Dear Readers, I was visiting a friend in Walthamstow today when I noticed that the only plant that seemed to be flourishing in the parched front lawn of a local housing estate was some yarrow. The ground is literally dust, but in this tiny spot (which is close to three Thames Water manhole covers) the yarrow is positively verdant.

It’s been a tough, tough year for many wild plants, but as the saying goes ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’, in this case spreading and taking advantage of a tiny patch which might possibly be a little damper than the soil round about. I note that in my first Wednesday Weed post about yarrow, I mention its deep taproots, which make it very drought-resistant. Once upon a time it was a vital member of any meadow community, and it has a millennia-long relationship with human beings. What a splendid little plant!

Let’s see what I’ve said previously about Yarrow.

Dear Readers, Yarrow is such a common plant (it’s in flower pretty much every month of the year), and in its natural state it is a shy and retiring white flower. However, it has spawned a whole raft of brightly coloured cultivars, usually called ‘Achillea’ in garden centres. Even the wild plant can often be found in various shades of pink, and I’m noticing cultivars in rusty orange and bright yellow. Hoverflies in particular seem to love those easy, open flowers – they don’t have the specialised equipment needed for dealing with a foxglove or a phlomis, but they will very happily while away the hours on a yarrow flower, regardless of colour.

But I am most delighted because Yarrow has been in flower in my ‘meadow’ next to the pond (aka the smallest meadow in East Finchley). It makes me feel as if I have a few metres of genuine sward, and I’ve noticed that the froglets are enjoying having an easy exit from the pond too. There’s something so deliciously lush and green about this tiny patch of turf, and it’s stayed that way even though it’s been such a dry year. North-facing gardens have their problems, but also their advantages, like most things.

Yarrow was one of my very first ‘Wednesday Weeds’, so let’s journey back to 2014 and see what was going on then.

As I squelched womanfully around the edge of the playing fields at Coldfall Wood on Monday, I was forcefully reminded that most of the soil of London is clay. The whole area was a slippery, claggy mass. I could have picked up a handful and thrown myself a pot. A Golden Retriever hurled himself into a large puddle, and a crow hopped down to check out the new water features that had appeared after the previous night’s heavy rainfall.

I was looking for something interesting to share with you all. Something with berries, or interesting foliage. Something that hadn’t either disappeared or turned into a twig. And then I spotted these, flowering amongst the brambles on the sunlit side of the fields.

Yarrow is a plant of the northern hemisphere, which grows in Europe, Asia and North America. It gets its Latin name, Achillea,  from the Iliad – Achilles was said to have been taught the use of yarrow by his centaur teacher, Chiron, and to have always carried some with him into battle to staunch bleeding. Everywhere that it grows it has a long history of use as a medicinal herb. Some of its other names, such as Woundwort and Sanguinary, reflect its traditional use as a bloodclotting agent, but the flowers and leaves have also been used for everything from phlegmatic conditions to menstrual cramps. Humble the plant may be, but it seems to be a veritable medicine chest, and is even said to increase the efficacy of other herbs when it is used in combination with them.

In Asia, the dried stalks of Yarrow are used as part of the I Ching divination process, and in North America the Navajo use it for toothache and earache.

I associate Yarrow with areas of old grassland, where its delicate leaves form an important part of the sward, but quickly learned that it had an important role in the health of our agricultural land. Before we contracted our current mania for monoculture, Yarrow always formed part of the meadow’s plant community – it has extremely deep roots, which make it resistant to drought and helpful in cases of soil erosion, plus the leaves (which can also be eaten by humans) are rich in minerals and good for grazing animals. These days, it seems to be something of an outlier, growing at the edges of fields where the turf is allowed to grow a little longer.

The list of beneficial qualities goes on. Yarrow is excellent for companion planting because it attracts pollinators such as hoverflies who will eat many plant pests. Starlings use it to line their nests, and it has been shown to reduce the parasite load that the nestlings have to bear.

In the wild, Yarrow grows in three colour variations – white (as below), pale pink and dark pink. Many cultivated varieties exist, and are indeed ‘bee-friendly’, though not, I suspect, as ‘friendly’ as the original plant.

The name ‘Yarrow’ is said to come from the Anglo-Saxon word gearwe, which means ‘to prepare’ or ‘to be ready’. Many practices concerned its ability to ward off evil – it was burned on St John’s Eve (23rd June). This coincides with the Summer Solstice, so may be another case of a Christian holiday overlaying a much older tradition. Also at the Solstice, a bundle of Yarrow would be tied over a child’s cradle, or over the entrance to the house, to ensure good luck in the coming year.

As usual, I am gobsmacked. This unobtrusive little plant has had a millenium-long relationship with human beings all over the world. These days, most of us (including me) scarcely give it a second glance. Pushed to the edge of the field like so many plant species, it flowers on , even on an iron-hard December day. It makes me sad that so much of the plant lore that our grandparents would have known is being lost. It is so important that we recognise our place in a community that is made up of land, plants and animals, not just humans. In the meantime, the Yarrow waits on.

 

 

Dear Readers, I am in the midst of packing for my South Africa trip, and have suddenly been struck with a wave of pessimism. So many things could possibly go wrong! So I visited  our local chemist, and have purchased:

• Anti-histamine ointment for bites
• Immodium for dodgy tummy ( I have never had to use this yet, but if I don’t have it I know I’ll need it) (And yes, in case you’re worried, I would only ever use a small amount to get me through a long flight (i.e. 10 and a half hours from Cape Town) or a particularly long and dodgy bus ride)
• Nurofen for headache
• Sturgeron for travel sickness. I am never travel sick (fingers crossed) but some poor soul often is, and it’s useful to have some around.
• Mini aspirin for the flight ( I have a genetic condition which makes me more liable to DVT )

I already have every possible compression bandage/painkiller/cold remedy that you can imagine, so I am pretty much a walking medicine chest. And hopefully I won’t need any of it.

While I was packing, I suddenly remembered that the Ice Plant (Delospermum) is native to South Africa, so here is a quick reminder of this lovely plant. Last year it was all over the garden centre, this year not so much, which is a shame as it would have been perfect for my sun-blasted window boxes.

Onward!

Dear Readers, the local garden centre is absolutely full of these cheery little plants at the moment, and the ones in my window boxes are positively busting out all over. These are succulents, and so are (helpfully) drought-resistant, a theme that feels more and more important as hosepipe bans loom, and heatwaves and dry spells are likely to become more common.

The common name for Delosperma is ‘ice plant’, but this is also used for a whole variety of what I used to call sedums. Older readers might also remember the name ‘Mesembryanthemum’. There are about 170 plants in the genus, and all of them live in Southern Africa. They are beautifully adapted to dry conditions: their leaves are fleshy and store water for arid times, and the seed capsule opens in response to rain to free the seeds at the most auspicious time. These plants have been flowering consistently since I planted them over a month ago, with no sign of stopping yet! They seem to be attractive to hoverflies, though the marjoram that they’re planted with is a much bigger draw for bees.

Another adaptation to arid living is the bladder cell: this is what gives the plant the name ‘ice plant’, as sometimes the cells shimmer with liquid. They are modified hair cells, and during times of high stress will manage the salt intake of the plant – as less water is available, the salts in the plant can reach toxic levels. There is some thought of using members of the Delosperma genus for bioremediation of salt-logged soils.

So, Delosperma is clearly a great plant for a sun-drenched south-facing window box, and it comes in a whole array of colours too, from red, orange and yellow through cool blues and icy whites. I imagine it must look strikingly beautiful when it blooms in its natural surroundings. In California it seems to be a favourite in some ocean-front properties, maybe due to its ability to cope with the salty breezes.

Remarkably, though, the plant is also very hardy – one gardener that I follow has found that his Delosperma specimens will survive a Newfoundland winter, and I may well leave mine out just to see if they can make it through the colder months.

Although the plant doesn’t look as if it might be particularly edible, it was apparently taken onboard ship and the leaves eaten to prevent scurvy – again, maybe its drought and salt tolerance would have made it appealing. I imagine that the leaves taste a little like samphire. Medicinally, the leaves have been used to make a soothing cream, and have also been used to treat bloating, dysentery, liver and kidney disease and pneumonia. Interestingly, the leaves are also said to contain hallucinogenic chemicals, and a deep dive into the internet realm of people rearing plants for their psychedelic properties reveals lots of folk growing pretty pink succulents and having no success with getting high whatsoever. Personally, I think that the flowers are quite ‘trippy’ enough without eating the poor thing.

However, the Batu people of South Africa use the leaves of Delosperma to make khadi, an alcoholic wine which induces hallucinations. The roots are used to grow yeasts which are then used for beer.

And now, how about a poem, lovely people? I am reminded of the photo of the California coast (above) as I read this. It takes a couple of readings, I think, to absorb all the nuance. W.S di Piero was born in Philadelphia in 1945, and his poems are said to be full of ‘gritty realism’: he also takes inspiration from painters such as Caravaggio and (my favourite!) Carpaccio. I think there’s something epic about this work, as it reaches back in time and then focuses in on the flowers around a child’s feet. See what you think.

Ice Plant in Bloom

BY W. S. DI PIERO

From where I stood at the field’s immaculate edge,
walking past the open patch of land that’s money bounded,
in California’s flat sunlight, by suburban shadows of houses
occupied by professors, lawyers, radically affluent do-gooders,
simple casual types, plus a few plumbers, children of lettuce-pickers
and microchip princes, grandchildren of goatherds and orchard keepers
who pruned and picked apricot trees that covered what wasn’t yet
block after block. Vaporized by money, by the lords and ladies of money,
in one month, on one block, three bungalows bulldozed, and the tanky smells
of goatherds and, before them, dirt farmers who never got enough water,
held momentary in the air like an album snapshot’s aura,
souls of roller-rink sweethearts and sausage-makers fleeing
heaps of crusty lath, lead pipe, tiny window casements,
then new foundations poured for cozy twelve-room houses.
So what was she doing in that field among weeds and ice plant?
The yellow and pink blooms spiking around her feet like glory?
Cranking her elbow as surveyors do, to a bored watcher in the distance,
she fanned the air, clouds running low and fast behind her.

A voice seeped through the moodless sunlight
as she seemed to talk to the flowers and high weeds.
She noticed me, pointed in my direction. Accusation, election,
I could not tell, nor if it was at me myself
or the green undeveloped space she occupied,
welded into her grid by traffic noise. Okay!
A word for me? A go-ahead? Okay! Smeared by the wind
and maybe not her own voice after all. I held my place.
She would be one of the clenched ministers adrift
in bus terminals and K-Marts, carrying guns
in other parts of America, except she dressed like a casual lady of money,
running shoes, snowbird sunglasses, wristwatch like a black birthday cake.
The voice, thin and pipey, came from the boy or girl,
blond like her, who edged into view as I tracked the shot. The child,
staring down while he cried his song, slowly tread the labyrinth
of ice plant’s juicy starburst flesh of leaves.
Okay! He follows the nested space between flowers that bristle at his feet,
his or hers, while the desiccated California sky so far from heaven and hell
beams down on us beings of flower, water, and flesh before we turn to money.
The sky kept sliding through the tips of weeds. The sky left us behind.

Photo Credits

Photo One By Peter D. Tillman – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89361118

Dear Readers, Nipplewort was one of the very first of my ‘Wednesday Weeds’ (I first wrote about it back in 2014). I’ve always been fond of it, with its delicate flowers, but this year I have been full of admiration for its tenacity. When everything else is drooping, Nipplewort (and it’s many yellow cousins, such as Dandelion and Sow Thistle) has been doing very nicely, thank you. Most of the plants around here are annual – Nipplewort can last for more than one year, but not usually in such harsh conditions as an urban pavement. And as I’ve mentioned before, the response of most annual plants to drought is to set seed as quickly as possible.

Interestingly, in the Victorian language of flowers, Nipplewort is said to represent ‘fidelity in adversity’, which feels strangely appropriate!

And, Readers, while I can find no poem that is specifically about Nipplewort ( a bit tricky to rhyme with, I guess), here is a typically strident few lines from Edna St Vincent Millay, who, with her crochety-ness and general misanthropy is becoming something of a favourite. See what you think, and then back, back to 2014. I see I was writing about my mother’s stroke – she survived it with very few ill effects, amazingly, and soldiered on for another four years.

Weeds
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.

Dear Readers, when I was photographing Trailing Bellflower last week, I found this elegant plant growing amongst the nettles in a mysterious  lane that the developers seemed to have overlooked. The long, graceful stems are surmounted by delicate yellow flowers, which seem to balance like trapeze artists.

This is Nipplewort, a native British plant which grows in disturbed land of all kinds. I hadn’t noticed it in East Finchley before, but of course, so many of the Wednesday Weeds were invisible to me before I got my plant-spotting eyes into focus.

The leaves of Nipplewort can be eaten in salads and, along with Chickweed and Shepherd’s Purse, it forms part of the Japanese Festival of Seven Herbs  (Nanakusa-no-sekku), where a porridge of fresh, local plants is eaten on January 7th.

Nipplewort got its name from the shape of its closed buds.

There was, in medieval times, a belief that God indicated how a plant should be used by creating a specific ‘sign’ encoded in its leaves or flowers. Hence, Eyebright, which is said to resemble an eye, was used for treating styes and eye infections. This idea is known as the Doctrine of Signatures  – the idea that each plant had a signature that could be read by a herbalist. Because of the resemblance of its buds to nipples, Nipplewort has been used as a treatment for breast ulcers, cracked nipples and for drying up milk.

I suspect that ,  although the ‘signature’ was said to come from God, the idea is much more ancient than that, dating back to pre-Christian times, when there was no need for a divine intercessor as the plants could speak directly to us, if we had ears to here.

It seems somehow appropriate that, on this sunny late autumn day, I was looking at a plant that was associated with motherhood. As I took these photos I had no idea that a cloud of troubles was forming overhead, or that by the end of the week I would be sitting at a hospital bed, holding my mother’s hand as she recovers from a stroke which has damaged her eyesight. But it gives me great comfort to think back to that patch of bright yellow flowers, the buzzing of bees in the ivy above, the Trailing Bellflower peeping from under the fence. It reminds me that everything is always in flux, blooming and falling fallow, and that I am part of that process. I need to  bow with the wind, to drink in the sunshine, to accept the dark times and to let go of the delusion that I can control anything important.

Nipplewort (Carl Axel Magnus Lindman [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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/