Dear Readers, at this time of year Herb Bennet appears (pretty vigorously if my garden is anything to go by) and causes all sorts of confusion. It’s such a delicate little thing, a member of the rose family and not too distantly related to the strawberry, and yet once it gets going you will find it popping up everywhere. Fittingly for a north-facing garden, it doesn’t  seem to mind the shade. I have a great fondness for the seedheads, which remind me of the miniature ‘hair-dos’ of clematis.

I note that in my original Wednesday Weed piece, written in 2015, I rather passed over the details of the medicinal virtues of the plant, but having recently acquired a Culpeper’s Herbal I can reveal that Culpeper described the plant as ‘governed by Jupiter, and that gives hopes of a wholesome, healthful herb’. The whole of the next paragraph sounds positively rhapsodic, and here’s just a sample:

‘The decoction also being drunk comforts the heart, and strengthens the stomach, and a cold brain, and therefore is good in the springtime to open obstructions of the liver; and helps the wind colic. It also helps those who have fluxes, or are bursten, or have a rupture….It is very safe, you need have no dose prescribed; and it is very fit to be kept in everyone’s house’. 

I find myself very moved by all this. In a time when medicine was hit or miss at the best, how reassuring this little plant with its multiple virtues must have been! And while it would be easy to find the idea of people ‘bursten’ or ‘having fluxes’ as slightly comic, I am of a serious humour today, and find myself empathising with people who were trying to live their lives in the midst of all sorts of pain and contagion, and with very little to help them outside of the herbalist and the apothecary. The thought of being able to gather something for free that might help must have been so comforting, and who knows what difference this humble herb would have made?

Another interesting thing that I’ve discovered since my original post concerns the plant’s Latin name, Geum urbanum. This always struck me as a rather strange name for a plant that’s an ancient woodland indicator, but it appears that Herb Bennet is often seen as an urban ‘weed’ on the streets of Stockholm and Oslo, and indeed in Edinburgh. Linnaeus, who named it, was a very observant man, and I don’t believe that the species name ‘urbanum‘ came out of nowhere. So, here we have a plant at home in the deepest, darkest wood, and growing out of the pavement. What a plant!

As I may have mentioned before, I’m not a botanist. In order to identify a plant that has appeared in the garden, I usually have to allow it to bloom before I can even start to put a name to it. And so it was with this delicate, straggly yellow flower, which turned up for the first time this year. At first, I wondered if it was some kind of buttercup, or even a renegade yellow strawberry. But eventually I worked out that it is a Herb Bennet, or Wood Avens, a member of the rose family and closely related to the cinquefoils and, yes, the strawberries.

The name ‘Herb Bennet’ comes from the word Benedictus, so the whole plant is seen as a blessing. Hanging the plant up above your door was said to protect against evil spirits, and also against venomous snakes and rabid dogs. These virtues were absorbed into the early Christian tradition: the plant has three leaves, said to reflect the Holy Trinity, and, usually, five petals, reminiscent of the Five Wounds of Christ. I say usually because my plant appears to have six petals. It was also thought to be associated with St Benedict, who formed the Benedictine order of monks.

The roots of the plant apparently have a clove-like smell, which has been used to flavour ale, and to deter clothes moths. The root, which had to be picked by 25th March in order to retain its vital qualities,  has been used to treat everything from diarrhoea to fever to headache. The lovely foraging site Celtnet suggests using it as a pot herb, or as a clove substitute in apple pie.

Herb Bennet, like Pendulous Sedge last week, is a plant of ancient woodland. Again, I am intrigued by the way that it has turned up in the garden for the first time. The seeds of this plant are normally transported by animals:

As you can see, the seedheads are covered in tiny hooks, and these can be transported from place to place on clothing, or in the fur of dogs, cats and rabbits. So, did my plant arrive attached to a wandering cat who had previously been in Coldfall Wood, and set up home because the conditions were right? I fear I will never know, but again I wonder if the land beneath my feet remembers that less than a hundred and fifty years ago, it was a wood too. Whatever the reason, I am very happy to be hosting this little plant, with its long tradition of culinary and medicinal blessings.