Country diary: You think you’ve seen it all, then you buy a UV torch | Plants

I blame my fellow diarist Kate Blincoe. Recently she extolled joy UV lampWhich is why I bought one, became addicted and now see the world in a whole new way.

Ultraviolet is short-wavelength, high-energy light that is usually undetectable by the human eye, but it is also harmful to many forms of life. In the late Proterozoic, most life flourished only under water, until a protective UV shield – the ozone layer – formed at an altitude of 15 to 30 km above our heads.

When a UV lamp is aimed at plants and animals after dark, its photons interact at the molecular level, causing light to be re-emitted at lower energy but in the visible spectrum. Essentially, objects fluoresce and the beam transforms everyday parts of our world into baroque psychedelia. For example, a sandstone wall turns into a dull red sheet (algae) speckled with shiny lime (any patches of lichen).

Photography requires combining before and after images so that any viewer can appreciate the resulting transformations. Most wondrous is what happens to the golden saxifrage, a plant that blankets the shores of Lightwood in shining pastures of pure green until a torch turns them into puddles of carmine confetti scattered across the night floor.

My favorite part is looking at the mosses in the old quarry where there is a patch of spiny bog moss. During the day it is a magnificent cushion of the freshest greenery, the central flower of each plant fringed by seven or eight side shoots that hang around the head like huge vegetative spiders. Look at it under UV light and the entire body turns into a dancing troupe of lavender, aquamarine, turquoise, purple or pink.

Upon receiving these images, a friend asked, “But what does this mean?” Perhaps Henry David Thoreau said it best when he witnessed a rainbow in December 1855. He reflected that what we see is only a fraction of the world’s possible brilliance, and that every drop of rain during a storm has the potential to become a rainbow in itself. “Beauty and music,” Thoreau wrote, “are not mere features and exceptions. This is the rule and character [of life]” The UV lamp simply offers you a new look at the same old sacred wonder.