Spot the Frippet: something viatical.

Viatical means to do with roads and journeys, and it also describes plants that grow by a roadside.

What will you find?

It'll often be plants that thrive in an atmosphere a little warmer than the surrounding countryside, and in soil a little less fertile (because the verges are very often made up of the stuff that was dug out to make the road). Quite often the plants will be wanderers, their seeds brought along the road in the slipstream of lorries, or perhaps unintentionally planted by picnickers.

What will you find?

Whatever it is, it'll be an immigrant, or at least a survivor, and worthy of study and respect.

Though not, necessarily, nurturing.


photo by Trish Steel

Spot the Frippet: something viatical. The Latin word viāticus means belonging to a journey.

A viatical settlement happens when a company buys the life-insurance of a terminally ill person.