Dear Readers, today my friend A and I went for a good long walk in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, on a beautiful sunny day. We were rewarded by the sight of this wonderful little falcon sitting on top of an ash tree, and watching the ground for any passing mice or voles. This is, of course, another good reason for not putting down rat or mouse poison. This bird is a juvenile – the male would have a  grey head, more distinct teardrop marks and a black bar on the tail, while the female lacks the grey head.

It’s so wonderful to see another generation of kestrels in the cemetery. The large area of open grassland really suits them, and they don’t mind that there are headstones everywhere. And I imagine that sitting on a tree watching for prey is much less energy-intensive than being a ‘wind-hover’, as in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s wonderful ecstatic poem. It gives me goosebumps every time I read it.

The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Kestrels are the most confiding of birds of prey – I think this one thought themselves invincible on the top of the tree, as we got closer and closer (though not too close, this is at x50 magnification). Like many predators, they are both curious and steadfast, and I feel so privileged to have spent a few moments in their company. The bird was still perched in the tree when we moved on.

And in the dappled, soft sunlight in the wooded part of the cemetery, this comma butterfly, as fresh as paint, flitted ahead of us.

Comma butterflies are an unusual and happy success story. They suffered a severe drop in numbers iwhen the hop plants that the caterpillars used to eat became rare, with the decline of the brewing industry. Then, suddenly, they seem to have discovered a liking for stinging nettles, and ever since their population has been growing and spreading further north. If this morning is anything to go by, they are going to have a bumper year.

This poem, by American poet Ellen Bass, really touched me. See what you think, Readers…

Dead Butterfly

By Ellen Bass

For months my daughter carried
a dead monarch in a quart mason jar.
To and from school in her backpack,
to her only friend’s house. At the dinner table
it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast.
She took it to bed, propped by her pillow.

Was it the year her brother was born?
Was this her own too-fragile baby
that had lived—so briefly—in its glassed world?
Or the year she refused to go to her father’s house?
Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there?

This plump child in her rolled-down socks
I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me
and carry safe again. What was her fierce
commitment? I never understood.
We just lived with the dead winged thing
as part of her, as part of us,
weightless in its heavy jar.

Dear Readers, my dear friend S gave me this plant last week, and ever since I’ve been completely fascinated. We often think of plants as being static beings, but of course they aren’t, they grow and move towards the sun and do lots of other things, but usually over a timescale that’s slower than ours. Purple Shamrock, however, opens its leaves like butterfly wings at the first sign of light, before collapsing like an umbrella once it’s dark. Have a look at a film showing the phenomenon here. This kind of movement is known as photonasty (not to be confused with video nasty), and it refers to ‘nastic movement’ – this is normally found in plants and relates to them being able to change the pressure of water within their tissues. With the Purple Shamrock, the leaves are pumped full of fluid in response to light, enabling them to maximise the surface area exposed to the sun. When it’s night time, the turgor pressure falls, and the leaves collapse. Amazing!

Purple Shamrock is not a ‘the’ shamrock associated with Ireland and St Patrick’s Day in particular. Instead, it’s a wood sorrel – we’ve covered several species of the family before, from the lovely Wood Sorrel that can be found in ancient woodland to the little brown and yellow Procumbent Yellow Sorrel which pops up at the bottom of urban walls, and Pink Sorrel, a pretty garden plant that is increasingly hopping over the wall and heading off into the wild.

No chance of Purple Shamrock doing that any time soon in the UK, as the plant isn’t frost tolerant: it comes originally from South America, in particular Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina. It has established itself in the wild in Florida and Louisiana, where presumably the temperature and humidity matches its requirements. In Brazil, the plant is thought to bring good luck (the trifoliate leaves are thought to represent  the Holy Trinity), and is often given as a New Year’s present.

Much to my astonishment, I’ve found several articles which suggest that this plant is edible, along with one which points out that it is ‘potentially poisonous’ to humans and pets. Discretion is definitely the better part of valour with this one. It contains oxalic acid, which can aggravate the kidneys, and can bind calcium, making it unavailable to the body. All in all, it’s much better to look at than to munch upon.

Apparently my Purple Shamrock should enjoy indirect light, not too much water, and will undergo a dormant period (so I’ll need to be prepared). At the moment it’s popping out flowers and leaves like nobody’s business. What a delight it is! I actually have a room in my house where I try to save ailing house plants, but it’s so nice to have one that seems happy. Let’s see how it gets on. Maybe I’ll be dividing it up and giving it to friends myself soon. Propagated plants are such a joy to share.

 

And of course, here’s a poem. I read this twice, and it grew on me. See you what you think.

Away
By Vona Groarke

We have our own smallholding:
persimmon tree, crawl space, stoop,
red earth basement, ceiling fans, a job.

Hours I’m not sure where I am,
flitting through every amber
between Gales and Drumcliffe Road.

I paint woodwork the exact azure
of a wave’s flipside
out the back of Spiddal pier

and any given morning pins
a swatch of sunlight
to my purple shamrock plant.

My faithless heart ratchets
in time to slower vowels,
higher daylight hours.

I grow quiet. Yesterday
I answered in a class of Irish
at the checkout of Walgreen’s.

I walk through the day-to-day
as if ferrying a pint glass
filled to the brim with water

that spills into my own accent:
pewtered, dim, far-reaching,
lost for words.

Dear Readers, it’s particularly poignant reading this now, especially the paragraph about my Dad, who died a few days after I wrote this, on 31st March 2020. And five years on, I’m still writing every day. How does it feel for you, looking back on that extraordinary time? Personally I feel as if we still haven’t come to terms with it, but lots of people just want to forget about it and get on with their lives.  For me, though, there were important lessons to be learned about community, about how we look after one another (especially the most  vulnerable amongst us), and about how we value those who are on the front line in these situations.    I also suspect that our governments are not any better prepared for the next pandemic, pessimistic though that sounds. Sending any of you who need it a big hug. 

Dear Readers, it has been a remarkable few weeks. On Friday 13th March I headed off for my big 60th birthday trip to Borneo, something that I’d been planning for over a year. At the time there were no travel advisories for Malaysia, and the main problems with Covid-19 seemed to be in China (where it was seemingly coming under control), Italy (in lockdown) and South Korea. Malaysia had a small number of cases, and Singapore, where we were heading to at the end of the trip, had the best results of any country in containing the disease. However, for the past ten days it has felt as if we are surfing just ahead of a huge wave. Singapore was closed, so that part of the trip was cancelled. Malaysia announced a lockdown, so no new tourists arrived. We were the last visitors at each place that we stayed, and the staff and guides at the lodges had no idea when they’d be able to work again after we left. Our plane home, on Sunday night, was packed with people who’d gotten stuck all over Asia. Out of 60 planes leaving from Kota Kinabalu, 56 were cancelled. I am so grateful and lucky to be home, and am also full of sadness, both for the beautiful but benighted country that I visited, and for the terrible effects of this virus. And don’t get me started on the inadequate responses of our own government.

So, I have lots of things to share with you, and I will start a daily blog from Thursday so that I can take you all with me on my Borneo adventure (minus the mosquito bites). But first, I wanted to check in with you and see how you are all doing. I know that different places are in different degrees of lockdown, but here in the UK all non-essential shops are closed along with schools, churches, and other meeting places. Physical distancing is supposed to be observed, with a 2 metre gap between people who don’t live together when in public spaces. You can go out to exercise once a day (and I’ve already had a brisk walk around Coldfall Wood, where most people seem to have got the message about keeping their distance). The police now have powers to enforce the closures and physical distancing but it will be interesting to see how that goes. The measures are supposed to be reviewed in three weeks, but realistically I expect this to last for a good few months at least. I am able to work from home, which is great, and for me I think that the key will be to get into a routine – it would be so easy to disappear into a black hole of online Covid-19 news and general nonsense. I recognise, again, how lucky I am in so many ways: I am in good health, my husband is also my best friend so we won’t be throwing things at one another as the weeks go on, and it’s easy to get to the local shops that are open for food. I am joining one of the local voluntary support groups so that I can help with shopping or picking up medications for people who are totally self-isolating, and that will help me feel connected. Plus, the garden is full of birds and the fritillaries are in bloom, so nature, as always, helps to make me feel grounded.

My biggest worry is Dad. His nursing home has been in lockdown for several weeks now, with no visitors allowed. On Sunday he developed a chest infection and was admitted to the local hospital. He is now improving, but has to await the results of a COVID-19 test, which is taking two days. This seems like a very long time to wait for test results – if Dad is getting better I suspect he doesn’t have the virus, and therefore is blocking a bed for someone who is much sicker than him. Plus, his dementia makes him extremely distressed in unfamiliar surroundings, and visitors are strictly limited. Fortunately his favourite carer from the home is going to see if there’s any way that she can get in to see him today, which will help, and hopefully he’ll test clear and be out on Wednesday. These situations always make me feel helpless, and it’s even worse when I can’t get down to see him myself.

So, I would love to know how you’re holding up under the strain of the current situation. It’s an anxiety-provoking time for us all, and we will need one another more than ever. How are you spending your time? Are you, like me, looking at the clutter and deciding that this might be the time to make life a bit simpler? Are you able to get out into the garden or into nature? What hobbies or pastimes calm your nerves? And do you have any advice for the rest of us? We are living through a historic time, and there will be lessons to be learned that will resonate through the years to come. How we look after ourselves and one another may give us valuable information about the kind of world that we want to live in going forward.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, today there was a Bird Walk in Coldfall Wood, one of two patches of ancient woodland here in East Finchley. We’d already had a good walk when, right at the end, our guide, Gareth Richards, heard a familiar song. And then, a Firecrest flew out of the holly along the edge of the wood. What a treat!

Firecrests and Goldcrests are the UK’s  smallest birds, both weighing in at 4-7 grams (less than a quarter of an inch for those who are Imperial-measurement  inclined. But the Firecrest has a bold line through its eye, and that bright orange crest, though this isn’t obvious all the time.

Plus, I always think that the Goldcrests have rather indignant little faces. In my experience, I often see Goldcrests in yew or other conifers, but Gareth explained that Firecrests prefer holly and ivy, especially amongst oak trees – just the kind of habitat where we spotted ‘our’ Firecrest.

Firecrests are relatively rare birds (though not on the Red List), so this was a great find for the wood – the British Trust for Ornithology estimates that there are about 2000 breeding pairs in the UK, as opposed to 790,000 breeding pairs of Goldcrests.  Apparently Firecrests are increasing in number in London, which is great (we need all the birds we can get!) Firecrests and Goldcrests can sometimes be found together, but they differ in the prey that they eat, which reduces competition  – Firecrests favour bigger prey and, in addition to stealing dead insects from spider’s webs, they may also eat the spiders themselves. In Europe, Firecrests may nest in the same tree as the mighty Northern Goshawk, which will feed on the Firecrest’s main predators, such as sparrowhawks and squirrels. If we ever get one of these in Coldfall Wood you’ll certainly hear about it!

Firecrest really are a great find for Coldfall Wood, and it makes me think  that I should definitely do more regular birding there. If we don’t look, we don’t know what we’ll find. And that goes for any local ‘patch’,  be it a park, a garden, a stretch of shoreline or an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We found 30 species of bird in 90 minutes today, which just  goes to show that all is not lost, and there is still much to see if we’re patient and pay attention.

Dear Readers, you may have been amazed by the behaviour of Bower Birds, who are often the stalwarts of nature documentaries. This family of birds lives in Australia and Papua New Guinea, and they are expert creators of ‘bowers’, where they perform dances in order to entice females. Some of the bowers are quite simple, but some of them are very highly decorated, often with items of a particular colour (blue seems to be a favourite).

Female birds come and inspect the bower, and if it meets with their approval they may allow the male to mate.

Well, in the UK we have a small wading bird, the Ringed Plover, who displays a similar-ish behaviour. In this case, it’s the nest site is decorated with broken shells before any eggs are laid. Although this behaviour is well-known by ornithologists and conservationists (who use the shells as a visual cue for where the birds are nesting), nobody really knows why the birds do this.

However, in this month’s British Birds magazine, Liam Andrews has noticed that a nest on the edge of an airstrip on the Out Skerries in Scotland was decorated with white flakes of paint, scraped from a concrete post twenty metres away which had peeling paint – the area had no seashells, so the bird seems to have reached for a substitute.

So, clearly this little bird is so motivated by the need to decorate the nest that it will seek out white scraps even when there are no seashells available. But why? It may be that the female prefers a few spots of white when choosing a nest site. It might be that the white spots mimic droppings and give some indication that a bird is already nesting, and so it’s safe. Whatever the reason, I would have thought that it made the nest site more visible from the sky, and that would be a worry, although the chicks are extremely well camouflaged, and are able to run about from the moment they hatch if danger strikes.

Ringed Plovers also have an impressive tactic for dealing with predators – like many of their relatives, they will run away from the nest while dragging a wing so that it looks as if they’re injured. When they’ve lured the predator away from the nest they’ll take to the wing.

For once, the Ringed Plover is not on the Red List, but it is threatened by human/dog disturbance near its nesting sites – for many wading, ground-nesting birds even the sight of a dog on a lead can be enough to startle them from the nest, let alone a dog that’s running free. I love dogs, but I do think that at least some of these nesting sites should be off limits to humans and dogs when it’s breeding season. Surely that’s not too much to ask?

 

 

Dear Readers, when Constable painted this landscape over two hundred years ago, he could little have thought that the trees he depicts so lovingly would now be vanishingly rare – there are now less than 7000 Black Poplar (Populus nigra subsp betulifolia) trees in the UK. Furthermore, only 600 of the trees are female, problematic in this species where the sexes are separate. This is a tree of boggy ground, and as more and more land has been drained for agriculture it has largely disappeared from Britain’s countryside. Furthermore, female trees were always considered a bit ‘messy’ – this tree is a member of the cottonwood poplar family, and the seeds are fluffy little things, spreading what looks like cotton wool far and wide. Finally, the variation of the trees is limited, with only 150 of the remaining trees being genetically distinct.

Still, all is not lost: the National Trust has sprung into action, creating a gene bank of seeds, and has replanted a flood plain on the Killerton Estate in East Devon. 80 trees of varying genetic heritage have been planted, and the hope is that, once the trees are established, cuttings can be sent to other suitable sites all over the country. Male and female trees have to be within 200 metres of one another to reproduce, and as the population has declined this has become less and less likely to happen, so the new ‘forest’ could be a lifeline for the species. The National Trust has also identified several other sites where the Black Poplar was probably present in the past, and could be re-introduced.

The Black Poplar can live for 200 years and grow up to 30 metres tall, making it arguably the UK’s tallest native tree. Ecologically, it provides food for a wide variety of moths and other insects, including the spectacular Poplar Hawk Moth.

So, let’s hope that this sterling effort by the National Trust pays off. The UK is nature-deprived enough without losing another species.

Dear Readers, last year I wrote a post about watching the swifts on our road here in East Finchley – they kept flying up into the eaves of buildings as if looking for a nest site, and finding nothing. Fortunately the scaffolding at my house has given me a chance to pop up a swift nesting box, and if any birds show an interest I shall certainly be adding some more.

You are not supposed to have favourites, but swifts are right up there with my favourite birds. Maybe it’s because they stay for such a short time. It might be because they are the most aerial of land birds, never touching the ground, flying, feeding, mating in the air. Maybe it’s because they’re such harum-scarum hooligan birds, almost daring one another to see how close they can come to the pavement, the rush of wings lifting your hair. But they having a breeding population decline of 66% since the 1950s, largely due to the decline in their insect prey, upon which they are completely dependent, and the loss of breeding sites. Hence the swift box. I am keeping everything crossed that they like it (though a friend tells me that her swift box is home to house sparrows. As they are also a Red List species, I wouldn’t be too upset.

I once had a cat who belied her fluffy, slow-witted appearance with the hunting instincts of a velociraptor. One day I came downstairs to find that she had deposited a live swift in her food bowl. I couldn’t believe it at first – I could only assume that the bird had been skimming the patio and got unlucky. What an extraordinary creature it was, close up – almond-shaped eyes, scimitar wings and tiny feet. I took it to a wildlife sanctuary, where they pronounced it unharmed, and thought that it could go free after a night to recover. After that, I kept the cat in when I heard the swifts about, but they are one of the few birds who are not much affected by these furry predators.

What to do? Well, swifts nest overwhelmingly in areas of human habitation. On my road I’ve started a campaign to encourage people to stick up a swift box when they’re having renovations done (which on my road is pretty much constant), and a few kind souls have already agreed. I was inspired by Hannah Bourne-Taylor, a tireless, indefatigable campaigner on behalf of swifts, who has been trying to get the government to mandate the inclusion of swift bricks in every new development.  Why is it so hard to get the smallest of changes enacted on behalf of wildlife? But with this, at least, there’s something we can try to do.

For those of us who might be yearning to hear the swift again, here are some from Sweden (with a cuckoo in the background for good measure). You can hear the rush of wings.

And finally, a poem, one I hadn’t come across before, by Anne Stevenson. See what you think.

Swifts

By Anne Stevenson

Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.
The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.
But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child
You shout, ‘The swifts are back!’

Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther
Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.
Swereee swereee. Another. And another.
It’s the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs.

The next day, a fleet of high crosses cruises in ether.
These are the air pilgrims, pilots of air rivers.
But a shift of wing, and they’re earth-skimmers, daggers
Skilful in guiding the throw of themselves away from themselves.

Quick flutter, a scimitar upsweep, out of danger of touch, for
Earth is forbidden to them, water’s forbidden to them,
All air and fire, little owlish ascetics, they outfly storms,
They rush to the pillars of altitude, the thermal fountains.

Here is a legend of swifts, a parable —
When the Great Raven bent over earth to create the birds,
The swifts were ungrateful. They were small muddy things
Like shoes, with long legs and short wings,

So they took themselves off to the mountains to sulk.
And they stayed there. ‘Well,’ said the Raven, after years of this,
‘I will give you the sky. You can have the whole sky
On condition that you give up rest.’

‘Yes, yes,’ screamed the swifts, ‘We abhor rest.
We detest the filth of growth, the sweat of sleep,
Soft nests in the wet fields, slimehold of worms.
Let us be free, be air!’

So the Raven took their legs and bound them into their bodies.
He bent their wings like boomerangs, honed them like knives.
He streamlined their feathers and stripped them of velvet.
Then he released them, Never to Return

Inscribed on their feet and wings. And so
We have swifts, though in reality, not parables but
Bolts in the world’s need: swift
Swifts, not in punishment, not in ecstasy, simply

Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world’s breathing.
The grace to say they live in another firmament.
A way to say the miracle will not occur,
And watch the miracle.

 

Dear Readers, all week long I’ve had builders replacing my windows. What hard, dusty, physical work it is! And they’ve done a lovely job too, with real pride and attention to detail. It feels important for me to remember the generations of my ancestors who worked with their hands (and their legs, backs, arms, brains). And so, here are a few work-related poems. See what you think.

Filling Station

By Elizabeth Bishop

Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
esso—so—so—so
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

Oh lord, this one….’Alabanza’ means ‘Praise’.

Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100

By Martín Espada
for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local l00, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center

Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.

Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.

Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.

After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.

Who remembers cinema ushers, guiding you to your seat with their torch? What happened to them, I wonder?

The Dignity of Ushers

By Al Maginnes

Their authority did not unfold
from ironed white shirts and thin ties
or from the funereal seriousness that struck
their acne-splashed faces but because
they stood heir to our native faith in light.

So we followed the thin white waver
of beams they pointed down aisles
to seats we never thought of refusing.
It was the first job I wanted,
especially after birthday outings

far from home showed me the glowing
outfits worn by big-city ushers, their get-ups
a blend of doorman and military dictator,
as gaudy and fine as the plots
of movies my Saturdays were swallowed by.

None of us knew, as they took us
into the artificial light of the cinema,
that they walked the path of the pin setter,
the blacksmith or elevator operator,
professions reduced to curiosity

by wandering time. Only in the quick steps
of floor salesmen, the slim backs of hostesses
bringing us to our tables, do they remain,
the artful flutters of their flashlights lost
in dark we are left to find our own way through.

Any favourite work poems, readers? A most under-poeted area, I’m sure.

Dear Readers, it’s funny how things go around. Five years ago I wrote a post about this inoffensive little plant, which turns out to be the first plant to have its genome sequenced, and to be the source of all kinds of exciting information about plants in general. Then, this week on my Open University course we have some group work on a model organism – this is a plant/creature/bacteria which has had its genome investigated in depth, and which has helped to explain what the various genes do, and how different organisms are related to one another. Furthermore, some of the key areas that make every living thing ‘work’ evolved way back in bacteria and viruses, and have proved to be so useful that they’re carried forward right through to present day plants and animals, a path spanning some 4 billion years.

First we have to pick our model organism, and there is some variation of opinion, as you might expect. I suspect we’re going to end up doing E. coli, which will still be fun (not something you often say with regard to this sometimes-pathogenic bacterium) but not as much fun as my ‘weed’. Still, sometimes you have to go with the flow, and that’s never more true than when trying to get an Open University project done.

But I am still determined to let Thale Cress have its moment in the sun, so here we go!

Dear Readers, today I was searching for a new weed in East Finchley Station car park. I don’t know how you spend your Saturdays, but for me a plant hunt in a relentlessly urban setting, with tube trains whistling past my ear and the steady thrum of an emergency generator forming an interesting soundscape is as close to heaven as I can imagine. This is mainly because the auditors finished their work yesterday, and although they had many, many comments, none of them related directly to anything that I’d done. Hooray! Life can resume some vestige of normality, and nothing is more normal than peering at a tiny plant and realising that, humble as it is, this is one of the most scientifically important organisms of the past century.

Thale cress is a brassica (as was our hairy bittercress last week) and on the surface of it, there is nothing much to report. It is a winter annual, with a rosette of dark green, hairy leaves, and a long waxy stem bearing tiny white flowers. The ‘hairs’ on the leaves are called trichomes, and are interesting because in thale cress, each one is a single cell.

However, what makes thale cress so important is that it was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced: its small size, short life-span and relatively simple genetic structure made it perfect as a model organism in scientific research. It also has remarkably little ‘junk’ DNA.  Because it was (relatively) easy to map the genome of the plant to its appearance and behaviour, thale cress is used for experimentation in laboratories all over the world, leading to a much better understanding of flower and leaf development, light sensitivity and circadian rhythms. In spite of being self-pollinated, the plant is also surprisingly diverse, with over 750 naturally occurring varieties world-wide, and over 40 in the UK alone.This has led to a variety of commercial applications being suggested, from increasing the speed at which oranges develop to encouraging plants to produce more Omega-3 acid – this article by Peter Marren is a fascinating look at the different ways in which this humble ‘weed’ could be used.

Of the many discoveries that were made using thale cress as a model, one of the most intriguing to me is that the roots of a plant seem to channel light to their roots, where there are light sensitive cells that need illumination in order to grow.

Thale cress has also landed on the moon – the Chinese Chang’e-4 lander brought the plant in a closed environment together with silk worm caterpillars and potato seeds. In theory, the three organisms should be a microcosm, with the silk worms producing carbon dioxide for the plants, and the plant producing oxygen, provided, of course, photosynthesis can take place.

Thale cress is named after Johannes Thal, the botanist who first described the plant in 1573. Thal discovered it in the Harz Mountains in Germany, and thale cress does seem to be another of those mountain plants that does well as a weed, surviving light, infertile soil, a high degree of exposure and risk of drought.  It is a pioneer species, and I suspect that one reason that I’ve never paid it any attention before is because it is also ephemeral – with such a short lifespan it will be here one day and gone tomorrow. It is apparently sometimes used as a salad ingredient, but presumably it grows larger in less hostile environments, because you’d be a long time picking a bowl full in East Finchley station.

I found thale cress rather difficult to photograph – my camera really doesn’t like white flowers (they nearly always end up appearing overexposed) and my knees really don’t like crouching down for too long (poor old thing that I am). But for some really splendid pictures of this humble plant, have a look at the Wildflower Finder website. To whet your appetite, here is an example:

Medicinally, thale cress has been used in Indian traditional medicine to treat mouth sores and inflammation of the throat. However, scientists looking at the bacterial communities that live on the surface of the leaves of the plant have found that some of the bacteria are producing a substance that deters the growth of other bacteria – a novel antibiotic. If this proves to also be effective against the bacteria that cause disease in humans and animals, it would be a tremendous advance in the search for new methods of combatting infection. Many of our current antibiotics are becoming less and less effective as bacteria acquire immunity to them, so we need all the help we can get.

Now, thale cress is not a particularly beautiful plant. Monet preferred water lilies for some reason, and Van Gogh turned his nose up at the thale cress and went for sunflowers and irises instead. But there are some remarkable scientific photographs of thale cress, showing the intricate beauty of its structures.

How beautiful the tiny details of this plant are when viewed close up! And this is the point at which I would normally produce a poem. However, for the first time I can report that this plant actually is a poem. In 2003, a group of geneticists from Icon Genetics managed to encode a line from Virgil’s Georgics into the DNA of the line of thale cress that they were working with. The line was ‘Nec vero terrae ferra omnes omnia possunt‘ or ‘Nor can all of the earth bring forth all fruit alike‘. However, this was not a simple artistic act, but a way of copywriting the whole genetically modified organism – if it was ‘stolen’ it could be identified by the poem encoded into each of its genes. For more on this, and on the work of poet Christian Bok, who is attempting to encode a poem into a bacteria that will change and replicate as reproduction occurs, have a look here.

Thale cress is the fruit fly or laboratory rat of the plant world. It has been analysed and reorganised to produce plastic, to glow in the dark, and to produce oil . It is certainly something of a wonder plant, but while normal selective breeding (which humans have done for millenia) has limitations imposed by the genome of the organism, we are now swapping genes from one organism to another, sometimes for good, humanitarian reasons but often just because we can. I am no Luddite, but it seems to me that our technology may be running ahead of our ability to decide on the ethical implications of our discoveries. I believe that science can save us, but I also believe that we need to think through what the results of our experimentation mean. Looking at this tiny plant, so unassuming that it has taken me over six years to notice it, I wonder what other secrets it may hold, and what they will lead to. I only hope they will be used for everyone’s benefit, rather than to make profit for a few bloated corporations, naïve as that hope may be. It is long since time to cooperate rather than compete.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Heiti Paves – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29552690

Photo Two from http://wildflowerfinder.org.uk/Flowers/C/Cress(Thale)/Cress(Thale).htm

Photo Three from https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/9200579/xx8cd9g9.html

Photo Four from https://phys.org/news/2012-05-cellular-secrets-fatty-acid-production.html

Photo Five by Dr Heiti Paves at Tallinn University of Technology from https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2009-photomicrography-competition/arabidopsis-thaliana-thale-cress-1