Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Shepherd’s Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)

Shepherd’s Purse is one of those straggly  white-flowered weeds that grow at the bottom of walls, or in amongst the roots of city trees. It gets its name from its seed-pods, which are shaped like the leather pouches carried in medieval times, hung by draw-strings from the belt. The name also gives a clue to the length of time that it has been in the UK, for this little plant is a long way from home. It originated in Eastern Europe and Asia minor, but has been with us for a long time – it is considered to be an archaeophyte in the UK, which means that it came here prior to 1492. Plants which came along after this date are known as neophytes.

Like many so-called ‘weeds’, Shepherd’s Purse is an annual, and flowers almost all year round, the seed scattering far and wide from those heart-shaped seed pouches.

Shepherd’s Purse Seedhead

There can be several generations of Shepherd’s Purse in a year, and the seeds can also survive for a long time in the soil, making it an ideal plant for an urban environment. When conditions are right, it will proliferate. When times are hard, the seeds will wait for better times to arrive. Once you have noticed Shepherd’s Purse, you will see it everywhere, going about its modest business without any ostentation. Yet, it has been used in a variety of ways all over the world.

Shepherd’s Purse (the long straggly plant with the white flowers)

Shepherd’s Purse is a member of the cabbage family, and in many parts of the world it is actively grown as a food plant. It is increasing in popularity in this country as a foraged addition to salads, and in Japan is part of a ceremonial barley and rice gruel that is eaten on January 7th (for more details, have a look here). Although in cities it rarely reaches more than a few inches high, in rich soil, or when cultivated, it can grow into a more substantial plant, up to two feet high, with bigger, juicier leaves.

Shepherd’s Purse has also been used medicinally – a tea made from the plant is described as a ‘sovereign remedy’ against haemorrhage, especially of the kidneys. In Germany, the plant has been approved for use against nose-bleeds, pre-menstrual syndrome, wounds and burns. During the First World War, the herb was used in Germany to stop bleeding after other, more conventional remedies became unavailable.

Finally, the seeds of the plant are much loved by small birds, and I have watched sparrows hopping along the wall at the end of my street, pecking up the little ‘purses’.

This inoffensive, useful little plant is all around us, and yet, we have no respect whatsoever for it. This is the scene that greeted me a few days ago when I wandered up to the High Street:

Dying Shepherd’s Purse and other ‘weeds’

Someone had decided to spray all the little weeds growing at the foot of the wall beside Kentucky Fried Chicken. I’m not sure whether it’s the council, or the staff from KFC. I suspect the former – Barnet Council ‘gardeners’ have a zero-tolerance policy towards anything that isn’t a rose bush or a petunia. All these micro-habitats gone. All those seeds poisoned. I just hope that the sparrows have the sense not to eat them.

My one consolation is that I doubt it will be long before the Shepherd’s Purse is back. There will be seeds in the soil, just waiting for the toxins to die down. In the battle between man and plant, my money is always on the plant.

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Herb-Robert (Geramium robertianum)

Herb-Robert (named after a medieval monk who used it as part of his medicine chest)  is a kind of geranium or cranesbill, pretty enough to be included in the Royal Horticultural Society’s list of plants to buy. It is a low-growing, delicate plant, with a mass of small five-petalled pink flowers. As it matures, the stems turn deepest scarlet, which may give rise to one of its many vernacular names, Red Robin. It is a native of the UK, and is yet another urban plant that, in other habitats, prefers shingle and poor soil.

In the US, it is known as Stinky Bob, for a reason that will become apparent as soon as you pick off a leaf and rub it between your fingers. The smell has been described, variously, as ‘mousy’, and ‘like rubber tyres’. I lean towards the second interpretation personally, and if you have never had the Herb-Robert perfume experience, I recommend it – once you have smelt that very particular odour, you will never forget it.

As I surveyed the information available on the internet, two things became apparent. Firstly, this plant has become something of an invasive nuisance in Australia and North America, to which it was no doubt introduced by homesick English gardeners. In Washington State, for example, it is classified as a ‘noxious and invasive weed’. There are reports of trials of herbicides applied with a ‘CO2-pressurized backpack sprayer with a 5 -nozzle boom’. Not surprisingly, the Herb-Robert mortality rate was reported as ‘100%’. No mention is made of any other plants or creatures unfortunate enough to have been sharing the space.

Secondly, Herb-Robert tea is often cited as a cure for everything from cancer to Parkinson’s Disease.  Traditionally, Herb-Robert was used to cure toothache and nosebleeds, and the leaves, rubbed on the skin, are said to deter mosquitoes. The crushed leaves are also used as a way of keeping deer and rabbits away from crops. However, there are stories, from all over the world, of people using this plant to treat tumours. The scientific reason given is that Herb-Robert is a good source of organic Germanium, an element which helps the oxygen uptake in the body. The American Cancer Society suggests that there is no evidence to support this, and that Germanium can be toxic, though they do say that the levels in plants are not normally high enough to cause any harm.

As in all things, this is not a clear-cut situation. Maybe using Herb-Robert could be dangerous: the chemicals in plants are just as ‘real’ as the ones that are used in chemotherapy. Just because something is ‘natural’ doesn’t mean that it will be less efficacious, or less toxic, than something that comes out of a hospital syringe. But so many of the substances that we now use as medicines came originally from plants: aspirin from the willow and digitalis from foxgloves are just two examples. Plus, there is now so much  money tied up in the drugs industry that the thought of people using something cheap and uncontrolled to treat themselves may well give the corporate world a collective nervous breakdown.  Who is to say that there is not something in this little pink plant which is efficacious? It certainly made me look at it with a new curiosity and respect.

Herb-Robert from the Flora Batava of Jan Kops (1765-1849)

A London Plane tree on East Finchley High Street

It has been estimated that over 50% of the street trees in the capital are London Plane trees. Robust, pollution resistant and able to survive the root compaction that occurs under roads and pavements, they go largely unnoticed, in spite of their enormous size – the largest trees are over 130 feet tall, with trunks ten feet in circumference. They have grown to such a size slowly – they can live to for over two hundred years (Kew has one which was planted in the 1770’s). Many now have an uncomfortably cramped and oversized appearance, like a flamingo in a bird cage.

The bark of the London Plane is one of the reasons for its ability to survive the toxins that it encounters from diesel fumes and atmospheric pollution. The bark of the tree is shed regularly, taking the poison with it,  and this leaves the trunk with a paint-by-numbers look – organic shapes of beige and green grey and khaki.

London Plane bark

I remember the one and only field trip that we did when I was in primary school. Our class, a bunch of scalliwags and urchins, went  across the road to West Ham Park in the East End of London. We were looking at the trees to see whereabouts on the trunk the green algae grew most thickly. After compiling our notes, it was clear that the algae much preferred the north side, and it was the first time that I ever realised that nature was not only interesting, but helpful. Imagine my delight when I looked at the Plane trees on the High Street and saw that exactly the same was true, nearly forty-five years later. Algae is not fond of direct sunlight, and so prefers the shadier side of life, as does moss. The bark above is on the north side of a tree. The picture below shows the south side of the same tree:

South Side of the tree

Or, for another comparison:

North facing side of the trunk

South side of the same tree

You could find your way by these trees, the green sheen on only one side showing you your true north. There are so many forgotten ways of wayfaring, so many natural maps. Just knowing that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west can help. Knowing that buttercups grow in the wettest places can save you from soaking your plimsolls. Knowing that horseradish grows in pasture grazed by horses can give you an insight into who might possibly be lurking just behind that hedge.

Nature gives us a thousand words to read, but we are mostly illiterate. All that I’ve learned, I’ve learned from those who went before me, my parents and grandmother, and from looking carefully, and from reading books. I know a tiny fragment of what there is to know, but when I find something out I squirrel it away. You never know when it’s going to be useful.

On the other side of the crossroads, the Plane trees have been pollarded.

Pollarded Tree

Young men in safety harnesses pulled themselves up to the top branches and attacked all the little branchlets with a chainsaw a few months ago. To start with, the trees looked ugly and angry, the ends of their branches clenched into fists, like giants performing a war dance. Now, long twigs are starting to appear like thin fingers, and soon there will be leaves, although London plane trees are late to leaf.

These trees have been pollarded every couple of years, for their entire lives. The belief is that limiting the crown will limit the spread of the roots, because this is what the council fears – that the roots will infiltrate their million little rootlets into sewers and into the conduits of telephone lines and electricity cables. They also fear that, uncorrected, the branches will crash down onto passing cars, or take out the windows of double-decker buses. However, the trees are benevolent and respond to their regular mutilation by growing taller and leafier with each passing year.

Plane trees are a blessing in the summer. Their heavy shade cools those who sit underneath them. Trees can reduce the temperature in urban areas by several degrees, simply because they transpire – they pump water vapour into the atmosphere which acts to cool the air.

However, they are also something of an ecological desert. They are not native to the UK, being a hybrid of an American and an Asian plane tree, and so, although crows and squirrels may make an occasional nest or drey in their topmost branches, although woodpigeons may court amongst the new spring leaves, they have few creatures that actually depend on them. Compared to an oak, or an aspen, or an elm, they are sterile – big, leafy, predictable but, in all truth, a little dull.

The London Plane next to East Finchley Station

Some councils have started to replace the Plane trees, as they die, with other species. There are a lot of members of the cherry family, for example, lots of rowan trees. These are much daintier and smaller proportioned, with blossom in the spring, and berries for the birds. It is hard to disagree with the choice, but they are not as hefty as the trees that they replace, and will not provide the same degree of shade and cooling. Plus, history will tell whether they will have the Plane tree’s remarkable resilience. Climate change is making these considerations more and more important.

The big disadvantage of the London Plane is its seeds.

Fruit of the London Plane Tree – thanks to InnocenceIsDeath for the photo

The tree  produces spiky seed heads for much of the year, which look like the mace of a medieval knight. The seed heads burst open to reveal thousands of tiny fine seeds, which are implicated in hay fever and asthma. However, in a city as polluted as London (the official air pollution rating for the first part of this week is ten, as high as it can go) it’s always difficult to ascertain whether the reason that people are coughing and wheezing is the pollen or the particulates in the air.

So, the London Plane is a great whale of a tree, massive and mighty. Some of the trees on East Finchley High Street will have been there when it wasn’t cars coming up the hill but horse-drawn coaches, when there was a pig market behind the pub, when an incendiary bomb landed on Temple Road and killed fifty people. We are such temporary creatures, compared to trees.