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…..

Just when everything else is looking a little exhausted, White Dead-nettle is coming into flower. Was there ever a ‘weed’ with such pure white blossoms, or such tender green foliage? I am not surprised that all manner of Dead-nettles are being bred as garden flowers – here, for example, is Lamium maculatum ‘Roseum’…

Here is Lamium maculatum ‘Beacon Silver’….

and, finally, here is a white variant.

One reason for the growing popularity of Dead-nettle variants is that they are excellent ground cover in shady areas – few plants can survive in dry shade, but this is one family that will often thrive in these conditions. I do wonder, though, if the showier varieties have the delicate elegance of the wild plant. Sometimes, the result of breeding for appearance is the loss of value to wildlife – complicated flowers can make the nectar and pollen less accessible to pollinating insects, and sometimes the amount and quality of the food itself is reduced. However, my good friend Jo who has a pink Lamium variety in her garden tells me that it is very popular with bees, so this is not always the case.

White Dead-nettle is so attractive to bees that an alternative name is ‘Bee Nettle’. As it blooms right into the heart of the winter, it is invaluable for those mild days when hibernating queen bees pop out to top up their nectar stores. Only a heavy bee is able to open the flower in order to get to the food, so this seems to be a case of convergent evolution, where the shape of the plant has evolved to fit one particular group of pollinators.

Bees are not the only creatures who appreciate White Dead-nettle – it has been used by humans too, both as food (the young leaves can form part of a salad), and has been used for the treatment of catarrh and dropsy.

The name ‘Dead-nettle’ refers to the fact that this plant, although its leaves superficially resemble those of the Stinging Nettle, does not sting. However, as it often grows amongst Stinging Nettles, White Dead-nettle may benefit from the wide berth that its more assertive relative is given by some grazing animals and insect pests.

An alternative name for White Dead-nettle is ‘Archangel’. This is said to be because it was said to first come into flower on 8th May, St Michael’s day. However, I can’t help but think that it is because of the glowing white of its flowers, and their ethereal shape. Of all the ‘weeds’ that I’ve reported on so far, this one feels to me like the most angelic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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…..

It is always a pleasure to welcome a representative of  a new plant family to The Wednesday Weed. This week’s star is Cleavers, also known to me as Goosegrass and, when I lived in Dundee, as Sticky Willie. I found it growing in a neglected but fruitful flower bed at the top of Park Hall Road, and was delighted to find that it was in flower in the middle of November.

Cleavers is a member of the Bedstraw family, which includes a host of small-flowered scrambling plants. The name comes from the medieval use of the plants as bedding material, and Cleavers was used as part of the mixture because the tiny hooks that cover the plant held the contents together, ensuring that the ‘mattress’ thus created didn’t become too lumpy and bumpy.

As a child, I remember that I delighted in attaching this plant to my long-suffering brother when he wasn’t looking. The sticking-power of this plant is very satisfying, especially if the victim is wearing a woolly jumper or a duffle coat. Indeed, I would sometimes manage to cover my sibling in so much Cleavers that from the back it looked as if Birnam Wood was once again on its way to Dunsinane. Forty-five years later, I am still waiting for the retribution that will surely come my way for such silliness.

Cleavers is a plant of many, many uses.  When I was in Scotland, we would gather armfuls of Goosegrass to feed to the ducks, geese and chicken that we raised on a city farm. And in Plants Britannica, Richard Mabey describes how a combination of nettles and Herriff (yet another name for Cleavers) was used to make a beverage that resembled ginger beer.

Mabey also relates how the fruits of Cleavers were used by the lacemakers of Bedfordshire to cover the pinheads on their lacemaking cushions.

In spite of its hairiness, Cleavers is said to be edible if cooked before the flowers appear. But even more astonishing is the fact that Cleavers is in the same family (Rubiaceae) as the coffee plant, and the fruits can be used as a coffee substitute, though I suspect that one would need an awful lot to knock up an espresso.

Cleavers has been used for a host of medicinal uses: it has been a lymphatic tonic, a poultice for leg ulcers and a mild sedative. Its hairy stems have been used as a sieve for milk into recent times in Sweden. And its roots can be used to produce a red dye – according to the Plant Lives website, when birds eat the root of Cleavers, their bones are turned red.

I have been amazed by the sheer variety of ways that this modest little ‘weed’ has been used. Today, I wonder if city children even know that they can use it to torment their brothers and sisters. We are becoming more and more detached from the world around us, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The plants are still here, just waiting to be noticed.

 

 

 

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…..

When I first decided to write the Wednesday Weed, I must confess that I had not given much thought to what would happen in winter, when very few plants are flowering, and many have disappeared altogether. Today, I walked around Coldfall Wood with a heavy heart, looking at the Brambles  and the Ivy   that I have already written about, and wondering what I would find that would be interesting. In some desperation, I slipped along the muddy path into the Cemetery  and realised that there was enough inspiration here for the whole of the winter and beyond.

Tumbling over one of the gravestones was a shrub of Sweetbriar (Rosa rubiginosa). It had no flowers, and barely any foliage, and yet the hips were characteristic – they have very long sepals (the dangly bits at the bottom of the fruit), and when viewed from below, the hips look a little like a cone-headed alien parachuting to the ground.

According to Harrap’s Wild Flowers, there are glands on the stems and leaves which give off a ‘delicious apple-and-cinnamon scent’. How I wished I’d thought to test this out! I will make a return visit soon to see if the plant retains its perfume this late in the year.

Sweetbriar flowers in June and July, and its blossoms are much pinker than those of the commoner Dog Rose.

Sweetbriar is the Eglantine of Shakespeare and other early poets, who often contrasted its sweetness with the sharpness of its thorns, as in this poem by Richard Herrick (1591 – 1674).

The Bleeding Hand

From this bleeding hand of mine,
Take this sprig of Eglantine:
Which, though sweet unto your smell,
Yet the fretful briar will tell,
He who plucks the sweets, shall prove
Many thorns to be in love.

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, however,  the plant is all drowsy seductiveness:

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

When I was growing up, rose hips, such as those from the Sweetbriar, were a valuable source of vitamin C, and I remember looking forward to my daily spoonful of Delrosa Rose Hip Syrup. Since the 1930’s it had been known that a cup of Rose Hip pulp had more vitamin C than 40 oranges, and during the Second World War, when citrus fruits were difficult to come by, the Ministry of Health instigated a scheme for voluntary collection of the hips. These were turned into syrup, and distributed to small children. Collection continued until the 1950’s, and the syrup was considered a valuable dietary supplement for many years. Plus, unlike many such products, it was delicious. If you would like to learn more (including how to make your own Rose Hip Syrup), I can recommend the Wartime Recipes website – a real delight. Who could resist Patriotic Pudding (key ingredients potato, fat and carrot?)

The one thing that slightly concerns me about finding Sweetbriar in the cemetery is that it shouldn’t really be here. It tends to be a plant of chalky soils, and is not common anywhere. So, could it be that it was planted by a mourner, wanting to honour a loved one by surrounding them with its scent and its pretty flowers? Whatever the reason, its bright hips have brought back a lot of memories for me this morning, and have reminded me that although there is not the abundance of plant activity in autumn and winter that there is in the warmer seasons, there is still lots to observe, if I take the time to notice.

 

When I was a little girl, we used to go to visit my Auntie Mary, who lived in a Home in Chingford. Auntie Mary had a learning disability, which my great-grandmother always swore was the result of Mary hitting her head on a kerbstone when she was a child, but by the time that I knew her, she was in her seventies.  The Home was a grand house in its own grounds, but the huge, high-ceilinged rooms always had a faint whiff of boiled cabbage and urine about them. Auntie Mary was a cheerful soul, who loved nothing better than playing ‘Banker’, a card game which involved cutting the pack into piles, and betting on which one would  reveal the highest card when turned over. It could go on for hours.  We would play for pennies, and she almost always won, because in spite of her challenges, Auntie Mary always knew exactly how many coins she had, and had an unerring instinct for which was the winning pile. When she was a young girl and was sent out to do the errands, she always knew when people were trying to cheat her, even though she was able to do little about it.

My younger brother and I loved Auntie Mary, with her institutional hair cut and toothless grin, but the place itself scared us. We didn’t understand why someone was always screaming, or why there was an old lady sitting in an armchair, a white strand of spittle dangling from the corner of her mouth. And when things got too much, Dad would take us outside. In the grounds was the most magnificent Horse Chestnut tree. In the winter, there would be conkers. In the summer, the tree would be full of blossom, looking like a Christmas tree covered in candles.

Poor Auntie Mary, who never asked for a single thing out of life except for the occasional card game and a hug from my father (who she doted on), died unexpectedly following complications from a cataract operation. I never see a Horse Chestnut tree without thinking of her, and so I have been horrified at the state of many of the Horse Chestnut trees that I’ve observed over the past few years. Here, for example, is one that grows just inside Coldfall Wood in East Finchley.

The leaves of the tree have not just turned brown, they have turned to a crisp. Furthermore, although we are now in November, this has been happening for months. Let’s have a closer look at the leaves of another Horse Chestnut that I found further into the wood:

Horse Chestnut trees are under siege from several directions. The first is via a fungus called Guignardia aesculi, which was first reported in 1935. It first appears in June, and causes blotches which are often outlined in yellow, as in the leaves above. However, the trees have largely learned to live with this fungus. The real problem is a more recent invader.

Horse Chestnut Leaf-miner, Cameraria ohridella, first arrived in the UK in 2002. It is a micro-moth, and its caterpillars burrow between the layers of the leaf, usually between the veins – in the photo above, you can see that the leaves have become transparent, with a little black blob indicating a pupa. The new moths emerge in May. The infestation starts at the bottom of the tree and spreads up, causing the leaves to shrivel and turn brown. This leads to early leaf fall. Although this is not fatal, it makes the trees unsightly, and greatly shortens their period of leaf growth. As if this was not enough, the size of the nuts is also reduced, disappointing any children old-fashioned enough to like a game of conkers alongside their online activities.

So, what can be done? One thing that many local councils are doing is to gather up the fallen leaves and burn them – this will reduce the number of moth pupae that hatch and produce new moths. Birds, especially tits, have been seen eating the caterpillars, and may be responsible for munching up between two and four percent of the insects.

However, the final answer may come from a much smaller predator. There are hopes that parasitoid wasps may find the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner to their liking, and that they will start to increase their numbers as they discover how much tasty protein is lurking between the layers of the leaves. There is also evidence that some trees have immunity to the Leaf Miner, and suffer to a much lesser extent.

The Forestry Commission emphasise that there is no reason to destroy a tree with a Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner infestation – although unsightly, the hope is that gradually a balance between predator, prey and natural immunity will develop. There is some evidence that the degree of parasitism is increasing in areas like London, where the Leaf Miner has been present for the longest time.  In the meantime, we will have to wait, and hope that our Horse Chestnut trees are soon healthy and magnificent again, as they were in the days when Auntie Mary was alive.

 

 

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…..

Ivy is perhaps the most divisive wild plant in the UK. For some, it is a clambering, entwining seducer, a plant of overweening ambition, capable of pulling the mortar out of brickwork and dragginbg the mightiest Oak to the ground.   For others it’s the most valuable wildlife plant that you can grow, providing nectar and pollen for bees and butterflies and shiny black berries for the birds.

Firstly, Ivy as strangler.

In the photo above, we can see the ambitious roots grappling with the bark of a Hornbeam as the plant reaches for the sky. Whilst Ivy can exist perfectly happily in a sprawl in dense woodland (and it is one of the few plants that will survive where there is very heavy leaf cover), it is also not averse to clambering upwards when it comes into contact with a suitable support. But unless it finds soil or a deep crevice, Ivy will use the object solely as a climbing frame, and is not a parasite.

The problem comes when the ivy reaches the top of the tree. Here, it will flourish, and, in a windy spot, the sheer weight of growth can be enough to pull the tree over. In Plants Britannica, Richard Mabey quotes a Dorset man who states that, when clearing ivy from a fallen tree, ‘the weight of the ivy often exceeds the weight of its host’.

And yet, I have a sense that something else is going on here. In much plantlore, the bold, straightforward Holly is seen as expressing the male principle, the sinuous, all-encompassing ivy as embodying the female principle . Could some of the hatred of Ivy, of its clinging,nature, be a kind of sublimated misogyny, a fear of fecundity? We are complicated creatures, and our motives are often hidden, even from ourselves.

Ivy has a long connection with alcohol. Because ivy can smother grapevines, it was sometimes seen as being able to cure a hangover through sympathetic magic. Ivy used to be grown over poles as an advertisement for the quality of the wine on sale at a public house – these poles were known as ‘bushes’, hence the phrase ‘good wine needs no bush’. Many pubs, such as the one below, maintain the link with Ivy:

Furthermore, a bowl made of Ivy wood was said to neutralise the effects of drinking bad wine.

Ivy has a long history, also, as a magical plant, particularly with regard to the protection of domestic animals. In Plants Britannica, Richard Mabey tells how, in the Highlands and Islands, it was plaited into a wreath with Rowan and Honeysuckle to protect the cattle. Animals that have been poisoned by eating Yew or Ragwort are said to eat Ivy when they won’t eat anything else. It is said to tempt a sick ewe to eat after a difficult birth, and to cure eye disease in cattle.

One factor in Ivy’s success is its adaptability. It can form a modest sprawl, it can completely cover a building, or it can change its nature completely and become a shrub. Once Ivy flowers, it becomes a blessing for all kinds of insects when other sources of food are long dead.

All these creatures were photographed on one sunny afternoon last week, clustering around the Ivy flowers and filling the air with their buzzing. For the Red Admirals, who hibernate, this last food might make the difference between surviving the winter, and dying.

Ivy is also the larval foodplant of the Holly Blue butterfly, another reason for having some in the garden.

So, Ivy is generous, sometimes to a fault. From a little sunshine and a few soil nutrients, she can cover a fence and provide hiding places for the nests of blackbirds, niches for the webs of spiders, and food for all manner of flying things. I find it difficult not to love a plant that so many creatures find useful.

And in one  way, I have a link with this plant. Ivy is my middle name, and was given to me to honour my paternal grandmother. She was a tough, tenacious individual, bringing up three children single-handedly after her husband was killed during the Second World War. Like her namesake, she clung on in desperate times, and I hope that, if put to the test, I could summon up the indomitable spirit of my grandmother, and of the plant that we are both named after.