BOTANISING WITH CLARENCE BICKNELL | BOTANICOOL

The nineteenth century was a time when scientists and scholars tamed nature and created order out of chaos; a time of missionaries and rest cures and shining light into the darkness of the past. One man who made his mark on our region in particular was Clarence Bicknell.

He is best known for his detective work cataloguing the prehistoric rock engravings of the Vallée des Merveilles (Valley of Wonders), high in the mountains behind Nice. These mysterious symbols were engraved on beautifully coloured rocks around what is thought to have been a sacred mountain – though nobody knows for sure.

BOTANISING WITH CLARENCE BICKNELL | BOTANICOOL

However, Clarence learned his classification skills in a different arena: botany. Bicknell, the thirteenth child of a wealthy whale-oil magnate from London, came to the Riviera in 1878 to take up the post of chaplain to the expatriates at Bordighera, 50 kilometres from Nice. The sleepy Italian village was a popular colony for rich sufferers of ‘consumption’ and in the winter season had a population that was about 50 per cent British. Less than a year later he suffered a crisis of faith and never wore a dog collar again, but Bordighera suited Bicknell, and he stayed. He was becoming a reputed botanist and botanic artist, and was ranging ever higher into the verdant mountains behind the coast discovering rare and unknown plants.

Thanks to its geography, the region behind Nice is now recognised as a haven for wild plants. Sitting at the confluence of different climatic and geological influences, and with altitudes ranging from sea level to over 3,000m, it has an astounding range of habitats.

The Mercantour range of mountains is known to have the greatest biodiversity in France, with more than 2,000 species of plants; 10 per cent of them are considered rare and there are 30 endemic species found nowhere else. Included in those are many species of orchids, and saxifraga florulenta, a hardy Alpine plant that clings to cracks in rock faces and flowers only once in its lifetime.

The Mercantour was one of the first areas in France to be classified as a national park. At its heart are the valleys of rock engravings so associated with Clarence Bicknell. Because this huge area is now protected, much of the scenery and plant life are just as it would have been 150 years ago. This was the area Bicknell grew to love.

Over the course of many years, he travelled into the mountains to collect and draw plant specimens, and corresponded with other experts to develop a taxonomy of the abundant plant life he found. In 1885 he published Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Riviera and Neighbouring Mountains, filled with delicate, beautiful drawings of local plants.

This botanical background meant that, when he did find the rock engravings, he was ideally trained to analyse them. The symbols joined botany as his life’s obsession. In 1906 he built a villa in an upland meadow nearer the engravings, and filled it with frescos and paintings of plants. He died there in 1918.

Botanicool is our homage to the beautiful flora of the mountains we ride in near our home in Nice. Check out the Botanicool collection here. The Museo Clarence Bicknell at Bordighera holds a large collection of his botanical drawings and rubbings, as well thousands of books from his library. You can buy prints of Clarence's alpine flowers from the Casa Fontanalba Visitors' Book from his family's association here.

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