When Jesus told us to consider the lilies, chances are he was referring not to the variety of hothouse flowers, but simple arable weeds – the flowers of the field. These days you’d be hard pushed to find any of Jesus’ weeds. Modern farming has all but banished them, like Plato once banished the poets from The Republic. Here and there though, you can still find them lingering, in raggedy margins and quiet corners beyond the crop sprayer’s reach. Like the corn marigolds I found last week.