Places in The Winter Ghosts." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2024/01/kate-mosse-adds-fictitious-place-to.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 19 January 2024. "Kate Mosse Assembles Fictitious and Real People in The Winter Ghosts." Earth and Space News. Friday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2024/01/kate-mosse-assembles-fictitious-and.html

Mosse, Kate. October 2009. The Winter Ghosts. London UK: Orion Publishing Group.