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, I confess that I found this little plant outside of my half-mile territory – it was growing on a mossy wall at the edge of Hampstead Heath – but I was so intrigued by it that I thought I’d share it with you. I was very puzzled when I found it: it was clearly some kind of strawberry, but the flower was bright yellow, and it wasn’t in any of my plant guides. So, off I went to my friends at the UK Wildflower Facebook group, who recognised it as mock strawberry within about thirty seconds.

Mock strawberry is not the same as barren strawberry (Potentilla sterilis) or wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca).

As you can see, although the leaves are very similar the flowers of both our native strawberries are white, with a much larger gap between the petals in barren strawberry. Mock strawberry is native to Asia (hence one alternative name of Indian Strawberry), and so it is another garden plant that has ‘escaped’. According to the Plant Lives website, it was introduced to the UK in 1804, and there was a craze for using it in hanging baskets during the Regency period of 1810 to 1820. I can well imagine how pretty it would have looked, and how enthusiastically it would have fallen from its lofty perch and headed off into the undergrowth.

Mock strawberry does have ‘strawberries’, although these are said to taste like a rather insipid watermelon. However, on the ever-interesting Eat the Greens website, Green Deane considers that maybe the fruits are suffering from ‘negative exaggeration’ – they look so palatable that it is a disappointment when they taste a little bland. Deane describes how the leaves can be used as a pot herb, or as a pleasant tea when dried. The berries can be used to make a jelly or jam, and to stretch other berries when making preserves. Plus, it can be a useful ground cover plant in the garden (though here I might incline more to using wild strawberry, because I have a passion for the intensely flavoured berries).

The mock strawberry is listed as a noxious weed in many parts of North America and Europe, and also on vulnerable islands such as Reunion. This is in part due to its modes of reproduction. The plants have both male and female flowers, and so are ‘perfect’ – capable of self-pollination if there are no pollinators around to encourage genetic diversity. However, like other members of the strawberry family, it can extend its reach by ‘runners’, which erupt as baby plants a good distance from the ‘parent’. So, when times are hard the mock strawberry can go in search of nutrients without the original plant moving an inch.

All parts of the plant have been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, where it is known as she mei – snake strawberry – because snakes make their nests amongst the leaves. It has been used to treat tumours, inflammation, diarrhoea and vaginal bleeding.  Western studies have been investigating the uses of the plant too, and a recent study showed that the plant has anti-inflammatory properties, whilst another looked at its potential as an immunostimulant in the treatment of cancer  

Another human use for mock strawberry is as a pesticide – it has a long history in Asia of being used not only to cure malaria, but also to kill mosquitoes who might carry the disease (though I’ve yet to discover what part was used, and how). What a useful plant this is, even though its fruits might not be altogether to human taste.

Nearly all of the websites that I’ve visited to research this plant state that it was used in India as an offering to the gods. However, as exactly the same sentence seems to be replicated in each one, it may be that it’s one of these factoids that chases round and round the internet without my ever being able to get to the bottom of the story, which I find rather frustrating. I would love to be able to share the details of where, how and why it featured in such ceremonies, if indeed it ever did, and if any of my readers can enlighten me (and the rest of us) I would be delighted to hear from you!

Photo Credits

Photo One – Walter Isack / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two – By H. Zell (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Three – By Kurt Stüber [1] – caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/mavica/index.html part of www.biolib.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3975

Photo Four – By H. Zell – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10936678

Photo Five – By Botanical Register, vol. 1: t. 61 (1815) [S. Edwards] – http://plantillustrations.org/illustration.php?id_illustration=96851&language=English, Domena publiczna, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22035704

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, what a pleasure it is to see the blackthorn in full flower. The English name of the plant describes it well for anyone uncertain what it looks like – the twigs and branches are black or dark grey, and the plant has thorny side shoots. Each of the flowers has many long, elegant stamens which give the blossom a speckled appearance. Such a mass of flowers is a boon for early insects of all kinds, from hoverflies to honeybees. In some traditions, the signal for the start of Imbolc, the time of Celtic  spring rituals, was the blooming of the blackthorn.

I must confess to a personal attachment to this plant. In its other incarnation as the sloe, blackthorn forms the basis of one of my favourite tipples, sloe gin. My father worked for many years as a distiller for Gordon’s Gin. In those days, the recipe for the gin was a closely guarded secret (the details were held in a locked safe), and only a few people knew how to make up the concentrated flavour that would be used to create the spirit. As a result my father, who left school at fourteen, ended up flying all over the world, working in distilleries in Spain, Jamaica, and in the middle of a jungle in Venezuela. He had many adventures, including being confined to quarters during a State of Emergency in Jamaica, being knocked over by an earthquake in Venezuela, and flying first class with Peter Wyngarde, the diminutive mahogany-toned star of the TV show Jason King. I credit my dad with imbuing me with a love of travel, and the belief that it was possible to  have an interesting and fulfilling life regardless of where you start.

And what has all this to do with blackthorn, I hear you plead? Well, Gordons made a limited number of bottles of sloe gin, which, heavily diluted with lemonade, was one of my first introductions to the delights of alcohol. I still love a glass at Christmas today (though minus the lemonade). It is possible to make the drink at home, though the process involves gathering basketfuls of the astringent purple-blue fruits, and individually pricking every one to allow the juices to colour and flavour the gin that you pour all over them. At Gordon’s, they had a special machine for pricking the sloes, which I believe were harvested in Scotland. And a very fine drink it was too.

The juice from the berries has also been used as a dye – apparently it initially turns cloth a reddish colour, but after several washings this turns to a permanent pale blue.

Humans are not the only creatures with a taste for blackthorn, however. It is a recommended source of food for the caterpillars of the rare Black and Brown Hairstreak butterflies, as well as numerous moths.

The eggs of the brown hairstreak are laid directly onto the stems of the blackthorn, and it’s well worth having a look to see if you can see any next time you are passing by a bush. They are quite distinctive, though at a distance you might mistake them for lichen, or bird droppings. Once the caterpillars emerge, they are extremely well camouflaged and feed only at night.

And for your delectation, here are some of the other insects whose larvae may be found feeding on blackthorn:

As so many creatures depend upon it, it is a good thing that blackthorn has been used as a cattle-proof hedge since at least medieval times. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey describes how crossing the blackthorn with the cultivated plum tree can produce ‘thorns more than two inches long and tough enough to penetrate a tractor tyre’, so I can well see how even the most ambitious cow would admit defeat.

The wood is described by Cobbett as being ‘precisely the colour of the Horse Chestnut fruit and, as smooth and bright, needs no polish’. Blackthorn wood has been used as a material for walking sticks, and was traditionally the wood used for Irish shillelaghs (clubs), because it was less prone to cracking than other materials. The wood was seasoned with lard and put up a chimney to season, which gave it its black colour. The normal weight of the stick was about two pounds, but a ‘seasoned club’ had the hitting end filled with molten lead. You would not want to attempt to mug someone carrying one of these sticks, for sure.

Although it was a rather mild day when I spotted the blackthorn in blossom at the weekend, it is said that the plant may come into flower during a period of bitter winds following a ‘false spring’ – a ‘blackthorn winter’. As with many plants that bear berries, plentiful fruit was also believed to be indicative of a harsh winter to come:

‘many sloes, many cold toes’

The bark has been used as an intestinal tonic, and also for tanning – it turns leather a reddish-brown colour. It seems that this plant, which shares such a long history with us, has been useful to us at every turn.

I like to try to find some artistic or poetic reference to my Wednesday Weed, and this week I have found this portrait by the Pre-Raphaelite Marie Spartali Stillman, arguably the greatest woman artist of the movement. The painting shows the Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni, a character from Dante’s poetry, and she is described as ‘a heartless lady dressed in green’. She is holding a branch of blackthorn, and I wonder what it symbolises: her wintery coldness, her thorny nature, or even her purity? Her enigmatic gaze is giving nothing away. I love that the painting features not only the blackthorn, but that the flowers in the Madonna’s hair are hellebores, and that ivy twines amongst the dried oak leaves above her head.

Spartali Stillman lived in England for her whole life, first in Clapham and then on the Isle of Wight. She studied under Ford Madox Brown (who is buried in ‘my’ cemetery) and was a model for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron and Burne-Jones, amongst others. She also had an extensive sixty year career of her own, which included major exhibitions in both the UK and the US. Yet I had never heard of her. It seems that, as so often, a woman’s work is buried in obscurity while her male compatriots are famous names. I am  fortunate to live in an age where such works can be discovered with a simple internet search, uncovering a whole world of beauty that I can share here. It is easy to criticise the web, and yet it enables us to make connections that I cannot imagine would have been so easily made any other way. Who knew that a post on blackthorn would take me so far?

Credits

Richard Mabey’s ‘Flora Britannica’ and Sue Eland’s ‘Plant Lives‘ website are my constant companions for the Wednesday Weed.

Photo One – By Allan warren – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9982286

Photo Two – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=337699

Photo Three – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.

Photo Four – By Hectonichus – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12471724

Photo Five – By Gilles San Martin – Flickr: Thecla betulae egg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15753504

Photo Six – By jean-pierre Hamon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=524340

Photo Seven – By ©entomart, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=294708

Photo Eight – By Donald Hobern – originally posted to Flickr as Esperia oliviella, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5715537

Photo Nine – By Samuraiantiqueworld – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12311379

Photo Ten – By Marie Spartali Stillman – Source 2nd upload: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/484137028666579864/Source 1st upload: http://bertc.com/subone/g94/stillman.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=607536

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, at this time of year the most dramatic plants in the Everglades in Coldfall Wood are the bulrushes. They sway in the wind, their dried leaves susurrating as if they are whispering to one another and, when the water level is as high as it currently is, they add an otherworldly air, as if they are relicts of a drowned world.

In the UK, the bulrush is also known as common reed mace, but the plant has a very wide native distribution, from Africa and Asia through to North America. It is not, however, the plant that the cradle of the baby Moses was found in – this is most likely to have been the paper reed (Cyperus papyrus).The bulrush is an ‘obligate’ wetland species, which means that it is always found alongside water, though it prefers the depth to be no greater than 2.6 feet. It is also fond of water with high levels of nutrients, which means that it does very well in places where there is run-off from roads and farms, and can be used for bio-remediation in polluted areas.

The flowerheads of the bulrush are so familiar that it takes a moment to realise how extraordinary they are. The female flowers are the fat, cigar-shaped objects that sit around for months and finally erupt into a mass of fluffy seeds. The male flowers form a lighter-coloured pyramid on top of the female flowers – in the photo above, you can see the spikes on the plants to the left where the male flowers have already gone. The photo below shows both male and female flowers – male flowers are ‘staminate’, female flowers are ‘pistillate’.

In the UK, bulrushes have not been used for medicinal or culinary purposes, or indeed for anything much at all except for adding a touch of drama to flower arrangements (or at least, this is all I could discover – feel free to put me right!) In North America, however, the plant (known there as reedmace or cattail) was much more widely used. A quick look at the Plant Lives entry on Typha latifolia reveals the following ways that the plant facilitated daily life:

• It was used ceremonially in both rain and sun dances by different Native American tribes
• The root was used to caulk canoes
• The leaves were used to make winter roofing that kept out both rain and snow
• Many tribes used the leaves to weave baskets
• Everything from raincoats to skirts was also made from the leaves
• The down from the female flowers was used to stuff pillows
• The down was also used as a weapon by the Chippewa tribe, in the belief that it would blind enemies if it was thrown into their faces
• The roots were ground and eaten by many tribes, and the first European settlers to North America were introduced to this food by the Native Americans that they met
• The male pollen was made into porridge and flour, and formed part of the staple diet of the Dakota and Chippewa tribes
• Young shoots and stems were also eaten
• Medicinally, it was used as a medicine for horses by the Iroquois, and was very widely used for human skin diseases.

Not bad for one plant! In fact, ‘Backwoods Home’, a North American website on self-sufficiency, describes Typha latifolia as ‘the super Wal-Mart of the swamp’. Anyone trying to survive on their wits in the wilderness would be well advised to keep an eye open for a patch of bulrushes, because, as the author of the piece above states, the plant provides food during any season, whether via its roots, its shoots (known as ‘Cossack asparagus’ because they were much favoured as wild food in Russia) or the young male flowerhead which can apparently be eaten like corn on the cob.

What intrigues me a little is how in the UK we seem to have ignored such a useful plant. Maybe there were other plants that could fill the same needs, without any wading into bogs and streams.  Who knows. What I do know is that I will be looking at it with a new-found enthusiasm and respect though, growing where it does, I doubt that I will be paddling out to see what its roots taste like any time soon.

Credits

Photo One – By Marshman at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2692834

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, those of you who read Saturday’s post will know that I’m spending a lot of time in our local cemetery at the moment, which gives me plenty of time to admire the primroses that are just coming into bloom. They seem to favour sites where the graves themselves have practically disappeared, and have mostly, I’m sure, spread from a couple of primroses planted when the ground was first turned and the headstones, now long-gone, first erected. Close to where I first spotted the fox sunning himself there are hundreds of primroses, poking their heads through the moss and dead leaves like so many eager fishes.

The late Oliver Rackham suggested that primroses will only really prosper where the soil is rich, and where there are higher than average levels of mineral nutrients. If this is so, maybe the primroses are taking advantage of the recycling of the bodies of those who died so long ago. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey notes that the Victorians often planted primroses on the graves of children, which adds a note of melancholy to those patches of prettiness.

The name ‘primrose’ means ‘first rose’, referring to the way that the plant is one of the first spring flowers to come into bloom (though it is not, of course, a rose, being a member of the Primulaceae family). This family includes, to my surprise, such dissimilar plants as cyclamen, pimpernels and creeping jenny.

Primroses come in many different forms, as anyone who has visited a garden centre lately will know. The popular, brash polyanthus is a cross between the native primrose and primula veris, the cowslip. How all those reds and blues came to be is anybody’s guess, but there is a fair amount of diversity even among wild plants. The yellow ‘eye’ in the centre of the plants above can be found in native primroses, but may also have been bred for. There are also occasional ‘rhubarb and custard’ primroses amongst the cream and yellow ones, which I can only imagine have popped up by themselves, over time.

April 19th is Primrose Day, which makes me happy because it is also my brother’s birthday. A bouquet of primroses is placed on Disraeli’s statue outside Westminster Abbey, because these were the politician’s favourite flower. They are also strongly associated with Easter, and, along with daffodils and chocolate eggs, seem to be a popular component of presents over the season. Primroses are also the county flower of Devon.

As I mentioned in last year’s post about the Cowslip, primroses come in two forms: Pin flowers and Thrum flowers. For pollination to be successful, it needs to be between flowers of different forms. Each plant will be either a Pin plant or a Thrum plant. In this way, the plant ensures that it cannot pollinate itself, a fact that helps to ensure diversity.

The leaves and flowers of primroses are said to be edible – certainly the blooms would make a lovely addition to a spring salad (maybe with some English asparagus if there’s any about). In The Ecologist, there’s a lovely (and very honest) article about the joys of cooking with something as delicate as a primrose flower by Susan Clark, and the end result is a primrose meringue nest drizzled with primrose honey, which sounds absolutely delightful. Do have a look at the article here. It made me roar with laughter.

A delicious dish called ‘primrose pottage’ was made from rice, honey, almonds, saffron and ground primrose flowers, and very delicious it sounds too.

The flowers can also be used to make primrose wine, which sounds like one of those drinks that you  pack in a picnic basket and drink under a fine old oak tree while the bees buzz languidly past. Well, I can dream. Most of my picnics involve knocking over the wine, noticing that the cream has gone off, being visited by curious and very muddy cows and suddenly realising that one of those cows is actually, well, a bull.

However, before you rush out with a wicker trug, wearing your best bonnet, to gather primrose flowers, note that they are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which makes it illegal to pick wild primroses or remove them from the wild. Best to get planting in your back garden I think, though as you need 350 primrose petals to make 5 litres of wine I hope you have an extensive acreage.

The primrose also has a long history as a medicinal plant. A Modern Herbal explains that, for Pliny, the primrose was almost a panacea for the treatment of paralysis, rheumatism and gout. Culpeper described how the leaves ‘made as fine a salve to heal wounds as any I know’. Another renowned herbalist, Gerard, notes that primrose tea, ‘drunk in the month of May is famous for curing the phrensie’. So next time you are visited by the phrensie, you know what to do.

So, as I go on my nightly visits to the cemetery for jam sandwich distribution, I am much heartened by the companionship of the primroses, which seem to glow in the half-light. I walk back from my mission, scuffing through the dead leaves and watching the wood pigeons fighting over the ivy-berries. And all along the way, the primroses edge the path, and extend off in every direction. If this is Shakespeare’s ‘primrose path of dalliance’, I am all for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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, this is, of course, a garden plant which pops up all over the place in churchyards and close to habitation, but what a pretty one! The tiny flowers, each the colour of lapis lazuli, are delicately fringed with white, and remind me a little of old-fashioned lady’s bloomers. The name ‘muscari’ comes from the Greek word muskos and refers to the scent, although it is not to everyone’s taste – another name for the garden grape hyacinth is ‘starch hyacinth’, as some people thought that it smelled like wet laundry.

Grape hyacinths are not technically hyacinths at all, but belong to the same family as asparagus, bluebells and lily of the valley. Like bluebells, they will spread far and wide if the conditions are to their liking, and in my experience they are some of the easiest of bulbs to persuade to naturalise and to come back year after year. Plus, they provide an early source of nectar for pollinators, and I have often seen them visited by early solitary bees and hoverflies.

What I did not know, however, was that in addition to the garden grape hyacinth that we see everywhere, the UK has its own native grape hyacinth (Muscari neglectum). This is a very rare plant, found mainly in Breckland, and has flowers that are a deep dark blue, almost black. The smaller, bluer flowers at the top are sterile.

In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey tells of one important site for Muscari neglectum at Lakenheath in Suffolk, a place now know mostly for its air-base. One area of grassland which was full of native grape hyacinths was levelled to make concrete areas for storing bombs. When the site was dismantled in the 1960’s the plants returned, and until the 1970’s, when the area was once again flattened for housing, thousands of the bulbs flowered every year. Suffolk locals apparently call the plants ‘grey parsons’, and if you try to say grape hyacinth with a Suffolk accent, you’ll see why.

The garden grape hyacinth is a native of the eastern Mediterranean, from Greece and Turkey to the Caucasus (hence the species name armeniacum). In Greek and Italian cookery, the bulbs are considered a delicacy (although they are poisonous), and are either preserved or pickled in oil after being boiled. I wonder if they are used like pickled onions, to add a certain savour to cheese or cooked meat? According to the ever-interesting Plant Lives website, grape hyacinth bulbs are believed to stimulate appetite.

So, this little bulb, which cheerfully goes about its business with little intervention from us is a real winner in pots or containers, or at the edge of a bed of daffodils. However, in the famous Keukenhof bulb gardens in the Netherlands, they celebrate the  garden grape hyacinth by creating a ‘blue river’  which meanders  through the park, edged here by white narcissus. A bit over the top, for sure, but breathtaking nonetheless. I think I must redouble my efforts with bulbs next year.  If only mine looked these, I would be a happy woman.

Credits

Photo One – By This photo was taken by Ryan Bushby(HighInBC) with his Canon PowerShot S3 IS. To see more of his photos see his gallery.

Photo Two – © Hans Hillewaert / , via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Three – By Tom Jutte https://www.flickr.com/photos/hereistom/8072659107

All other photographs copyright Vivienne Palmer