Dear Readers, when I was visiting my parents’ house in Dorset this week for my mother’s 80th birthday, the peace of the autumn was disrupted by the whine of the hedge-trimmer. My parents have the most spectacular beech hedge surrounding their little bungalow, fully twelve feet high and three feet thick, and every year Ian the tree surgeon comes to cut it for them. This is a two day job, involving standing on scaffolding to reach the top, and trimming the sides with meticulous care, for Ian is a perfectionist, and by the end the hedge would grace any stately home. However, I think even Mum and Dad’s hedge will have to wait a while before it can match the Meikleour beech hedge in Blairgowrie, Scotland. This one was planted in 1745, and is said to grow towards heaven because the men who planted it were killed at the Battle of Culloden. It is the longest and tallest hedge on earth, reaching 100 feet tall and 1/3rd of a mile in length. Furthermore, unlike my parents’ hedge, this one is only trimmed once every ten years.

Beech is one of the few deciduous trees that carries its leaves all year, a phenomenon known as marcescence ( how I love finding a new word – I shall be trying to slip this one into the conversation for the rest of the week). It’s thought that the retention of these leaves may make the spring buds less palatable to grazing animals, and indeed beeches which are pruned (an act which must surely feel to the plant like particularly heavy browsing) are most inclined to keep their leaves. Whatever the reason, one of the distinctive sounds of November for me is the gentle rustling of the browning foliage as it clings to the twigs and interstices of the hedge.

Birds love the beech hedge. It is a valuable roosting place for them, providing more cover during the cold winter nights than a leafless haven might do. Indeed, the noise of sparrows was positively deafening today as I left Mum and Dad’s house to travel down to London. In the spring, the sparrows, wrens and blackbirds all nest in the branches, safely tucked away from predators.

When Mum and Dad first moved into the house, their first thought was to cut the hedge down. It makes some parts of the bungalow quite shady and secluded. But a neighbour advised them against it.

‘The prevailing wind comes right down the hill’, he said. ‘I’d stick it out for the winter and see what you think in the spring’.

The hedge stayed.

In my garden, I also have a mixed hedge, with beech as a large component. In the spring, I love the way that the new leaves unfurl through a gossamer-like covering, as if they were wrapped in cobwebs. I love the deep chocolate brown of the leaves, and the way that they fade to copper, and yellow, and lime-green. My sad little hedge has not yet produced any nuts, nor will it for a while: a beech may produce some beechmast, as the fruits are called, at ten years of age, but will need to be at least thirty before they are produced in any quantity. Even then they will be occasional, rather than regular, events: the production may be related to hot, dry summers, but even so the beechmast is rarely produced for two years in a row. When it does appear, however, it is a bonanza for everything from badgers to squirrels, tits to finches. Some of the seeds will, of course, be buried, leading to the development of new beech seedlings in the spring.

There is some debate about the origins of beech in the UK. Some think that it arrived in the south of England about 2000 years after the English Channel was formed, and that it was carried here by Neolithic people, who probably used the nuts for food. Others suggest that the plant predates this. Officially, the plant is described as native in the south of England and south-east Wales, and as ‘widely planted’ elsewhere. The nuts can be pressed to make oil, although this doesn’t seem to have taken off in the same way that Hazelnut oil has. The leaves, when young, can be eaten, and can also be turned into an alcoholic drink called Beech-leaf noyau. If you fancy having a go, there’s a recipe for Beech Leaf Gin here, though my dad, an ex-gin distiller for Gordon’s Gin, would no doubt be horrified.

The timber from beech trees was largely used for firewood – in Roman times, it was used to supply the fuel for ironworks. However, one specialised use of the wood was for the manufacture of chairs, and a specialised company of these carpenters, called bodgers, existed in High Wycombe right up until the early years of the twentieth century. These men lived in hovels in the beech woods, and made the chair legs for the Windsor Chair, so-called because it was sold by dealers in Windsor. The bodger felled the beech trees (he would buy a stand of trees from an estate), cut it into chair leg sized pieces, and turn the wood on a lathe to produce the part required. The legs would then be left to stand, or season, until ready to be turned into furniture. Each man could turn out 144 legs a day. However, for working six days a week, ten hours a day, he was likely to earn only £1.50 per week. I wonder if this combination of high productivity and low wages led to the use of the word ‘bodger’ as a description for someone with more enthusiasm for DIY than ability.

A beech tree was often seen as a safe haven in storms, because it was protective against lightning. It was also said that no harm would come to anyone sheltered under its branches, and that any prayers uttered there would ascend straight to heaven, unhindered. How appropriate that, when turned into a hedge, beech becomes the protector not only of houses, but of all the small creatures who might otherwise be buffeted by wind and weather. It seems to cradle all things, big and small, in its rustling, brown-leaved branches.

Photo Credits

Meikleour Hedge – “620-250 Year old Beech Hedg” by MichaelDFowler – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:620-250_Year_old_Beech_Hedg.JPG#/media/File:620-250_Year_old_Beech_Hedg.JPG

Beech mast – “European Beech” by photo en:User:MPF – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:European_Beech.jpg#/media/File:European_Beech.jpg

Windsor Chair – “Windsor Chair Sack Back Armchair cr”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windsor_Chair_Sack_Back_Armchair_cr.jpg#/media/File:Windsor_Chair_Sack_Back_Armchair_cr.jpg

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

 

 

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, last week I was exploring the car park at East Finchley tube station when I came across a plant that was entirely new to me – Perforate St John’s-wort. My copy of Harrap’s Wild Flowers describes it as ‘abundant, and by far the commonest St John’s-wort’. This may be so, but it’s fair to say that it’s a retiring and delicate plant, easily overshadowed by the more assertive ‘weeds’ that grow in the same habitat. It is easy to see that it’s a member of the same family as Rose of Sharon and Tutsan – it has five petals, a shaving-brush of stamen, and that butter-yellow colour that is so characteristic of the family. If you break a flower-bud, a reddish-purple liquid is produced.

But why on earth is it called ‘Perforate’? If we look closely at the leaves, we can see that they are covered in tiny translucent ‘windows’. These are resin glands, and are said to be responsible for the ‘foxy’ smell of the species, though I was not inclined to molest the small number of plants that I discovered to find out.

Although this is a new plant to me, it is a native of Europe and Asia and has a long history of interaction with humans. Richard Mabey (in Flora Britannica) describes how, since prehistoric times, this plant was burned on the Midsummer Day Fires that were set all over the country. It was believed that these fires would purify communities and crops, and Perforate St. John’s-wort was one of the ‘sun-herbs’ which were thrown into the fire, probably because its yellow colour was thought to strengthen the power of the sun, while the smoke from the fires protected the fields against more malevolent summer manifestations, such as drought and wildfires.

Another story, attributed to the peoples of both the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight is that if you accidentally stood on Perforate St-John’s-wort at night, you would promptly be carried off on a fairy horse from which you could not dismount until sunrise. By then, you could be anywhere, and would need to find your own way home. I find this such a delightful idea that I was almost tempted to creep back to the car park at dead of night with a thermos flask, some sandwiches and an Oyster card, just to see what would happen.

Later, as has so often been the case, the plant was absorbed by Christianity – the Feast of St John the Baptist is on June 24th, and so this pagan plant was renamed as a Christian one. The genus name Hypericum is supposedly derived from the Greek words Hyper (above) and eikon (holy picture), to describe the way that the plants were hung above icons on St. John’s day to protect the house against the evil eye. In a combination of the pagan and Christian uses of the plant, the flower-buds were gathered on 24th June, crushed and steeped in olive-oil, to produce a blood-red liquid that was called ‘Blood of Christ’ and was used for anointing.

The reason that most of us have heard of St John’s-wort, however, is because of its use as an anti-depressant. Reviews of the use of the plant have regularly indicated that it is more effective than a placebo for patients with major depression, as useful as standard anti-depressants in mild to moderate depression, and that it has fewer side-effects. It should be noted, however, that the studies performed in German-speaking countries (where herbal medicine is an accepted part of many treatment regimes)  returned much more positive results than those conducted in the US (where there is more reliance on synthetic medicines) (for more details see here). There is no doubt that this is a medicinally active and potent plant, and should therefore (as with all plant remedies) be treated with respect – it decreases the levels of oestrogen in the body by speeding up the rate with which the hormone is metabolised, and so may decrease the efficacy of the contraceptive pill. It may cause photosensitivity, and is also associated with aggravating psychosis and mania in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I do note, however, that all these are also potential side-effects of many standard anti-depressants. I suspect that the main danger of this plant is using it alongside conventional anti-depressant drugs, and hence doubling up the dose of psychoactive chemicals. It also interacts with many other medications, including statins and HIV treatment protocols. Even so, it is given several pages on the website of Mind, the main UK mental health charity, and many people swear that using Perforate St John’s-wort has given them relief from the symptoms of anxiety and depression. So much power in a plant discovered at the back of a car park in North London!

As with so many plants that I have discovered through The Wednesday Weed, Perforate St John’s-wort has proved to be a problem in countries to which it is not native, especially Australia and the US. It is poisonous to grazing livestock if ingested in large quantities (indeed in Russia it is known as Zveroboi, or ‘beast-killer’), and some of the side-effects suffered by humans, such as photosensitivity and mania, are exhibited in animals unfortunate enough to have dined extensively on the plant. It is said that one of the effects of the plant is to make the suffering animal run in circles, resulting in strange ‘crop-circles’. The poisoned animal may be terrified of water, or may become so obsessed with it that it drowns. Fortunately, in places in which it is native it is unusual to see Perforate St.John’s-wort growing in anything like the quantities needed to cause these effects, but see the photo below of the plant growing in Australia for an idea of how densely-packed it can become.

What a remarkable plant this is. Its chemical composition means that it can both cure and poison, relieve distress and cause suffering. Of all the plants that I’ve featured on The Wednesday Weed, it is the one that has given me the most pause for thought. Modern Western society largely despises the healing power of plants, and is disrespectful of their undoubted power to heal or harm. In many places in the world, only a manufactured drug is considered efficacious, even though it may be originally derived from plants. Thank goodness for the people all over the world who are curious and knowledgeable about their botanical heritage, and who are working to preserve this priceless information for generations to come. Now, we just need to make sure that we also preserve the plants themselves.

Photo Credits

Perforated Leaves – By Matt Flavin https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/5259021048 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Illustration of Perforate St John’s-wort – By Prof. Dr. Thomé, Otto Wilhelm (www.biolib.de) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Field of Perforate St.John’s-wort in Australia – By Peripitus (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

Resources

Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey

The Plant Lives website curated by Sue Eland

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, when I was a small girl I was prone to what were euphemistically called ‘bilious attacks’. These resulted in plenty of sleepless nights for my poor mother, and lots of changing of the bedsheets. What I remember most from these episodes is a cool hand on my forehead, and my mum singing the following song.

‘Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do.

I’m half-crazy, all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage.

I can’t afford a carriage.

But you’ll look sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle made for two’.

This always seemed to do the trick, and I wonder if my mother sung it with a certain relish because she and dad did, indeed, have a tandem bicycle when they were courting. Once when they were riding it in Stratford Broadway, it got stuck in the tramlines and both my parents fell off. Mum never forgot that Dad went to pick up the bike before he rescued her, but all must have been forgiven. After all, they were married, and I had arrived.

Is there anything more homely, more gentle and more ubiquitous than a daisy? It’s often the first flower to show its face, and the lawn in front of the flats next to the cemetery has hundreds still in full bloom in early November. It is a flower of childhood, of a more innocent time. I remember making daisy chains on hot summer days, and adding the flowers to the bunches of buttercups and grasses that my brother and I picked when went to ‘the country’ for the day (often Waltham Abbey or Buckhurst Hill).

Daisy is a corruption of the phrase ‘Day’s Eye’, as the plant closes at night and opens during the day time. Its Latin name, Bellis perennis, is said to mean ‘Pretty Everlasting’. And at a time when flower names for girls are coming back into fashion (I’ve heard quite a lot of calls for ‘Lily’ and ‘Poppy’ in my local coffee shop) surely it can’t be too long until Daisy makes a comeback. It was, after all, the name of the heroine in The Great Gatsby, and is also the name of one of my closest friends.

Daisies have also been used medicinally. Roman slaves who were accompanying surgeons into war picked sackfuls of daisies – the juice was extracted and used to soak the bandages that bound up the spear and sword wounds. One interpretation of the Latin name of the plant suggests that the Bellis does not relate to prettiness, but rather to war (as in belligerent and bellicose). It interests me that this plant, so closely associated with innocence, may have such a war-like connection.

In Austrian medicine, the plant is used as a tea for respiratory and gastrointestinal purposes. The flowers have also been used to garnish salads and desserts, though I’d advise against picking them from areas where they may have been subjected to herbicides and dog-contamination. Daisies may look pretty, but they are also tough, and grow in some of the most polluted places in our urban areas.

Although each ‘daisy’ looks like a single flower, they are in fact a collection of small, tightly packed individual flowers or florets – this arrangement is known as a capitulum. The bright yellow centre contains ‘disc-florets’, which are surrounded by elongated petal-like ‘ray florets’. If you look closely at the photo below you can see that some of the disc-florets are opening, revealing their flower-like character. Our simple daisy turns out not to be so simple after all.

Photo Credits

Daisy flower close-up at the end of the post  – “Bellis perennis white (aka)” by André Karwath aka Aka – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bellis_perennis_white_(aka).jpg#/media/File:Bellis_perennis_white_(aka).jpg

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

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, many years ago I lived in a flat which looked out onto Wanstead Flats, an area of ancient common land in east London. Cows used to graze there during the spring and summer, and they  occasionally wandered into my tiny front garden, where they ate all the daffodils and tore out the winter-flowering pansies. If I threw open my front door to remonstrate they merely raised their heads, blossoms dangling from their jaws and a look of complete indifference on their faces. Sometimes they would make their sedate way up the side of the block to the car park and back ‘garden’, which was a mass of concrete split occasionally by thistles and dandelions, and even these would be mulched down by my bovine visitors. The only plants that survived were the brambles tumbling onto my ‘patio’ from the house next door, and the great knotted thickets of Bittersweet that scrambled through it.

Bittersweet (or Woody Nightshade) can be found in most woodlands and looks like some exotic vine, with its purple and canary-yellow flowers, and translucent cerise berries. Its leaves are said to smell of burnt rubber.  It is a member of the Solanum genus, which includes tomatoes, aubergines and potatoes, but also Deadly Nightshade, for which this plant is sometimes mistaken, although the berries of Deadly Nightshade are black.

The red berries of Bittersweet look delicious, but John Robertson, the author of my go-to blog on ‘dangerous’ plants The Poison Garden, states that they have an extremely bitter taste, which does not become sweet regardless of the length of time that they are chewed. A nine year-old girl did die of what appeared to be Bittersweet poisoning in 1948, but she must have been either very hungry, or, as Robertson speculates, have had an impaired sense of taste in order to eat enough for a fatal dose. However the Modern Herbal website suggests that the name Bittersweet refers to the taste of the root and stem rather than the berries. I wonder if the berries merely look as if they should be sweet, and in fact taste disappointingly bitter? The species name ‘dulcamara’ means ‘sweet-bitter’, and maybe this is the simplest explanation.

The genus name, ‘Solanum’ is said to have derived from the Latin phrase for ‘ease’ or ‘solace’, and it has been suggested that the plants were used for their sedative properties. Another name for the plant, ‘Felonweed’, refers to its use for abscesses of the fingers or toes (known as whitlows these days, but formerly known as felons). Bittersweet has also been used for a variety of skin conditions, including eczema and scrofula.

In the UK, a garland of Bittersweet used to be hung around the necks of sheep who were suspected by their shepherds to be under the ‘evil eye’, and horses that appeared to be ‘hag-ridden’ were given a necklace of Bittersweet and Holly. In Lincolnshire it was pigs who were protected with Bittersweet. Writing about this, I find I have a lump in my throat as I think about the days when farm animals were seen as individuals, with needs and personalities, rather than as the generic production units that they have so often become today. This attention to the needs of the animals in our care, this strange tenderness, still lingers on in small farms and in wild places, but has no place in an intensive pig unit or a battery farm or a mega-dairy. So many animals pass from farm to plate not only ungarlanded, but unregarded, their short, miserable lives a testament to our ability to separate ourselves from the creatures that surround us, and to our tendency to inflict things on others just because we can.

But, as usual, I digress.

ittersweet wasn’t seen as protective only for animals. It is a native plant in the UK, but is also found in northern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. I have mentioned the Plant Lives website before, and in her entry on Bittersweet, Sue Eland mentions that the plant is found

‘on the third collarette of Tut’ankhamun’s third coffin, and shows the fruit threaded on strips of date palm’.

The collar appears to have been made up of red Bittersweet berries and blue glass beads and it seems that the Egyptians also had a tradition in which the plant was protective.

There is something about Bittersweet that makes me think that it not to be messed with. Of course, when we comment on the ‘personality’ of a plant it is more likely to be about how we see it at the time than about the plant itself, but still. The more time I spend with plants, the more I am convinced that they are not just a green back-drop to our everyday lives, but are rather more active than their sedentary nature would give us to suppose. There is much to be gained by regarding our botanical neighbours as members of our larger communities rather than as ‘things’ to be exploited or ignored. After all, without plants we would have no oxygen, no food and no atmosphere. A little respect seems a small price to pay.

Photo Credits

Deadly Nightshade berries by David Hawgood [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bittersweet illustration “Illustration Solanum dulcamara0” by Kurt Stüber – Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz1885, Gera, Germany.www.biolib.de. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Illustration_Solanum_dulcamara0.jpg#/media/File:Illustration_Solanum_dulcamara0.jpg

All other photographs copyright Vivienne Palmer

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, rarely does the common name of a plant reflect so accurately its nature as with this member of the Asteraceae or daisy family. With its copper-coloured petals and tight groupings of buds, Fox-and-cubs clearly brings to mind a vixen and her youngsters. I was pleased to find it in full bloom on the unadopted road close to my house in East Finchley, especially because, of all the ‘wild’ daisies hereabouts, it’s the only orange one, and so is relatively easy to identify.  Note also the hairy stem and the lack of leaves apart from in a rosette at the base.

Fox-and-cubs comes originally from the Carpathian mountains, and we have noticed before how often plants that are used to the harsh conditions of drought, ultra-violet light and thin soils that are encountered at altitude find themselves at home on our city wastelands. The plant was first seen in the UK in 1629, and was recorded in the wild in 1793. It is a close relative of our native Mouse-ear Hawkweed (Pilosella officinarum), and in some places forms a hybrid. In London it is usually a garden escape, although its light, fluffy seeds can transport the ‘cubs’ a long distance from their mother.

Fox-and-cubs has a variety of other vernacular names. ‘Devil’s Paintbrush’ is wonderfully descriptive. ‘Orange hawkweed’ is obvious. However,  I find myself very puzzled by one of the others: ‘Grim-the-collier’. I have read several explanations for the name, including one which says that the plant resembles a collier’s beard because of the tiny black hairs on the buds.

To add further to the confusion, a play called ‘Grim the Collier of Croydon’ was published in 1662, in which the titular Grim is a kind and simple-hearted soul who finally wins the hand of his sweetheart in marriage after the intercession of a small devil. The first question that sprang to my mind was why we would be having colliers in Croydon, but apparently it was the one of the centres of the coal trade in the seventeenth century. Of course, this brings me no closer to understanding the link between the play and the plant. Could the actor who played Grim have been a red-head, I wonder? And did the play-going public make a link that has stuck for 400 years? Well, maybe not, because there is an earlier reference in a herbal by Gerard going back to 1633 in which the plant is called ‘Grimme the Collier’, which suggests that the play was based on a story which was already extant then. Who knows? Suffice to say that this interloper was already familiar enough to have a very English name just a few years after it arrived.

As with so many of the plants that I feature, the arrival of Fox-and-cubs in other parts of the world has not been treated with unalloyed joy. It is on the noxious weeds lists of of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and parts of British Columbia. It is on the quarantine list in Australia, and is a noxious weed in Tasmania. Part of the problem is that it reproduces not only via its seeds, but also vegetatively by runners, like a strawberry. On the other hand, like so many members of the daisy family it is very attractive to pollinators. It seems to be liked very much by hoverflies, but is also visited by bees. This last is something of a puzzle, because orange and red flowers are almost invisible to these insects. However, there is evidence that Fox-and-cubs also features ultra-violet patterns which make it able to be seen. Certainly, it is a plant that is often added to green roof seed mixes, both to give a splash of russet to the colour palate and because it reproduces so readily and looks after itself so easily. I must confess that it is one of my favourite ‘weeds’, one that always cheers me up when I find it peeping out from a mass of grass, or forming part of an alpine meadow. Orange is such a rare colour in nature that we should treasure it whenever we find it.

Photo Credits

Photo of Mouse-eared Hawkweed is by Anne Burgess [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other photos are copyright Vivienne Palmer.