Well, Readers, Hydrangeas have been much in the news this week: the Royal Horticultural Society has decided to move its hydrangea collection further north, from Wisley in Surrey to its northern gardens in Greater Manchester (Bridgewater) and Yorkshire (Harlow Carr). Queries about drought and heat-related problems in the plant have tripled over the past few years, and the RHS’s collection has also suffered, with more stress-related disease, and smaller and fewer flowers. The RHS state that it’s mainly the mophead and lacehead hydrangeas which are suffering: they note that the climbing hydrangeas (I have one which is my pride and joy) are doing very well, because they are more resilient.

It’s not only the hydrangeas that are moving from Wisley either: the rhododendrons are going to Harlow Carr, and the rhubarb and gooseberries are going to Bridgewater. Everything that has legs or wings is on the move north, but of course plants are a bit stuck, so it’s interesting to consider lorries full of rhododendrons zooming up the motorway. Let me know if you notice any!

And here’s my original post. Don’t miss the Mark Doty poem at the end. I love the way he takes a fairly mundane event and blows it open….

Dear Readers, in spite of a plethora of native exotic blooms, the lovely folk in Costa Rica have gone bonkers for hydrangeas. They spill out of the little gardens of San Jose (often peeking through the bars that surround urban houses to keep out thieves), burst forth from the manicured grounds of haciendas, and decorate the paths of hotels (as in the photo above from Monteverde). I find it a little confusing: why would you plant hydrangeas when you have heliconias and passionflowers and hibiscus? But of course, the hydrangeas are no further away from home in Costa Rica than they are in London, because this species (Hydrangea macrophylla, or Florist’s Hydrangea) actually comes from Japan.

The flowers of hydrangeas are actually formed of four decorative ornamental petals surrounding five smaller petals ( a ‘tetramer’ surrounding a ‘pentamer’ for those of you with a lust for new words). The outer petals can be white, pink or blue, and the inner flower contains the fertile part of the plant, with five bluish-green sepals.

It’s well known that the colour of a hydrangea varies according to the soil pH, but I had it round the wrong way. Counter-intuitively, an acid soil may produce a flower on the blue spectrum, an alkaline soil one that is pinker (though see below). I have been pontificating about exactly the opposite for years. That’ll teach me.

The reason for the colour change is that hydrangeas are ‘hyperaccumulators’ – they can take up particular minerals and elements (in this case aluminium) to a degree that would be toxic to other plants. This gives them a clear advantage in particular soils. In alkaline soils the aluminium ions are ‘tied up’ and are hence not available, but in acid soils they are free to be taken into the tissues of the plant. The ions in the metal affect the pigments in the petals, thus causing the colour change – the more aluminium taken up, the bluer the flower.

Note that you can’t change the colour of a hydrangea just by re-potting it – it’s the aluminium ions that cause the change, not the pH per se. Also, some varieties have been bred to retain their pink or white colour regardless of the metal content of the soil. It’s probably best to buy a blue variety and hope for the best if that’s your preference.

Incidentally, an alternative name for hydrangeas is ‘change rose’. The name ‘hydrangea’ comes from the Greek and means ‘water vessel’ after the cup-shaped seed capsule.

In Asia, pink hydrangeas are much preferred, with a meaning generally translated as ‘you are the beat of my heart!’.

Now, I should probably make a confession at this point. I have never been overly fond of this kind of hydrangea – they seem to take up a lot of garden space for a plant that is not very useful for pollinators or other creatures and, although florists seem to love those big blousy overblown flowerheads, even when dead, they always seem, well, just a bit much. I have a climbing hydrangea with a much lacier flowerhead, and a Hydrangea paniculata which the bees love for its abundant pollen, but these chaps just leave me cold.

It seems that I am not the only person who is not overly fond of hydrangeas, either: in the language of flowers a hydrangea can indicate ‘boastfulness, cold beauty, heartlessness, and ‘you are cold’. There was an English tradition that the daughter of a  house with hydrangeas growing in the front garden would never marry, and that the plants are generally unlucky. Try telling that to the good folk of East Finchley, you can barely walk ten yards without falling over a hydrangea.

As with many ornamental plants. Hydrangea has a variety of medicinal uses: the root and rhizome are said to be useful in the treatment of urinary complaints. However, it’s worth noting that the plant is poisonous, especially the leaves and buds.

As I have been preparing this piece I have come across several articles remarking that you can make a tea called Amacha from the leaves of the hydrangea  – you are supposed to rub the leaves until they become sweet. It is very popular for the Buddha’s birthday celebrations. Note, however, that the tea is made from the leaves of a different species of hydrangea, Hydrangea serrata. I would be loathe to risk poisoning everyone from the leaves of our common garden hydrangea.

In my internet travels today I have found several paintings of hydrangeas, but none of them quite sum up my feelings about them as well as this painting by Victoria Dubourg, a French flower painter who died in 1926. The heads of the flowers bow under their own weight, and remind me of nothing so much as the big white broiler chickens that I rescued when I worked on a city farm years ago. Those poor creatures had deformed legs from being bred to put on weight so quickly that their frames couldn’t support them, and for me the very largest of the hydrangea cultivars have the same quality of ‘too-muchness’. But still, they have a kind of languid, tubercular beauty that even I can see.

And, finally, here is a poem by Mark Doty, one of my favourite American poets. I love him for many reasons, one of which is his astonishing book ‘Dog Years‘ which is about his dogs, and about losing the man that he loves to AIDS, and how these things come together. And another reason is that he manages to be both funny and profound simultaneously, a clever trick to pull off. This poem was originally published on the Poem A Day website, which I recommend for a daily poetry ‘fix’.

Spent

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, the march of the Hibiscus trees in  East Finchley continues apace: today, I noticed one on Lincoln Road which is doing very nicely. The regular heatwaves this year are no doubt encouraging the plant, but I haven’t seen many pollinators using it, which surprises me a little  – maybe the bees haven’t worked out that this is a pollen  source yet. Still, it’s good to see so many plants doing so well – the local lime trees seem to be having a spectacular year for flowering, and the scent is very pleasing as the temperatures rise. Alas, bumblebees are very susceptible to overheating, being adapted for a tundra lifestyle. Let’s hope that they can survive the next heatwave, which is due to turn up next week in the south of England.

And now, let’s have a look at what I shared about Hibiscus in previous posts….

Dear Readers, I’m off on a bit of an adventure this week (of which more soon), but I still had time to admire the hibiscus plants around East Finchley. There is a hibiscus tree just up the road from me, and I honestly thought that it was a goner last year, but this year it seems to be doing quite nicely, thank you.

And one of my neighbours also has a very nice shrub in their front garden. But the most impressive is this one at the Sunshine Garden Centre. Who knew that the flowers could be quite so enormous?

Hibiscus have suddenly become popular as street trees – Paul Wood (author of London’s Street Trees) mentions that Garden Walk in Shoreditch is a great place to see them, so any of you East Londoners might want to take a little toddle down there, I suspect that it should be glorious at the moment. The hibiscus is a small tree, but having the flowers close to eye level adds to their appeal.

There’s another poem in my original piece below, but here’s a haiku by Basho. I fear for many of us, the haiku form was spoiled by having to create them in poetry lessons and coming up with something less than impressive, but I have grown to like them with my advancing years, the way they sometimes burst into flower at the end. See what you think.

in the twilight rain

these brilliant-hued hibiscus

a lovely sunset

Matsuo Basho

Dear Readers, is it just my imagination or has there been a sudden burst of enthusiasm for hibiscus as a garden plant? Once upon a time I had to travel to the Mediterranean to see these exotic beauties in full flower, but on a wet Sunday afternoon I found no less than three different plants in the environs of the County Roads in East Finchley, and very splendid they were too. I suspect that the climate change induced warmer temperatures are suiting them very well, for this plant comes originally from southern Asia, with its long warm summers. Hibiscus arrived in the UK in the 16th century, and was at first thought to be unable to survive frost. Later, it was realised that although individual buds might be affected by sub-zero temperatures, the shrub itself was frost-hardy.

Hibiscus syriacum is part of a genus of several hundred species belonging to the mallow family, or Malvaceae.  In the UK the plant is also known as the Tree Hollyhock, but in the US it is also known as Rose of Sharon, a name that in the UK refers to a bright yellow member of the St John’s wort family. Yet again, we find ourselves divided by a common language, and I give huge thanks to Linnaeus for his system of nomenclature that enables us all to understand what we’re talking about.

Many hibiscus species (mainly the red ones) are pollinated by hummingbirds or sunbirds, but our plant, originating in China, is not. It is both self-fertile (i.e. each flower contains both male and female parts) and capable of being pollinated by insects, chiefly bees, who are attracted more for the plentiful pollen than for the nectar. Each flower only opens for a day, but in a good year the shrub will be covered in blooms for weeks, providing plenty of opportunity for pollen-hungry invertebrates.

Hibiscus syriacus is the national flower of South Korea, where it is known as mugunghwa, from the word ‘mugung‘ meaning ‘eternity’ or ‘inexhaustible abundance’. In the South Korean national anthem, reference is made to ‘Three thousand ri (about 1,200 km, the length of the Korean peninsula) of splendid rivers and mountains covered with mugunghwa blossoms’. It is not surprising that Hibiscus syriacus became the national flower after Korea gained its independence from Japan in 1945.

The leaves of Hibiscus syriacus are said to be a good substitute for lettuce, though a little mucilaginous. The buds are said to resemble okra (not necessarily a good thing in my opinion, but each to their own).  The flowers are edible, although it’s the dark red flowers of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis that are more usually used to make hibiscus tea. I must admit to getting a bit irritated with the way that so many herbal fruit teas use hibiscus as their first ingredient in order to bulk it out – I find the rather astringent flavour overwhelms everything else. You can also get hibiscus syrup, again, normally made from Hibiscus rosa-sinensis.  The ingredient is having something of a ‘moment’ in trendy restaurants at the moment, and to be honest I will be delighted when the moment has passed, and we can get back to normal food, like charcoal bread or aubergine icecream.

As you might expect, such a structurally-interesting flower has attracted many artists. I rather like this still-life by Dutch artist Nicolaes van Veerendael, painted some time between 1660 and 1691, and proving that a Hibiscus syriacus just like the one around the corner from me was flowering quite happily in the Netherlands over 300 years ago. Incidentally, the picture sold at Christies for £92,500 in 2014.

And for our poem, I rather liked this, by American poet Jim Ballowe who is, quite rightly, Artist of the Month for August 2018 at the Center for Humans and Nature website. Do have a look at his other work, too.

Remember that in North America Hibiscus syriacus is known as ‘Rose of Sharon’ and is thought to be the plant referred to in the Song of Solomon.

Lessons from the Garden

                         for Ruth 

                        1

The garden doesn’t give a fig for Solomon 

any more than we know what he meant when he said

that kisses are sweeter than wine. The white fly

sucking at the belly of sweet potato leaves

pauses to ponder neither sex nor text.

Remember that piece of fluff, that ancient ephemera

circling the Rose of Sharon, settling awkwardly

at last in the sun-warmed bird bath, 

how determined it was to continue on the wing again 

after we plucked it from its futile folly?

Think how the Rose of Sharon greets spring as a dead stick,

then revels through summer days in a pink pregnancy,  

each night dropping its spent blooms  

nestled like newborns curled in silk blankets.

 

                        2

In a month of spiders, butterflies, and hummingbirds,

in days of asters, mums, and Autumn clematis,

in sun-harsh hours cascading into velvet nights,

in lapsed minutes the sumac takes to redden,

the unexpected forever happens, and we,

thrilled to see the intricate web, the floating color,

the darting shadow, the many-petaled flower,

the diminishing light, are reassured by nature’s tricks,

the existent summer’s ephemeral exit,

fall’s hovering presence awaiting embrace,

geometrical designs in crisp skies,

the unmasking of trees, the sense of humor behind it all,

a stage whisper, the thought that we too

share this scene, waiting to go on.

Jim Ballowe

Photo Credits

Photo Two from http://www.mois.go.kr/eng/sub/a03/nationalSymbol_3/screen.do

Photo Three from City Foodsters [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

Dear Readers, today was one of those days when I left the house wearing a jacket and scarf, and came home ‘feeling the heat’ as the old saying goes. But as I journeyed from Walthamstow to East Finchley, it felt as if every single privet hedge was in flower, and the scent filled the air. To me the perfume has a creamy, rather sickly quality, but there were sparrows dashing in and out of some of the bushes, and overall it’s a most attractive plant.

In ‘Alien Plants’, Clive Stace and Michael Crawley have this to say about privet:

‘The rather nauseous smell is to me the characteristic smell of hedge-lined city streets in July, when the best of the summer has gone’.

I suspect many people have planted it because, with the advent of the Box Moth, box hedges are no longer viable in many places.

As I walked home, a man in a sweatshirt was wielding the most enormous hedge-cutter as he tackled the privet hedge on the High Road next to ‘Amazing Grates’. I complimented him on his work, but I can imagine it was a very uncomfortable job as the temperature climbed.

Incidentally, it’s obligatory for shops that sell fireplaces and flame-effect fires to have a pun for a name – in addition to ‘Amazing Grates’ I’ve seen ‘The Better Hearth’ and ‘Grate Fires’. Is there something about selling something so cosy that brings out the wag in the shopkeepers? I have no idea. But let us turn to my original post on privet, from 2016. In particular, have a look at the Privet Hawk Moth. What a stunner!

Dear Readers, many years ago I used to commute to the Netherlands for work. Every Sunday I would catch the last plane into Rotterdam Airport, where the cleaners were mopping the floors, and the security guards were jingling their keys, all ready to lock up. The taxi would take me through the frozen countryside but, as we got into the city itself, the warm glow of light from the uncurtained windows of every flat and house were a constant source of fascination. The interiors were stylish, and there were often families gathered at a perfectly dressed table for their evening meal. Admittedly, I only got the quickest glimpse, but there never seemed to be an overflowing waste-bin, or a pile of clutter on a chair. I loved the openness of this attitude, the generosity of it, as if people were saying ‘Here we are, do have a look if you’re interested’.

It’s fair to say that we do things differently where I live. The hedges of the County Roads in East Finchley are truly a wonder to behold. It’s not surprising: our front gardens are tiny and so every passerby can look into our front rooms if they are so minded. So, to provide a bit of privacy, many people have gone for the hedge option. In these parts, the plant of choice seems to be the oval-leafed privet. When I was on ‘Wednesday Weed’ patrol yesterday, I realised that I had never noticed that these hedges bear tiny black berries at this time of year (though I had noticed the sickly-smelling white flowers in the spring). I had always thought of privet as being rather a boring plant (when I thought of it at all). So, what is the story of the oval-leafed privet?

Oval-leafed privet originated in Japan and Korea. We do, in fact, have a native privet, Ligustrum vulgare, which has narrower, smaller leaves than the plant pictured here, but the majority of plants used for hedging in the UK are of the oval-leafed variety, maybe because of its more abundant flowering and fruiting.

It seems as if every plant that I write about these days is poisonous, and privet is no exception. The RHS website considers it to be ‘somewhat poisonous’ (which is not overwhelmingly helpful). A quick run around the internets has articles which state that privet hedge cuttings can be dangerous for horses, goats, sheep, cattle, hens and rabbits. Another website mentions that the berries are poisonous if eaten by dogs. All in all, it seems that the berries should be left on the bush, for the thrushes that enjoy them ( the plant is in the British Trust for Ornithology’s guide to berries for birds).

A wide variety of moth caterpillars enjoy a meal of poisonous privet leaves, however. As I love the names of moths almost as much as the moths themselves, a small selection are pictured below.

Perhaps the most spectacular of the privet-feeding moths, however, is the privet hawk moth, a creature of satanic beauty which can produce an alarming hissing sound by rubbing the segments of its abdomen together. Do not attempt to replicate this at home unless you want to spend Christmas in traction.

The caterpillar of the privet hawk moth is a delightful lime-green creature with lilac and white side stripes and a sticky-up tail like a terrier. It would be worth growing a privet hedge for the chance of a sight of one of these little chaps.

Although the privet hedge is one of the quintessential symbols of suburbia, it turns out to be quite a useful thing, if not cropped indiscriminately. It provides roosting and nesting sites for birds, flowers for pollinators, berries for thrushes and leaves for big fat green caterpillars. Privet hedges thrive in polluted environments, and may even help to protect us from the gases and dust produced by cars.  And it also provides opportunities for creative pruning, and for the more energetic among us to let rip with the power tools. Plus, who wants to be washing net curtains all the time? Much better to have a living barrier to the prying eyes of the curious public or, at the very least, something for them to talk about.

Photo Credits

Photo One (privet flowers) – By No machine-readable author provided. MPF assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=983049

Photo Two (Common Emerald) – By Ben Sale from UK ([1669] Common Emerald (Hemithea aestivaria)) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Three (The Engrailed) – By ©entomart, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=806463

Photo Four (The V-Pug) – By ©entomart, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=290444

Photo Four (Privet Hawk Moth) – By Gaudete [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Five (Privet Hawk Moth Caterpillar) – by Rachel_S (https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachel_s/2829915165)

All other blog content free to use or share non-commercially, but please attribute to me, Vivienne Palmer, and link back to the blog, thank you!

Dear Readers, those of us who live in London are pretty familiar with London Plane (Platanus x hispanica) trees – they’re pretty much everywhere, and very fine they are too. But it’s easy to miss the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) – I found several in East Finchley Cemetery at the weekend, and was struck by how elegant they look. It isn’t actually ‘oriental’ in the sense of being from the Orient – its native range is from Italy through the Caucasus to Iran, though it is a large and handsome tree which has been transported all over the world. At its largest, it can have a diameter at breast height of 5 metres, which makes it a very chunky tree indeed.

Oriental Plane is one of the parents of London plane, along with its western counterpart, the American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis).

The timber of Oriental Plane is also known as lacewood, but perhaps most intriguing is the use of the leaves of the tree for leaf carving, a relatively new art form that originated in China. You can see some examples here . They look as if they would take endless patience.

In India, the Oriental Plane is known as Chinar, and is associated with the Hindu goddess Bhavani. In Kashmir there has been a recent ban on cutting the trees down, and they are now registered and considered the property of the state.

But here in the UK there are a number of exceptional Oriental Plane trees, including one, in Corsham Court in Wiltshire, which was planted by Capability Brown in 1760. It now has the title of ‘the most spreading tree in the UK’. It takes up an area equivalent to the size of a football pitch.

The Pococke tree, an Oriental Plane planted in the gardens of Christ Church, Oxford in 1636, was thought to be the inspiration for the monster in ‘Jabberwocky’

Now, recently I have developed a bit of a passion for the music of Handel, so I couldn’t leave the subject of this tree without mentioning Handel’s ‘Largo’ (Ombra mai fu) from the opera Serse, based on the story of the Persian emperor Xerxes. In the aria, Xerxes praises the plane tree for its shade:

‘Tender and beautiful fronds
of my beloved plane tree,
let Fate smile upon you.
May thunder, lightning, and storms
never disturb your dear peace,
nor may you by blowing winds be profaned.

Never was a shade
of any plant
dearer and more lovely,
or more sweet.

And here it is, in all its glory. For those of you with a classical inclination, the opera is being performed at the Barbican on June 19th (I will be there, gentle readers, and will report back). Enjoy!

Traditionally, the aria would have been sung by a castrato, but here’s  countertenor Valer Sabadus, doing a pretty good job I think….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbfGLpDdXPY

and here is Cécilia Bartoli. See which you prefer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdeOyrLHdSg

Dear Readers, I have a great fondness for Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) – I mentioned its use for headaches in my original post, but it’s so attractive, with its daisy flowers and bright green leaves. I always wonder what turns some plants from ‘weeds’ into ‘wildflowers’ or even ‘garden plants’, while some remain resolutely ‘weeds’ in most people’s minds. When I visited the garden centre last week I was amazed to see pots of trailing bellflower on sale, even though they are growing wild everywhere on the streets of East Finchley. Maybe one day Feverfew will make the jump, but clearly not yet. However, ironically it was probably first brought to the UK from the Balkan peninsula as an ornamental – it was first recorded in the wild in 995 CE, so I think we can consider it well-established.

The name ‘Feverfew’ refers to the belief that, if planted around buildings (especially during times of plague), the plant purified the air and put fevers to flight, a rather lovely idea, however inaccurate. The genus name ‘Tanacetum‘ means ‘immortality’ – the leaves of the closely-related Tansy were placed in the shrouds of the dead to deter vermin. The flowers of Feverfew are also thought to act as an insecticide, if dried and then steeped in water. Feverfew also protected against ‘elf-shot’ – if a mischievous elf took against a person or animal, they would shoot them with invisible arrows which caused extreme pain, such as that caused by a ‘stitch’ or arthritis. The spear-shaped leaves were thought to indicate that the plant would protect against such attacks.

The plant doesn’t seem a very likely candidate for edibility, but the flowers are used for herbal tea.In German, Feverfew is ‘Mutterkraut’ and was said to speed up labour – in sufficient  quantities it was even thought to be an abortifacient.  In the Veneto, where Feverfew is known as ‘erba madre’, it’s made into a cake (though the side effects of the plant mean that anyone who is pregnant shouldn’t be eating it). Recipe here for the non-gravid!

And here’s a poem. It’s tangential, but I loved it too much not to share it. Caroline Herschel (1750 – 1848), the sister of the better known (of course!) William Herschel was the first professional woman astronomer, and the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist. However, she caught typhoid as a child, and grew to only 4 foot 3 inches tall – she was thought to  be destined to be a household servant, but moved to Bath after her father’s death, where she became a renowned singer (appearing in Handel’s ‘Messiah’) and later becoming an astronomer who discovered several comets. We don’t know if Feverfew was used in her treatment for typhoid, but she survived the disease, and became a truly remarkable woman. For the full breadth of her life, have a look at the Wikipedia entry here.

And here’s the poem, by Irish poet Rosamund Taylor. I think it’s absolutely stunning, see what you think…

On Surviving Typhoid Fever by Rosamund Taylor

In 1828 the Royal Astronomical Society awarded a gold medal to Caroline Herschel. No woman would receive one again for 168 years.

My mother can’t forgive me for being alive.
The typhoid made me stooped, legs short,
never to be wed, but my hands are quick,
my voice strong, and I look up as I walk icy streets –

I may trip over frozen excrement
or sighing heaps of rags but I remember my brother’s
hand in mine as he said, look at the planets,
that’s Jupiter, and there’s Mars, there

among those constellations. I imagine walking
with the Seven Sisters, their bright cold hands,
meeting Orion, his gruff laugh, his belt looped
around my waist. All fancy, of course –

my mother says I read too many books
but I can’t resist the articles my brother sends,
solar winds and stars, telescopes, the geography
of Mars. I dream them, though I don’t sleep much:

at five I pull myself from warmth to break flinty ice
on the water buckets, begin bread, wake my mother
with hot milk. She pinches me. I won’t squeak –
she likes it when I do. Instead I begin

my piece-work, each stitch made with raw fingers,
rubbed stiff. I’m paying her back for my illness,
the days I spent in bed, the man I cannot wed,
the woman I cannot be. My mother won’t forgive me

for being alive, but I sing to myself, my clear soprano,
I put celestial distances to familiar tunes, whisper
names of Martian canals, of Jupiter’s moons.
In my head the whole scope of the sky.

And here’s my original Feverfew post, from (gulp) 2014….

I am delighted to have spotted this plant at the corner of the workshop at the end of my road. Flowering away, minding its own business, is the plant that has been described as the ‘aspirin of the medieval world’. Feverfew, as its name suggests, was used for all kinds of colds, coughs and infections, and for general aches and pains. Even more excitingly, it has been proved to be extremely efficacious in the treatment of migraine, In a study of 270 migraine-sufferers, over seventy percent reported that their symptoms were significantly decreased after nibbling only one leaf a day for three months, whilst a third seemed to have eradicated their attacks altogether. If only I had known about this when I was growing up – my mother suffered from terrible, debilitating migraines, and it would have been interesting to see if this common, overlooked little plant would have helped her.

Even if it wasn’t so medicinally useful, this would be a welcome plant – it has a sunny, cheerful aspect, and certainly brightens up the rather prosaic corner of this small industrial site. As I stood on the pavement in my fluffy slippers, taking some photos, I was a source of some amazement to the workmen coming and going. One of them stopped, looked at me, looked at the plant and ruminated on what would be an appropriate comment. Eventually, it came.

‘It took us ages to grow that, you know’, he said, with the jolly sarcasm of the North London Geezer. I patted him on the arm.

‘You did a lovely job’, I said.

 

 

Dear Readers, this year my wildflower turf is giving me lots of sorrel (and red campion), so here’s a few thoughts on the plant, and all the creatures that eat it (including us). Plus a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay, my favourite sourpuss…

Dear Readers, what an unassuming little plant this is! if you weren’t paying attention you could easily miss it. This is sorrel (Rumex acetosa). Sorrel looks like a grass, but isn’t one. It’s a member of the Polygonaceae or knotgrass family, along with the various persicarias and bistorts and our old friend, Japanese knotweed. The zesty leaves have been eaten throughout the plant’s range, which includes Scandinavia, the rest of Europe and parts of Eurasia. Sorrel is used in spanakopita, the Greek feta, leek and greens pie, in Albanian byrek pies and in Armenian aveluk soup, with walnuts and lentils. In Eastern Europe, it’s turned into soup with hard-boiled eggs. In short, sorrel’s lemon-flavoured leaves are much enjoyed in parts of the world where citrus isn’t grown, or at times of the year when lemons aren’t available.

The flavour of the leaves has given rise to a whole range of vernacular names. My Vickery’s Folk Flora (by Roy Vickery) tells me that in northern England sorrel is known as bitterdabs, in Roxburghshire as Lammie sourocks, in Northern Ireland as red sour-leek and in Ross-shire as sourey souracks, which is probably my favourite. It reminds me rather of Boaty McBoatface, the name selected by the public in the UK when asked to suggest a name for a research ship (subsequently named the David Attenborough, which is more appropriate but rather less fun).

Medicinally, Scottish children used to eat the first leaves of sorrel as a cure for their spots, and John Clare describes how workers in the field would nibble on the plant to slake their thirst. It used to be believed that the plant could ward off scurvy:although the flavour comes from oxalic acid rather than ascorbic acid, it contains some Vitamin C, as do all green plants. While the oxalic acid is associated with kidney stones, you’d have to eat prodigious quantities of the plant to do yourself a damage. Plus oxalic acid is also present in foods like rhubarb, and what is the point of life without rhubarb?

Sorrel was also the source of ‘salts of lemons‘, a concentrated compound of the oxalic acid, which could be used to bleach straw, remove rust stains from linen, and remove ink stains. With the last, however, the chemical reaction only worked if the ink was made from oak galls and salts of iron.

It is eaten by various caterpillars, including those of the fiery clearwing (Pyropteron chrysidiformis), the forester moth (Adscita statices) the blood-vein (Timandra comae) and the scarce vapourer (Orgyia recens), all scarce species that it’s well worth encouraging.

Sorrel can also be used as a dye, with either the whole plant or the root being used with various mordants to get a whole range of colours. The dyes in the photo come from sorrel’s close relative sheep’s sorrel (Rumex acetosella) but the results should be broadly the same. Who knew you could get so many colours from such a modest little plant? The photo comes from the Forest and the Spirit blog, which is well worth a look.

And finally, a poem. I love Edna St Vincent Millay, with her streak of cussedness and curmudgeonly attitude. How could I not also love this poem? Why, even the name is appropriate. I’m not exactly sure what the last verse means, so feel free to share!

Weeds by Edna St Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

White with daisies and red with sorrel
And empty, empty under the sky!—
Life is a quest and love a quarrel—
Here is a place for me to lie.

Daisies spring from damnèd seeds,
And this red fire that here I see
Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds,
Cursed by farmers thriftily.

But here, unhated for an hour,
The sorrel runs in ragged flame,
The daisy stands, a bastard flower,
Like flowers that bear an honest name.

And here a while, where no wind brings
The baying of a pack athirst,
May sleep the sleep of blessèd things,
The blood too bright, the brow accurst.

Photo Credits

Photo One By Popo le Chien – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69436320

Photo Two by Ferran Pestaña, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Three AfroBrazilian, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Four by hamon jp, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Five by Ilia Ustyantsev, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Six from https://forestandthespirit.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/plant-dyes-sheep-sorrel/

 

 

 

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, the Blackthorn has been out for ages here in East Finchley and feels like a true herald of spring, but in Nature’s Calendar, Lulah Ellender describes how the plant has a much darker side: the permission of the fairies had to be asked before any part of Blackthorn was cut or harvested, and it was said to be imbued with evil spirits and prone to cause miscarriage. On the other hand, it was the material of choice for Irish shillelagh – the wood was daubed with butter or buried in manure in order to cure it, and was then placed inside a chimney. Just the thing to give someone a bash on the bonce!

The wood is also the material used for the staff of the ceremonial Black Rod in parliament, who has the door of the House of Commons slammed in their face on Queen’s/King’s Speech day, and is only allowed admittance after striking the door with the staff three times.

Now, let’s have a look at some more personal remembrances of Blackthorn, from 2016…

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

Dear Readers, last year I planted lots of wildflower seeds, in the hope that something interesting would pop up, and this year seems to be the year of Red Campion – there are half a dozen plants, all looking very pink, and attracting the attention of rather a lot of aphids. Let’s hope that the aphid munchers won’t be far behind!

To be honest, I’m amazed that anything  is thriving at the moment – the shed is down, and the slab for the next one is laid, but the remains of everything else (including the eight-foot bamboo that was supposedly ‘contained’ in a trench behind the shed, but which was in fact breaking out in all directions) is strewn about the garden, waiting for a skip. Hey ho. At least my neighbours have plenty of bamboo canes for their allotments.

And now, let’s have a look at my original post about Red Campion, from 2016. Where did those ten years go, I wonder?

Dear Readers, there is a ‘wild’  burial site in the cemetery, close to where I feed the foxes. I love this as an idea – I can think of no nicer place to be interred,. One area has been roped off, and it’s full of ox-eye daisies, grasses, speedwell and the pink flowers of red campion. However, it’s not plain sailing all the way, and it’s clear that there’s more work to be done on some of the other parts of area. Here, for example, are some of the docks. Many of them are so enormous that they actually look down on me, like triffids who are just waiting to pull their roots up before they take over the world.

This is the problem for anyone who tries to set up a wildlife meadow. In ‘real life’, these would be mowed regularly, to gather in the hay and to prevent the perennials (like the docks and sow thistles and bindweed) from setting seed. If this is neglected, within a year or two what you have is not a meadow, but scrub, and all the biodiversity disappears. On the other hand, I did see this very splendid red dock weevil, but I think he will need lots of little friends to cope with the sheer volume of dock leaves.

Anyhow, back to the red campion. This is a native plant, and a member of the Caryophyllaceae, the same family that includes chickweeds, stitchworts and pinks. The petals are very deeply notched, and the flowers always look to me like gears from a child’s model engine.

The Latin species name ‘dioica’ indicates that, as with annual mercury, the male and female plants are separate. The male flowers have ten stamen (though some might be buried within the capsule of the plant at any given time), and the female plants have 5 style (which look like little white hooks). The seed capsule has ten strongly down-curved teeth on the edge. I am currently doing the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland’s Identiplant course, for which I had to find ten plants and record how many were male and how many female. In my little sample, there were nine males and one female, which makes me wonder a little about whether there is something in the seed mixes used for ‘meadows’ which favours one sex over another, though I have no idea why this should be.

The genus name, Silene, comes from the Greek god Silenus, who was always drunk, and is often depicted swaying atop a long-suffering donkey. Now, the name Silenus is said to come from the Greek word for saliva, implying that Silenus was not only drunk, but drooling. What a delightful picture! However, the link with the Red Campion is that the female flower is said to produce a foam which helps to capture pollen from visiting insects. I have not seen a bloom doing this, but will keep an eye open and see if I can capture such behaviour on camera if I notice it.

Just to complicate matters, red campion contains a substance called saponin, which has been used in soap-making – indeed another member of the family, Soapwort, has historically been used for just this purpose. Maybe this is another reason for the ‘Silene’ Latin genus name.

Red campion has a variety of alternative names, but one that I like is ‘Bachelor’s Buttons’, referring to the way that the plant was worn as a buttonhole by eligible males. However, it was also said to be one of the flowers that children should not pick, as it was associated with the death of parents – on the Plant Lore website, one person reports that the plant was known to them as ‘mother-and-father-die’. On the Isle of Man, red campion is said to be beloved by the fairies, and so it shouldn’t be picked by humans. The plant is also said to be efficacious in the unlikely event (in the UK at any rate) of being threatened by a scorpion: all you have to do it grab a handy red campion and hurl it at the offending arachnid and he or she will scuttle away. Never let it be said that you don’t learn useful things in the Wednesday Weed.

Medicinally, the flowers of red campion have been taken in a glass of wine as a treatment for kidney and liver complaints and internal bleeding. The crushed seeds are also said to be efficacious against snakebite, but on the Plant Lore website mentioned above, one lady, from Wales, said that her grandmother was convinced that a snake would come into the house if she brought a posy of the flowers, so it appears that you can’t win.

You might expect that such a bright-faced spring flower would attract the attention of poets, and you would not be wrong. Mary Howitt (1799 – 1888) was the author of ‘The Spider and the Fly’ (parodied by Lewis Carroll in ‘Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland’ as ‘The Lobster Quadrille). She was a most prolific writer, creating over 180 books, and wrote many poems for children. Among them was ‘Summer Woods’ (you can read the whole poem here, and a fine evocation of the joys of the great outdoors it is too).

 

There are many things to love about Mary Howitt, who had a most full and adventurous life, including relocating to Scandinavia (where she learned Swedish and Danish and proceeded to translate Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales), being friends with the Wordsworths and Charles Dickens,  and meeting the Pope. She was never separated from her husband William, and The Times had this to say about them:

‘Their friends used jokingly to call them William and Mary, and to maintain that they had been crowned together like their royal prototypes. Nothing that either of them wrote will live, but they were so industrious, so disinterested, so amiable, so devoted to the work of spreading good and innocent literature, that their names ought not to disappear unmourned.’

When I read about the lives of Victorians, I am amazed by the fullness of their lives, and the variety of things that they got up to. However, it would be a mistake to think of them as  exceptional. Every person, if listened to in a sympathetic way and asked the right questions, seems to have had an extraordinary life. We rarely think of our lives as in any way unusual, but if we stop to consider the experiences that we’ve had, the people that we’ve met and loved and influenced, the place that we have in our community and in our family, we might be surprised at the richness and complexity of our existence, the extent of our interconnectedness. In a world that seems to view other living things, including human beings, as expendable, it’s worth remembering how precious every single one of us is.

Dear Readers, I was visiting Cherry Tree Wood yesterday, for a chat with my pal Roger about pollinators, when he asked me if I’d noticed the snakeshead fritillaries. What snakeshead fritillaries? I asked. And to my delight, on the way out, I noticed literally hundreds of them, planted in a spot where a derelict pavilion used to be, and doing very nicely.

Snakeshead fritillaries like it damp, so this is an ideal spot, and hopefully they’ll continue to multiply. Do have a look if you’re an East Finchleyite, or just visiting – they are amongst my favourite spring flowers (yes, I know you’re not supposed to have favourites), and will not be around for long.

Now, let’s have a look at my original post, from (gulp) 2016…

Dear Readers, snake’s head fritillary is my favourite spring bulb. I am exceedingly fond of snakes, and so the strange scaly pattern on the purple flowers enthralls me. I love the elegance of the pure white flowers. I love the nodding heads, which only reveal their beauty if you turn them over.

However, it’s fair to say that the plant has an unfortunate reputation. One alternative name was ‘Leper Lily’, as the flowers are said to be the same shape as the bells that lepers had to carry to announce themselves. Vita Sackville-West called it ‘a sinister little flower, in the mournful colour of decay.’  As with many other flowers of a nodding habit, they were said to be hanging their heads in sorrow at Christ’s crucifixion.

Well, harrumph to all that. The fritillary family contains the only truly chequered flowers that I know (but do remind me of others if you can think of them!) Both parts of the Latin name for snake’s head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) refer to this feature: the Fritillaria part refers to either the Latin word for dice (fritillus) or (more likely to my mind) the word frittillo, which means a table for chess-playing (thanks to The Poison Garden website for this insight). This is also the root derivation for the name of the fritillary group of butterflies.

The meleagris species name means ‘spotted like a guineafowl’.

According to my Harraps Wild Flowers book, snake’s head fritillary were first recorded in the UK in 1578 (they are native to mainland Europe and Asia), but were not reported in the wild until 1736. However, there is a view that the plants are actually native, growing originally on the floodplains that extended from the Rhine and included the Thames before the opening up of the North Sea in about 5500 BC. They are now a plant of unimproved meadow which occasionally floods, a vanishingly rare habitat, and are considered to be Nationally Scarce. Richard Mabey, in ‘Flora Britannica’, mentions a few sites where the plants can be seen in quantity, including North Meadow in Cricklade,Wiltshire. He describes this meadow thus:

North Meadow (now a National Nature Reserve) is an ancient common, and what is known as Lammas Land. Its 44 acres are shut up for hay on 13 February each year until the hay harvest (apportioned by lot) some time in July. On old Lammas Day, 12 August, it become the common pasture of the Borough of Cricklade, and any resident of the town may put up to ten head of horses or cattle on it, or (after 12 September) 20 head of sheep. As far as is known, this system of land tenure has continued unchanged for more than 800 years, and the show at North Meadow may be the best evidence that the fritillary is a native species.’

Whatever their provenance, snake’s head fritillaries are certainly widely naturalised in many places, such as here in St Pancras and Islington cemetery, where they are outgrowing their original planting site and heading off in to the woods. I have some in my garden as well, where they don’t seem to mind the clay soil and the shade.

Although the snake’s head fritillary is such an exotic and enigmatic plant, it appears not to have been used medicinally – maybe its association with lepers was too strong for it to be considered useful. It is also poisonous, though there are no accounts of anybody tucking into a bulb and doing themselves a damage as there are with daffodils.  However, the plant is celebrated as the County Plant of Oxfordshire (due to Magdalen College Meadow being an important snake’s head fritillary site), and also as the provincial plant of Uppland in Sweden. And furthermore, it is also celebrated by me. This most curious plant cheers me up whenever I look at it, in much the same way as I am delighted when a new house spider turns up or when I discover an unexpected caterpillar in the lettuce. I find its snakiness a refreshing change from all the wholesome bulbs that are bursting forth at this time of year, and it reminds me that something (or somebody) doesn’t have to be pretty to be beautiful.

Photo Credits

Photo One – By Bob – Picasa Web Albums, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12365512

Photo Two – By James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1680620

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

Dear Readers, with all this talk of asparagus and Jersey Royal potatoes at the start of spring, it’s easy to forget one of the real, regional delicacies of the early part of the year – forced rhubarb. I gently poached some in dessert wine a few weeks ago, and what a delicacy it was! And later in the year, there’s the prospect of a strawberry and rhubarb crumble, with the coarser stalks that appear later in the year.

I know that it’s something of a ‘Marmite’ plant, as discussed in the piece below. And thinking about it now, it’s sad that the plant in the photo above had gone to seed, something Dad would never have allowed if he’d been well enough to notice. I did hack it down myself, but Mum and Dad were not to be around in the house for much longer, and I suspect that it’s now gone. But still, rhubarb is a favourite of mine, and a single mouthful brings back so many memories. Let’s see what I had to say about it.

Dear Readers, rhubarb is something of a travelling plant in our family. I remember a patch of it growing in the two allotments that we had when I was a child, and I strongly suspect that it was the same plant, dug up and transplanted. And now that Mum and Dad live in their Dorset bungalow there is a clump of the plant growing next to the greenhouse. How handsome it is, with its crinkly green leaves that look in need of a good iron, and those lip-puckering stalks, so unpromising raw, so delicious when combined with some sugar and topped with crumble. However, rhubarb is truly a divisive, love-it-or-hate-it plant. I find that people who love it often also favour other strong, uncompromising flavours, such as gooseberries,mackerel, blackcurrants and offal. It is a most assertive ingredient, and needs to be treated with the utmost respect by the cook.

In the first months of a new year there is forced rhubarb, with its yellow leaves and delicate rose-pink stems. In the UK this is grown in sheds in the ‘rhubarb triangle’ (between Wakefield, Leeds and Morley) and is picked by candlelight, in a tradition dating back to the 1800’s. The plants are grown outside for two years (and therefore exposed to frost, which is said to improve the flavour) and are then moved to low, heated sheds – the plants used to be fertilised with manure, night-soil and ‘shoddy’, a by-product of the wool industry. At one time, West Yorkshire produced 90% of all the forced rhubarb in the world, Such was the demand that the ‘Rhubarb Express’ brought up to 200 tonnes of rhubarb to the south every day before 1939. Alas, the post-war availability of more exotic fruits impacted on the rhubarb trade, and today the early rhubarb is an expensive luxury – beautiful, delicate, and, to my mind, less ‘up-front’ than the robust late-spring outdoor-grown plant. But what a treat it must have been before everything was available all the time! We have lost something, I feel, with our strawberries in December and our asparagus in October and our oranges all year round.

But the ‘real’ stuff comes later in the year, with green and red-tinged stems and with a tannic taste that can twist the face into some most amusing shapes. It cooks in seconds, and the stems collapse into mush at the slightest provocation, so if presentation is a concern, keep your eye on your rhubarb. Usually, though, the fruit is covered with a pie crust, or sponge, or the aforementioned crumble, and so appearance is not a major concern. I have been seeing some recipes which use young rhubarb raw in salads, and very pretty they look too.

Those crinkly leaves are poisonous, containing oxalic acid which is a corrosive ingredient that acts particularly on the kidneys. It is estimated that 5 kgs of rhubarb leaves would have to be ingested to run the risk of dying from rhubarb poisoning, but there is also a school of thought that suggests that using bicarbonate of soda in the cooking water ( a common technique for keeping the bright colour of leafy greens) accentuates the toxin. There is also a long-standing belief amongst scientists that there is another, unidentified toxin in the rhubarb leaves. During the First World War there were said to be a few cases of accidental poisoning when people harvested and cooked the leaves, but it seems to be hard to find hard evidence for such cases.

What is much better documented is the long history of rhubarb being used as a laxative – the Chinese have used it for this purpose for millenia, as did the medieval peoples of Western Europe and the Middle East. Along with senna pods rhubarb was one of the ‘comedy ingredients’ of my childhood – it would be clear that anyone eating rhubarb without the traditional sweet accoutrements was constipated. A good old purge was often thought to sort everything out, and rhubarb was just the stuff to do it.

Rhubarb feels as English as, well, rhubarb pie, but in fact it originated far further east, probably in China, and arrived in Europe in the 14th Century via the Silk Route. It was initially prized for its aforementioned medicinal properties, and was extremely valuable, more expensive than cinnamon, saffron or even opium. Have a look at this list of treasures from the East, written in 1403 by the Castilian ambassador to the court of Timur the Great (Tamburlaine) in Samarkand:

‘…The best of all merchandise coming to Samarkand was from China: especially silks, satins, musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, and rhubarb…’

But of course this is a most adaptable plant, and it took to the soils of Europe with much enthusiasm. Soon every peasant had a rhubarb plant of his or her own, and the ingredient was being used in every kitchen.

Rhubarb isn’t technically a fruit, as the stems are used rather than the fruiting bodies (just as a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable). I doubt that that has dampened anyone’s enthusiasm, however. Part of the joy of harvesting a (small amount) of rhubarb is that you head out with your machete,  cut off the stems while imaging that there’s a leopard in the undergrowth waiting to pounce on you (or maybe that’s just me) and return to the house with your booty. None of that time-consuming picking! Rhubarb is definitely an ingredient for the ‘I want it now’ generation. You can have a pot full of rhubarb compote in less than twenty minutes from opening the back door.

Incidentally, I have never seen a rhubarb plant in flower, but this is what it looks like. Rhubarb is a member of the Polygonaceae, which includes buckwheat, the various persicarias, sorrel and Japanese knotweed. If you look closely at the white florets, they look rather like buckwheat.

It’s believed that a slice of rhubarb placed into the hole where you plan to plant a cabbage or other brassica will prevent club-root, and a piece of rhubarb worn around the neck was said to prevent stomach cramps. And in my research for this article, I found a most delightful website called ‘The Rhubarb Compendium‘, which includes the following delights:

• Rhubarb is great for bringing back the shine to burnt pots and pans. I must remember this time next time I forget about my rhubarb compote and boil it dry.
• 3 tbsp of rhubarb root boiled in two cups of water can brighten the colour of blond hair (though I’d test it first. Pink hair is so last century, darling)
• The leaves can be used as an insecticide (all that oxalic acid, I’m guessing) – boil up in water, allow to cool, spray, watch all the aphids retreat screaming, clutching their babies under their arms (not that I’m trying to make anyone feel guilty of course).

But now we come to a most puzzling question. Why is the phrase ‘rhubarb, rhubarb’ used to simulate the sound of background chatting in plays and films? Allegedly it’s because the word contains no particularly obvious phonemes, and so if a lot of people are repeating it, in different tones and with different stresses, it sounds a lot like your usual background babble. Other phrases might include ‘watermelon’ and ‘peas and carrots’. Apparently, however, these days what is more often used is something called ‘pocket dialogue’ – a few uncompleted sentences relating to the matter at hand for the extras to say, to simulate the sound of conversation. What a shame. I rather liked the idea of everyone saying rhubarb. Though maybe it stimulated the appetite for a coffee break.

And here, finally, is a rather fine poem about rhubarb, and about lots of other things too….

 

Rhubarb by Matthew Burns

The poison lives only in the leaves,
thick with instant bitterness to warn you,
and my Polish grandmother said
this was to kill off the lazy ones, the stupid ones,
the ones who wanted things handed to them,
who couldn’t find it in themselves to dig.

And planting it told everyone
you didn’t mind dirt under your nails,
that you knew life was hard work if you did it right.
So she grew more than the whole family could eat.

By May, her narrow terraced backyard
in the city’s First Ward was a lapping sea
of palm-sized leaves; by June, a solid ruff of green,
a pruning knife’s hooked blade biting
through the stalks with a flick of her wrist
and a quick snap.

The one time I tried this I sliced deep
into my thumb knuckle at first swipe.
We were both red inside,
me, the rhubarb.
That’s the stuff I didn’t really think about at ten,
how everything bleeds;
how everything must die somehow—
the stupid ones poisoned, the hard workers
heart-worn and wrecked.

We ate the rhubarb raw, stripped of all its leaves.
Dipped in sugar, it still lingered
bitter on our tongues as some inoculation
against the worst of what was yet to come.

Photo Credits

Photo One by © Copyright Alan Murray-Rust and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Photo One by By Rasbak – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6656946