Country diary: Wenlock Edge

Garden bumblebee
A bumblebee inspects a flower Ben Darvill/Bumblebee Conservation Trust

I could see the flower through the clear pane in the old gas-bill envelope which landed on my doormat. The scribbled note on the back said it was sainfoin. Like a tiny pink lupin with vetch-like pinnate leaves, this pea relative is said to have been introduced from France, where it was called "St Foyn" in the 17th century. As a fodder crop, sainfoin was so nourishing to cattle it was called "holy hay" – "sain" meaning sound or healthy and "foin" meaning hay. Opening the envelope and taking out the flower was to open a history of this countryside which has largely been lost. The sainfoin became an emblem of those traditional flower-rich hay meadows which once covered much of this landscape. Only in relict or protected fields, strips of roadside verge and odd corners where the grass has not been "improved" by chemical fertiliser and herbicide do the hay flowers survive.

In these hot June days, meadow brown and ringlet butterflies, together with six-spot burnet moths, bumblebees and solitary bees and hoverflies, visit the pea family plants of bird's-foot trefoils, melilots, medicks, vetches and clovers. Once staples of livestock diet and supporting a wide range of insects too, these beautiful flowers of pink, blue, yellow and white tell a story of agricultural experiment and abandoned ideas. Many of the plant species in fodder crops were introduced from Europe or other parts of the world. Varieties were selected from native and introduced species for specific qualities or adaptation to specific soils; they hang on in a very changed world.

As I wander the places where these flowers grow, it seems to me that the plants that once fed animals which then fed people have still got an important role in our lives – it's not just bodies that need nourishment. I track down the holy hay to the edge of a copse where someone long ago chucked some sainfoin seeds down for their cows, not knowing that 300 years later we would value the flowers like rare jewels, a living vernacular treasure.