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…..

Dear Readers, during the day Evening Primrose can appear to be a rather shambolic plant. Its flowers, which emerge gradually and advance up the stem, can seem limp and unkempt, and the effect is of a plant which is lank and ‘weedy’.

And yet, as darkness falls, the plant undergoes a transformation. The flowers raise their heads and open their petals, so that they can be pollinated by the moths that are attracted to their faint perfume. I was fascinated by the difference between the day-time flower and its night-time exuberance, and I’m not the only one – for a photo sequence showing how the blooms go from closed to fully open in ten minutes, have a look at Rob’s Flowers.

Because it attracts nocturnal insects, Evening Primrose is also a great plant if you would like to be visited by bats, something I would certainly recommend. Nothing beats sipping a glass of something cold on a summer evening while the flittery shapes of pipistrelles swoop past.

A quick look at the design of the plant gives us a clue to its family: Large-flowered Evening Primrose is not a primrose, but yet another member of the Willowherb family.The stigma of Evening Primrose flowers is an ‘X’ shape, as you can see in the photo above. This particular species of Evening Primrose also has red sepals (the part of the flower that protects the bud), as you can see in the photo below.

The Evening Primrose family probably originated in Central America and Mexico, but it is a plant that hybridises extremely easily, and produces many variations. This species was introduced to the UK as a garden plant in the seventeenth century, but was seen ‘in the wild’ very shortly after this. It is a primary coloniser of disturbed land, and indeed one popped up beside my pond last year following my attempts at renovation. It is a biennial plant – in the first year, there will just be a rosette of leaves, followed by the flowers in year two. However, it doesn’t seem to be persistent – it is quickly out-competed by other plants. Its delicate appearance is matched by its ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ habit, so, like so many things, we need to appreciate it while it’s here.

The genus name of the Evening Primroses, Oenothera, may come from the Greek for ‘Donkey Catcher’, which is a little puzzling as the plants are native to the New World, which had no wild horses prior to the Spaniards. The family name for all the Willowherbs, Onagraceae, also has an equine connection: it means ‘food of the Onager’, an onager being a handsome and athletic species of Asiatic wild ass, which in the wild can run at up to 64 mph. As it has been hunted nearly to extinction, I suspect that these days it has very little chance to graze on willowherbs of any kind.

The reason that most of us have heard of Evening Primrose, of course, is because it is a source of Gamma-linoleic acid, or GLA. Evening Primrose oil was originally used by Native Americans to treat ‘swelling of the body’, and became a popular folk-remedy in Europe, known as ‘the King’s Cure-all’ However, it has been a controversial plant, having been taken off the list of recommended drugs for dermatitis back in 2002, and rejected by the American Cancer Society as a treatment for cancer or, indeed, anything else. However, I remember taking Evening Primrose capsules for PMT when I was younger, and thinking that it helped, though whether this was Primrose or Placebo is open to discussion. There are also studies showing that GLA may help with neuropathic pain. It does act as a blood-thinner, however, so anyone who is already taking such medication should proceed with particular care.

The roots of Evening Primrose can be boiled and eaten, and the buds are also said to be edible. If you would like some recipes for Evening Primrose Fritters, and for Roasted Winter Vegetables including Evening Primrose root, have a look at the wonderful Sacred Earth website here, and do let me know how you get on! However, Evening Primrose is not a common plant in my half-mile territory, and so I will be leaving it for the moths, and the bats that feed on them.

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…..

Dear Readers, today I took a walk to Muswell Hill Playing Fields, which are on the edge of Coldfall Wood. Earlier this year, there were several areas which turned into quagmire, the claggy mud coming up to the top of the dog-walkers’ wellington boots. As a result, the council sent in some heavy machinery to dig out the worst areas and replace the soil. Well, I have no idea exactly what they replaced it with, but both areas are now three feet deep in a very impressive selection of ‘weeds’. At the head of the rush are great stands of Annual Mercury and Redshank and some Pale Persicaria, plus some Scented Mayweed , but there are also some very fine Spear-leaved Orache (Atriplex prostrata).

This is an annual, native plant, a member of the Amaranthaceae family which includes Goosefoots, Oraches and many seaside plants. Spear-leaved Oraches are often found on the strand-line on beaches and on seawalls – like many other members of their family,  they have a very high tolerance for salt. But they are also found on disturbed soil, and you don’t get much more disturbed than completely replaced.

To distinguish Spear-leaved Orache from the many other members of the family (which includes the edible plants Good King Henry and Fat Hen), have a look at the leaves in the photo above. If the ‘spear’ shape is has a completely flat bottom edge, so that it looks rather like a triangle, you are most likely looking at a Spear-leaved Orache. Apparently the whole plant can turn red in autumn, so I will make sure to check.

The meaning of the word ‘Orache’ comes from the same root as the plant’s Latin family name, Atriplex, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary the meaning of both words is unknown. However, in A Modern Herbal, the word is said to be a corruption of Aurum, which means gold, and in this context referred to the use of the seeds, boiled with wine, to cure yellow jaundice. The plant is also said to be a cure for gout.

Let’s return to this question of salt for a moment. Whilst some members of the Orache/Goosefoot family are merely salt-tolerant, others are halophyles, which means that they positively enjoy salty environments. Amongst them are the Glassworts, better known to us as Samphires.

These are specialised plants, with thick, spongy leaves which retain water against the harsh winds and exposed conditions of coastal areas. And the leaves also absorb salt. I remember being on a field trip to the Thames estuary back when I was a youngster, and biting into the toothsome green stems of some samphire that we found. This was long before it had become a fashionable accompaniment to fish in West End restaurants, and I was amazed, town child that I was, that something so delicious could just be picked from the side of a path. Of course, as one of my readers pointed out a while back, ‘weeds’ are not only often good food in their own right, they are also the ancestors of so many of the plants that we eat these days – without wild carrot, and wild turnip, without wild strawberries and raspberries, we would not have the familiar fruit and vegetables in our greengrocers and supermarkets.

What is interesting to me is that even Spear-leaved Orache, which is not as well-adapted to coastal conditions as other members of the family, will change its habit if it finds itself beside the seaside. Here in North London, it grows erect, but on the seashore it will collapse and grow outwards instead of up, a much better adaptation to windy places. Plus, its leaves can become much fleshier, to help it to retain water. It is astonishing to me how variable some plants can be, and how over a few generations they can change themselves to be successful, taking advantage of whatever is happening. Anyone who doubts the reality of evolution should probably experiment by harvesting some Spear-leaved Orache seeds from a single plant, and planting some in their garden and some at the seaside, It would be interesting to see how long it would take them to start to differentiate.

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…..

Dear Readers, while I was walking in the Playing Fields at the edge of Coldfall Wood a few weeks ago, I saw a plant that I didn’t recognise. This in itself is not so strange – of the plants that surround me, I know only a tiny fraction, though my knowledge is improving all the time. But this plant looked like a member of the pea family, but grew like a bush. It was all on its own, and had delicate mauve flowers. How had I missed it before?

I hurried home to my plant books, and discovered that I was looking at Goat’s Rue. It is a member of the pea family, and is a naturalised species – it was first introduced from the Middle East by 1568 and was found in the wild by 1640. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey describes how it is extremely common around Sheffield, and how it might have spread:

‘A Sheffield miner told me that he remembered his father recounting how in the early part of this century horticultural traders used to work the poorer parts of the city suburbs selling garden plants which only just merited that description. They were aggressive species like tansy, Michaelmas daisy, feverfew and goat’s rue, all of which have naturalised widely in the city. He recalled his father purchasing Japanese knotweed and how friends were invited round to marvel at the spotted stem and attactive foliage and how the plant was later divided up for exchange’.

However, as I have started to delve into the history of Goat’s Rue, I have come to realise that this is no ‘ordinary’ weed. In fact, I’m starting to think that there is no such thing as an ‘ordinary’ weed, but this one is extraordinary. It’s Latin name, Galega, means ‘to bring on milk’, and it was used to increase milk supply in a variety of domestic animals, hence its common name. Nursing human mothers have also used the herb for this purpose, and a quick look on the internet shows that supplements containing this plant are available, along with recommendations for dosage using the whole plant. Personally, I would be extremely careful about using any plant that is known to have toxic effects (see below).

What fascinates me most, however, is Goat’s-Rue’s long association with the treatment of diabetes. One of the chemicals in the plant was long known to reduce blood-sugar, but the compounds themselves were toxic – they are said to cause ‘tracheal frothing, pulmonary oedema, hydrothorax, hypotension, paralysis and death‘. However a chemist, George Tanret, identified a slightly less toxic compound from the plant called galegine, and this was used as the basis for treatments during the 1920’s and 1930’s. The drug that is currently used to treat Type 2 diabetes, Metformin, is a synthesised form of the chemical that was discovered in Goat’s Rue, with the toxicity taken out. With two parents and a brother who all have diabetes, it makes me humble to look at this plant and realise that without it, they might not have had access to the drug that helped, initially at least, to keep their conditions under control. In a short paper in ‘Practical Diabetes International’ by C.J. Bailey and C Day, the authors have this to say:

‘Postscript of ironies

There are several ironies about metformin. In our high-tech era of drug discovery and development this first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes is little removed from a herbal remedy of the middle ages. Despite its chemical simplicity and detailed investigation, metformin continues to evade a complete exposé of its cellularactivity. While endless pharmacovigilance has monitored the safety profile of metformin, its natural ancestor,G. officinalis (known as Professor Weed in the USA) is a Class A Federal Noxious Weed in 35 states of America, and appears on the database of poisonous plants.’

This is not the only way that Goat’s Rue has been used. It has been used as a worm treatment for domestic animals, and also to treat plague victims. In the first case, I can imagine that its toxicity was a way of killing the parasites, providing the dosage was managed properly and didn’t kill the animal as well. As to the poor plague victim, I suppose that death by poisoning was the least of their worries.

The name ‘Goat’s Rue’ has been explained as either the result of its use to encourage milk production, or because of the unpleasant smell of its bruised leaves. I don’t find either of these ideas particularly conducive – I’d have thought that  a goat would be happy to be producing more milk for its kids (though admittedly not if it was stolen to feed humans), and the leaves don’t smell particularly goaty to me. But there we go. The reasons are lost in the proverbial mists of time. The North American nickname for the plant, Professor Weed, is said to be because it was originally introduced as a forage weed by the professorial body at the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station. Not only was it found to be less toothsome to the grazing animals than alfalfa, but it also ‘went native’ with a vengeance, hopping over the fence and spreading all over those wide open spaces. When a report that it had killed some sheep in Europe came in, an eradication programme which removed over 90% of the plant took place. Since then, it has bounced back, and the battle goes on.

Goat’s Rue has also been used as a replacement for rennet during cheese-making (and in fact yet another alternative name for the plant in the north of England is ‘Cheese-Rennet’). It is said to be useful if you are bitten by a snake. And, in experiments that no doubt resulted in the deaths of hundreds of mice, it has been shown to reduce obesity. Was there ever a poisonous plant with so many uses? And, furthermore, so many names?

In German folklore, Goat’s Rue is known as one of the Holy Hay plants, along with Sanfoin and Alfalfa. This is because it was said to be one of the plants laid in the manger in Bethlehem. When Jesus was laid down amongst the hay, it is said to have spontaneously burst into flower. And, whatever your religion, what a lovely image this is to end with.

 

 

Dear Readers, my call for any information about Rosebay Willowherb during the Second World War has produced this wonderful  photo, taken in 1948, from my friend and fellow blogger David Sweetland. Here’s what he says about it:

‘Attached is a photo my father took in 1948 to the north east of St. Paul’s looking across the area that is now the Barbican. A good view of Rosebay Willowherb in the foreground. Did not know the name of the plant until I read your post today.

I remember him telling me that this (along with many other plants) very quickly spread over all the bombed land across the City. The bombed and burnt buildings were quickly cleared leaving large areas with low walls and open cellars and the plants quickly colonised these.’

David’s blog A London Inheritance is both a celebration of the London captured in his father’s photographs, and a fascinating exploration of how it is today. I heartily recommend it.

 

 

Dear Readers, back in 2002 Rosebay Willowherb was named as the County Plant of Greater London by the charity Plantlife, and, with its long association with the capital and its familiarity to Londoners, it seems an excellent choice. But it was not always so, for this was once a shy, little-seen plant, its spread a result of two World Wars, aided, as with so many ‘weeds’, by the development of the railways.

I have a copy of a book called ‘Flowers of the Field’ by the Reverend C. A. Johns, which was published in 1913. In it, the good Reverend describes the plant as ‘rare, except as a garden escape’. And yet, as the forests were felled and burned to provide wood for the First World War effort, it suddenly appeared in great swathes of cherry-pink, a development that was watched with some trepidation. In his book ‘Weeds’, Richard Mabey describes how it was seen by the botanist H.J. Riddelsdell:

‘Beautiful as the plant is in its flowering season, when it is in seed it creates desolation and ugliness over the whole area’.

The plant is native to the whole of the Northern Hemisphere, and in North America it is known as ‘Fireweed’: Rosebay Willowherb is either more tolerant of scorched earth than other plants, or positively prefers it. This was to stand it in good stead during the Second World War, when it colonised the bombsites so successfully that the Londoners christened it ‘Bombweed’.

As is often the way with the Blitz, we now look back on it as a time of good spirits and plucky bulldog tenacity. Londoners are said to have seen this new pink plant, which few of them would have seen previously, as a sign of London rising from the ashes like a phoenix. I wonder if some people were also a little perturbed by this new ‘invader’ however, especially as they were right in the middle of fighting a human one. If anyone remembers these times, or remembers their family talking about them, I would love to know!

While all this bombing and burning was going on, the plant was further distributed, just as Oxford Ragwort and Buddleia were, by the spread of the railways, the seeds being happily blown along and finding the clinker and scree slopes of the embankments most amenable to growth. In fact, when I head down to Dorset this week to visit my family I fully expect my route to be a veritable carnival of past Wednesday Weeds, with all the plants mentioned above in full flower.

There is no doubt that Rosebay Willowherb (named for its colour and for its bay-shaped leaves) is a most attractive plant, with its pink and carmine petals. Bees think so too, which is another reason to be glad of its profligacy. Its leaves are also unusual: the veins do not go to the edge of the leaf but curl back on themselves in loops, as you can just about see in the picture below. This makes it easy to identify even when not in flower.

Rosebay Willowherb’s wide distribution means that has been used for a variety of purposes by many different communities. Here are just a few of them, from the Plantlives website:

• The Cree people of North America used the fibre from the stems as sewing thread
• The Kitasoo people used this same thread to make fishing nets
• The Quinault and Skokomish tribes mixed the white fluffy seed fibre with duck feathers to make blankets, and the people of the Klallam mixed the seed fibre with dog hair to weave cloth.
• The Blackfoot tribe rubbed the flowers on to their mittens and rawhide thongs to waterproof them
• The Tanana tribe used the flowers as a mosquito repellent
• The Thompson tribe regarded the flowering of Rosebay Willowherb as an indication that the deer were fat enough to be hunted, and for the Cree it was a sign that the moose would soon be entering the mating season.

Many peoples used Rosebay Willowherb as food – the shoots, leaves, flowers and roots have all been used, both as salad and as a potherb. In Alaska, it is used for everything from icecream to syrup, and you can find a recipe for Fireweed Jelly here. 

Monofloral (single plant) honey from ‘Fireweed’ is made in Alaska and areas of northwestern Canada, and is considered to be a premium product, slightly spicy and delicious.

In Russia, the flowers are used to make Koporye or Russian tea, which was exported to Western Europe as a competitor to Indian and Chinese tea during the 19th Century. It was fermented and dried in the same way as ‘real’ tea but had the advantage of being caffeine free. However, the East India Company was so threatened by the success of Koporye that they circulated a rumour about the way that the tea was produced, causing the trade to collapse. These days only a small amount of the tea is made, for local consumption.

Like Broad-leaved Willowherb, Rosebay Willowherb is also used in traditional Austrian medicine for urinary complaints of all kinds. In North America, it has been used for everything from boils to cancer. Maybe its rarity in the UK until the last century has restricted its historical medicinal and culinary uses here, but who knows what we will come up with in the future?

One inspiring use for Rosebay Willowherb is as a way of recolonising areas which have been damaged by fire, or even by oil spills. As it grows, it also provides nectar for any intrepid insects which venture past. In short, it is the most extraordinarily generous plant, capable of all kinds of uses and beautiful to boot. Long may its flowers herald the high-days and holidays of summer.