Dunnet Bay Distillers hosts exhibition in honour of man who rediscovered 'extinct' plant in Thurso
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A new north coast exhibition in honour of a man who rediscovered a plant once thought extinct in Britain opens tomorrow.
Dunnet Bay Distillers is hosting its 2022/2023 winter exhibition, Holy Grass Hero: The Life of Robert Dick.
Northern Holy Grass – scientific name: Hierochloe borealis, later renamed Hierochloe odorata – was rediscovered growing on the banks of the Thurso River by Robert Dick (1811–1866), a Thurso-based baker, botanist, and amateur natural historian.
In the Middle Ages, before churches in the British Isles had stone or wooden floors, they just had compacted earth floors and, with the local climate, compacted earth floors, rain, and wet feet equalled mud floors!
To soak up the mud, a grass which grew abundantly in the British Isles during the Middle Ages was strewn on church floors. However, when people stood on the grass it gave off a vanilla incense fragrance. These factors led to the common name for Hierochloe borealis – Holy Grass.
In the 1750s, scientists removed Holy Grass from the list of British flora, declaring it extinct.
It was reintroduced after publication in 1854 of a scientific paper by Robert Dick about his rediscovery of Northern Holy Grass. Robert Dick subsequently received requests from other botanists for Northern Holy Grass specimens, in return for which they would send him plants he could not obtain in Caithness.
Robert Dick added these specimens to his herbarium collection, now housed in the North Coast Visitor Centre in Thurso.
Dunnet Bay Distillers says its Holy Grass Vodka, which takes the plant rediscovered by Robert Dick in Thurso as its "hero botanical", is a fitting legacy to an eccentric Victorian era polymath who was a scientific genius and local hero.
The artwork featured in the exhibition is inspired by and connected to the life and work of Robert Dick. The artists whose work is on display have interpreted this in a variety of diverse ways including the plants that grow in Caithness, and the landscape of Caithness which inspired Robert Dick to collect geological specimens, fossils, insects and herbarium specimens.
The exhibition, which is being held at the Visitor Centre at Dunnet Bay Distillery, opens to the public on Friday, December 2 and runs until March 25, 2023. It will be open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm.
