Tree Houseleek (Aeonium arboretum )

Dear Readers, when I wandered past my local retirement home last week I was stopped in my tracks by this magnificent succulent, which was poking its face through the fence. I am often impressed by what the residents grow in their small, west-facing gardens – one lady is growing potatoes in a bucket, while someone else is specialising in pelargoniums. This plant, however, is endemic to the floral biodiversity hotspot that is the Canary Islands – of 1600 species of plant, 680 are found naturally nowhere else in the world.  On the volcanic soils of its homeland (where it is known as the Bejeque),  the Aeonium develops into a ‘sub-shrub’, and has green leaves and bright yellow flowers. In case you wonder, as I did, what on earth a ‘sub-shrub’ is, the answer appears to be ‘a bush’.

I also wondered where the ‘houseleek’ name came from, for both this plant and for its smaller relatives. Apparently the word ‘leac’ in Anglo-Saxon meant ‘plant’, so the name literally means ‘house-plant’. I suspect that these exotic beauties have been kept indoors for a long, long time, if only because exposure to the elements in the UK normally means the end, at least for the more sub-tropical species.

A wild tree houseleek on Gran Canaria (Photo One)

There are many ‘domesticated’ varieties of the plant: you might be familiar with the green version, where the leaves are edged with scarlet.

The green and red version (Photo Two)

There is also a variegated version, like this one from the Exotic Gardens in Monaco.

Variegated version (Public Domain)

I have always had a soft spot for succulents as house plants: when I was a child they seemed so exotic to me, and I loved the way that you could break off a plantlet, stick it in a pot, and away it went. Sadly, I also learned that you could kill them with kindness: too much water and their shallow roots rotted, their leaves turned to mush and a favourite plant was suddenly very much an ex-plant. But with a little neglect (and a regular inspection for white-fly) they flourished. Mum would sometimes rescue the plants from her office – as soon as a plant looked ragged the plant-care company would throw it away, but Mum often came home with an enormous succulent in a black bin bag.

‘All it needs is a little love and attention’, she’d say, and within a few monts it would be magnificent. We didn’t have a lot of room in our little house in the East End, but we surely had some fine house plants.

Aeoniums are part of the stonecrop family (Crassulaceae) which includes not only exotics like our plant, but Alpine flowers such as the Sempervivums or sedums. What they share are adaptations for preventing waterloss: in both semi-arid areas and mountainsides there is often thin soil (which allows water to flow away quickly) and exposure (which means that the sun and wind make a plant prone to dehydration). Aeoniums have thick leaves which store moisture and resist desiccation, and these leaves can curl up if the conditions are too hot or dry, resulting in something that looks a little like a globe artichoke. Once they flower they often die, which is why it’s worth potting up a few baby plants while the plant is still growing.

Mountain Houseleek (Sempervivum montanum)

In general, Aeonium plants cannot survive frost, but there are some naturalised populations in the Scilly Islands, where they take advantage of the balmier temperatures.

Now, I didn’t expect to find that this plant was edible, but I did find a rather interesting Youtube video, where the author eats the leaves of wild-harvested Aeonium arboreum that s/he finds on the coastline in Chile in a salad with tomato and cucumber (the plant is naturalised widely in many parts of the world where the climate is favourable). The spring leaves are apparently also used medicinally, principally for heart and liver problems. You can find the whole video here and very interesting it is too, especially on the subject of why the Canary Islanders only seem to have used the plant for medicinal purposes rather than as food (short answer – when you have bananas and mangoes why would you eat succulents?)

And finally, a poem. It’s rare that I read one that makes me laugh out loud, but this one did the trick, though I fear this is not its intention. The poet, John Gray (1866 – 1934), was romantically involved with Oscar Wilde ( he was possibly the inspiration for the character of Dorian Gray). He may also have been in a dalliance with the Arthur Edmonds of the dedication, who was Gray’s co-worker at the Confidential Enquiry Branch of the Civil Service.  Gray was part of the Aesthetic movement, and I can imagine him sitting at his desk, head in hand, a bouquet of lilies dying gently on the shelf behind him. He ended up as a Catholic priest, so at least this was only a passing phase.

In the poem, the ‘metal Burns’ is thought to be a bronze statue of the poet that stands in Victoria Embankment Gardens in London. And what a work this poem is! I love the ‘leprous daisies’ and particularly the ‘foul child’ – there is such a sense of languid distaste for all things wholesome and pure that I find myself reaching for the absinthe. And yes, the link with our poor plant is tenuous to say the least, though it is at least a ‘houseleek’. You try finding a poem about Aeonium and see where it gets you  :-).

Photo Credits

Photo One by By H. Zell – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55094687

Photo Two by By Philipp Weigell – picture taken by Philipp Weigell, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4337610

Dear Readers, as you will know I have been very neglectful of my poor garden during the past few years. But in the last few weeks there has been a flurry of cutting back and digging up (the box bushes were so well munched by box moth that it wasn’t worth keeping them) and so I am at the point of planning what to plant to keep the critters and the humans happy in the years to come.

My garden falls into two parts. It is north-facing, with heavy clay soil, and to add to the challenges, the left-hand side is extremely dry, with several medium sized trees, while the right-hand side is dominated by the pond. The garden has always been something of a challenge, but this time I am going to give it some serious thought. What can I plant that will thrive, look good, have a long season and keep the bees and other invertebrates happy? Here are my thoughts on the dry-shade part so far. Feel free to interject :-).

On the shrub front, I only really have room to add one plant, and so I am going for Oregon grape (probably Mahonia aquifolium). I have grown this before and know that it likes clay soil. My wildlife reason is that it is often the only thing in flower when queen bumblebees emerge during mild winters and early spring. I will need to plant it closer to the house, where it gets at least some sun – you can plant all the nectar-rich flowers that you like, but if the shade is too deep you will not attract very many insects.

Mahonia aquifolium

On the perennial front, my garden has long lacked hellebores, and I intend to make up that deficit this year. My Gardening for Wildlife book by Adrian Thomas mentions christmas rose but I might also look at our native species, such as stinking hellebore.

I will definitely be avoiding the pretty double-flowered varieties, which have less value for the creepy-crawlies. Hellebores are, again, early flowerers, which is a bonus.

Christmas Rose (Helleborus niger)

I am hearing good things about some varieties of Heuchera (Coral Bells) as wildlife plants, which surprises me a little as I have always thought of them as pretty but useless. If you have any experience with this plant, do let me know. My book recommends Heuchera ‘Firefly’ in particular, but there are so many varieties these days that it makes my head spin. I have always had a penchant for the ones with lime-green foliage, especially when paired with the chocolate-brown ones. I think they remind me of the chocolate-lime sweets that I used to eat when I was a child.

Heuchera sanguinea ‘Firefly’ (Photo One)

And then there is lungwort, or Pulmonaria. I love the way that the flowers change colour on this plant as each bloom is pollinated, and the spotted leaves remind me of a leopard. It’s another lovely woodland plant.

Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis)

Hardy geraniums will feature, of course. I already have a mass of dusky cranesbill (Geranium phaeum) but it finishes very early in the year, and I need another plant to take up the baton. My book recommends Geranium x macrorrhizum (or Balkan cranesbill), and I noticed this doing very well in my Aunt Hilary’s garden, so I suspect it will be soon be popping up in mine! There are several varieties, with ‘Ingwerson’s Variety’ winning an RHS Order of Merit.

Dusky cranesbill (Geranium phaeum) (Photo Two)

Geranium macrorrhizum ‘Ingersen’s Variety) (Photo Three)

For ground cover, I am thinking of some dead-nettles, probably Lamium maculatum, although I’ve had mixed experiences with it in the past – I think my dry shade is possibly too dry in parts even for this bruiser! I shall plant it in somewhere with a bit more sunshine this time, and am probably going to mulch everything this year as well.

Lamium maculatum (Photo Four)

On the bulb front, I am addicted to fritillaries, and shall pop in a few more this year.

Fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris)

There is a company in the UK called Farmer Gracy which does all manner of intriguing, and they have a remarkable selection of fritillaries that I’ve never heard of. It is the kind of website that makes one positively salivate, so be warned to hide your credit card before you pop in. I am tempted by several, including Fritillaria persica ‘Twin Towers’. There is also a green variety. Now that I am a working woman, maybe I’ll indulge…

Fritillaria persica ‘Twin Towers (Photo Five)

Fritillaria persica ‘Ivory Bells’ (Photo Six)

And of course, no woodland garden would be complete without some foxgloves. Mine self-seeded last year, but of course they won’t flower until 2021, being biennials, so maybe I’ll find some plants that will flower this year, so that I’ll then have a succession.

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)

And finally, a plant that I’ve never grown but which always seems like a pollinator-magnet is honesty . It has those lovely pink flowers, transparent seed cases in the autumn, and again it self-seeds. I shall definitely have a go this year.

Honesty (Annua Lunaria)

So, that’s the plan at the moment. I am considering various other plants (grape hyacinths, squill, snowdrops), but I will soon be running out of room (my garden is not enormous in spite of my ambitions!). Next week I shall be considering what to plant in and next to my pond, which is looking more like a muddy puddle than an oasis of calm at the moment, but if you have any thoughts on dry shade plants that have done well in your experience, do let me know. I haven’t actually bought anything yet!

Damsons at Tony’s Continental in East Finchley

Dear Readers, my local greengrocer, Tony’s Continental on the High Road in East Finchley, London, is my go-to spot for unusual produce. Some fruits and vegetables come in and out of season at such a rate that you might miss them if you blink. And now is the season for plums of all kinds: the golden-skinned Victoria, the olive-coloured greengage, and our subject today, the night-hued damson. Unlike other plums, the damson errs on the side of astringency, giving it a mouth-puckering flavour that, when tamed down a bit with something sweet, makes it one of my favourite subjects for jam.

The name ‘damson’ is thought to come from the name ‘damascene’, meaning ‘Plum of Damascus’, and one theory suggest that the plant came to the UK with the Romans. Certainly damson stones have been found at some Roman sites during archaeological digs. Damsons are probably a domesticated variety of a subspecies of the wild plum known as the Bullace, and their full species name is Prunus domestica subspecies insititia variety damascena. Wild damsons occasionally pop up in hedgerows or on woodland edges, but all wild plums are extremely variable and difficult to identify. The fruit of the damson is dark indigo, with a slight bloom of pale blue and sometimes with small patches of rust. The ones in the photo below remind me of Europa, the moon of Jupiter, although I’ll admit that they are rather more ovoid. Damsons are, as anyone who has attempted to make jam with them will tell you, of the ‘clingstone’ variety – this means that the flesh clings to the stone, making them something of a pain to prepare for jam. However, many cooks boil them up intact and remove the the stones at the end, once the fruit is pulped and split. The stones are said to impart a subtle almond flavour, largely due to the small quantity of cyanide that they contain.

Damson on the tree (Photo One)

Europa (from NASA – Public Domain)

At one time, damsons were an extremely popular food crop – they are said to be the only plums planted north of Norfolk, and were used extensively for commercial jam-making. The plants were also used as hedging in orchards to protect more delicate trees. They were taken to North America by English settlers in the eighteenth century and were thought to thrive better in the local conditions than other plum varieties. In some places, such as Idaho, the plant naturalised and can be found growing wild.

Damson Flowers (Photo Two)

With its dark colour, it’s no surprise that damsons were reputed to have been used in local dyeing industries. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey reports how a variety of damson called the ‘Edlesborough Prune’ (from a village near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire) was used to provide dye for the Luton hat trade, while the ‘Aylesbury Prune’ was unique to the village of Weston Turville, and was used as a dye on the straw plaiting that was a cottage industry at the time. However, contemporary experiments with using damsons as a dye have been rather disappointing in terms of the colours produced – see this post from Jenny Dean’s Wild Colour for example. One conclusion is that the fruit was probably used primarily for eating, with only damaged fruit being used for dye as a side line. Another is that the ‘damson’ used for dyeing might have been a completely different plant, or that there might have been some trick to extracting the colour. It is clear, however, that there are a multitude of different, very local varieties of wild plum with varied characteristics. What a treasure of genetic diversity they could be!

Now, to return to the subject of jam. I have three books on preserving (my cookbook collection is only outnumbered by my collection of field guides and nature books) and they all have a different approach to this fruit. In ‘Five Seasons of Jam’, Lillie O’Brien suggests making a virtue of the damson’s high pectin content to make damson ‘cheese’ (a bit like quince paste). This also has the added benefit that the fruit is cooked with the stones in and then sieved, avoiding all that tedious stoning. In my second book, ‘Salt, Sugar, Smoke’ by Diana Henry, there is a gratifying concentration on alcohol, with a recipe for damson and gin jam (the damsons are cooked with the stone in, and these are then skimmed off). She also has a recipe for damson gin, which is very similar to sloe gin, one of my all-time favourite tipples. This involves piercing each damson with a skewer, but it produces a most delicious, warming drink that I associate with winter and with Christmas in particular. In my final book, ‘The Modern Preserver’ by Kylee Newton, there is a recipe for damson and orange jam. Kylee suggests using the preserve instead of raspberry jam in a Bakewell tart, a thought that gets my mouth watering. Apparently damsons also freeze well, so I think I shall have to rush to Tony’s and get a bag full for one of those days when I’m not run off my feet. Making jam is a most meditative and gratifying process, but it does take a bit of time.

Incidentally, damson wine was once a common drink in England: a nineteenth century source stated that ‘good damson wine is, perhaps, the nearest approach to good port that we have in England. No currant wine can equal it.'(Damson Wine”, in Hogg and Johnson (eds) The Journal of Horticulture, Cottage Gardener, and Country Gentleman, v.III NS (1862), 264)

A display of damson jam from the Beamish Museum Co-Op (Photo Three)

Now, in my research for this piece I came across the most delightful website, called ‘Damson Plums‘ by Daiv Sizer. They moved into a house with an old damson tree in the garden, and were immediately smitten by the abundance of the fruit and the low-maintenance required by the plant. Daiv has created a complete guide to everything damson related, including history, recipes and the culture surrounding the plant. I had no idea that it had featured in so many poems by so many authors, from last week’s favourite Seamus Heaney to Shakespeare and Chaucer. The fruit also appears several times in the books of George Eliot, and in Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Woodlanders’ the character Suke Damson, a wild and buxom village maiden, is seen by one critic as being ‘the juicy plum is ripe for Fitzpier’s plucking’ (Landscape and Gender in the Novels of Bronte, Eliot and Hardy, by Eithne Henson). But for this week’s poem I shall return to another favourite, Edward Thomas. Thomas wrote this poem in 1915 while he was in Essex, teaching map-reading to officers. He had been encouraged to sign up (although he was a mature man who didn’t need to enlist) after reading his friend Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Less Travelled’ – Frost intended the poem to be a way of gently mocking Thomas’s indecision during their woodland walks, but Thomas took it much more seriously. In 1917 he died at Arras in France, having been shot through the chest. Rarely can a piece of poetry have had such a devastating effect.

‘There’s nothing like the sun‘