Probably the Hollyberry Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster bullatus)

Dear Readers, when I first wrote about cotoneaster back in 2016, I was very much thinking of the small-leaved hedging variety that is so popular here in the County Roads. However, I am now tripping over them everywhere, including in various woodlands where they are making themselves at home. In ‘Alien Plants’, Clive Stace and Michael Crawley list no less than 12 different species of Cotoneaster, of which the Wall Cotoneaster (described below) is the most commonly found. The authors describe how Entire-Leaved Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster integralis) and Himalayan Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster simonsii) seem to be the most inclined to bad behaviour: the former smothers limestone cliffs and turf, while the former prefers heathland in the far northern reaches of Scotland. The culprits, I fear, are our friends the birds, who gobble up the berries and deposit the seeds elsewhere. 

In all, there are 85 species of Cotoneaster in the wild in the UK, 82 of which are actual species and 3 of which are hybrids. No wonder it’s difficult to tell them apart! These plants are popular with bees, hoverflies and birds, so I can see why they’re so widely planted. In urban areas I think that they greatly cheer up our streets and car parks and public spaces, and I can even forgive the odd intrusion in the edges of our local woodlands. I can see how they’d be much more of a problem in a Site of Special Scientific Interest. 

Anyhow, let’s see what I thought back in 2016.

Dear Readers, I suspect that the most contentious part of today’s post will be how the name of this plant is pronounced. Do we go with ‘cotton-easter’, or is it the rather more exotic-sounding ‘cot-oh-knee-aster?’ Well according to the Oxford English Dictionary it’s the latter, preferably with the second syllable voiced as if you’ve just heard that the price of quinoa in Waitrose has doubled overnight. So that’s that cleared up. Incidentally, the name comes from cotone, the Latin for quince, and -aster meaning ‘resembling’ – I suppose that the berries, with their star-shaped ‘ends’, do look a little like tiny quinces.

There are over 80 species of cotoneaster in cultivation in the UK, but this is probably the most common. It is a great favourite in gardens – the small white flowers are bee-magnets that attract an extraordinary variety of pollinators from the second that they come into bud, and the berries are not only attractive to us, but also to birds. This is a plant that doesn’t need pruning, and is largely trouble-free for the gardener. Unfortunately it is also a frequent escapee, spread by those pesky birds who eat the berries and distribute them all over the place. In my ‘Field Guide to Invasive Plants and Animals in Britain’ it is described as being a dangerous invasive on cliffs and heathland, where it shades out less vigorous plants. In London, it crops up all over the place, and I’ve found cotoneaster seedlings in woodland, on waste ground and even in my own garden.

Cotoneaster is another member of the rose family (see tormentil last week), and is originally from western China. It was first introduced to the UK in about 1879, was recorded in the wild in 1940 and is said to be ‘still spreading’, though at present it can mostly be found in the south of England.  From the little map in my Harraps Wildflower Guide, it appears that Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset are ‘hotspots’.

However, there is a native cotoneaster, known in Welsh as the Creigafal y Gogarth “rock apple of Gogarth” (Cotoneaster cambricus) , and found only on the Great Orme peninsula in north Wales. There are only six of this plant left in the wild, with another 11 cultivated from cuttings and seeds. The plant is unique to this habitat, and grows nowhere else. It has a very slow and erratic germination and survival rate (the 11 cultivated plants are the only ones left from 33 originally planted out). The plant was discovered in 1783 and since then has been dug up by collectors, overgrazed by sheep, eaten by rabbits and goats and, the final straw, outcompeted by other species of cotoneaster from local gardens. There is a plan in place to increase the population to 100 plants by 2030, so fingers crossed.

The rock apple of Gogarth (Cotoeaster cambricus) – probably the rarest plant ever featured on the Wednesday Weed! (Photo One – credit below)

Having thought that we had nailed down the pronunciation of the name of this week’s plant, I have now come across a poem by Thomas Hardy which throws the proverbial spanner in the works. It’s fair to say that it’s not one of his best works, although it is in an interesting poetical form called a triolet, a French form with a rigid pattern of stress and rhyme. Here it is, in full.

Birds at Winter Nightfall

Around the house the flakes fly faster,
And all the berries now are gone
From holly and cotoneaster
Around the house. The flakes fly!–faster
Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster
We used to see upon the lawn
Around the house. The flakes fly faster,
And all the berries now are gone!

So, even accounting for Hardy’s probable West Country accent, we now have a third possible way of saying ‘cotoneaster’ – ‘cot-oh-knee-arster’. Unless Hardy pronounces ‘faster’ as ‘fass-ter’ rather than ‘farster’, which is quite possible. I like the idea of a ‘crumb-outcaster’ – that would be me, in all weathers.

However, my happiest find for this particular Wednesday Weed is some music by the composer David Warin Solomons called ‘Cotoneaster’. Inspired by the bees coming and going from his cotoneaster bush, it’s a rather meditative and peaceful piece, redolent of those first warm days of spring when the flowers open, and the queen bees are stocking up their reserves for the challenges ahead. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Cotoneaster for cor anglais and and guitar, by David Warin Solomons

Photo Credits

Photo One (Native Cotoneaster) – By Col Ford and Natasha de Vere from living in Wales (Cotoneaster cambricus Uploaded by Tim1357) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer. Free to use and share non-commercially, but please attribute and link back to the blog, thank you!

Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum)

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

Dear Readers, it might appear that I’ve become teasel-obsessed, but clearly I’m not the only one! In Nature’s Calendar, Lulah Ellender has an interesting piece on teasels. While I was familiar with some of it (see the ‘Wednesday Weed’ piece below), I had no idea that teasels had so many vernacular names, from ‘barbers’ brushes’, ‘donkey’s thistle’ and ‘brushes and combs’ to ‘Venus’s basin’ because of the way that the water gathers in the little ‘bowls’ at the bottom of the leaves. I had been intrigued by thoughts that the plant was on its way to insectivory, because one study showed that plants with drowned insects in the ‘basins’ did better than others. Ellender points out that a second study hasn’t borne this out, though, so more research is needed!

And here’s a poem by John McCullough, written in 2008. I remember seeing something very similar to this in Dorset when I used to visit Mum and Dad – the teenagers wreaking havoc through the quiet rural lanes, so full of energy that it felt as if they might burst. The ‘quivering teasel’ really reminds me of how the plant stands as a sentinel in a variety of unloved, damp places – ditches swamped with Himalayan balsam and rusting farm detritus, those strange rubble-y piles beside gates where something was dumped and is slowly returning to the soil.

NIGHT WRITING
In humid months, at the estate’s unwatched edge
the boys hook up for an after-hours cigarette

before trashing field gates. Dazzle of white Reeboks, bling,
practised geezer-laughs rev-revving

with the engines of graffiti tagged bangers.
Customised stereos thump out this week’s garage,

the race kicking off in a blizzard of chalk dust,
a bouncing charge up the crumbling, fossil-built rise.

Death and dew ponds can’t stop them while they swerve
past quivering teasel, conquer the bone ridge’s turn,

skeins of wool lifting from gorse as banners
for the night’s whooping, fist-raising winners.

Further off, the crews unite for a slow drift, melt into hills
but leave the empty sky with headlamp trails:

blazing ghosts still performing their necessary work,
still scribbling their names on the dark.

And now, here’s a revisit of my Wednesday Weed on teasel, from (gosh) 2015.

On a grey, damp day at the end of February, I went with my friend Ann to see what weeds I could find in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery. A stream runs along the far north-eastern edge of the area and there, silhouetted against the sky, we found the unmistakable seedheads of the Teasel.

Teasel, for all its grass-like appearance, is in fact a member of the Scabious family, and like scabious, it has a lot of wildlife value – I have seen whole families of goldfinches dangling from the stems and pulling out the seeds, and in summer, the flowers are loved by bees and other pollinators.

Blue Tits on Teasel by Archibald Thorburn

Hoverfly on Teasel flower by Rawdonfox via Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/34739556@N04/14773481592/)

The Teasel flower itself is remarkable. In July, a band of flowers opens around the middle of the head, as below:

Teasel flower at beginning of flowering period (By D. Gordon E. Robertson (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The band of flowers has now separated into two bands ( © Copyright Gerald England and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

For some truly beautiful close-ups of the Teasel, have a look at the photos by Brian Johnston here.

A close relative of ‘our’ teasel, Fuller’s Teasel (Dipsacus sativum) was extensively used in the  textile industry. The plant was used to ‘raise the nap’ on woollen fabric, particularly for such delicate jobs as treating the green baize covering on billiard tables (and indeed they are still used for this purpose, having proved to be the most efficacious way of performing this task). For anyone who would like to know more about the process, and about the history of baize, I can heartily recommend the Pegs and Tails website, which is full of arcane and interesting facts and photos.  The seed heads were attached to a machine such as the Teasel Gig below, from the Somerset Levels.

Teasel Gig from the Somerset Levels ( © Copyright Noel Jenkins and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

A single dried teasel head (“Teasel” by Loggie-log (aka Loggie) – Own work. )

By the twentieth century, the Teasel gigs had been largely replaced by metal combs. However, many weavers still swear by the Teasel heads – they don’t tear the cloth as metal items sometimes do, and are, of course, cheaper to grow or to harvest. And the Wild Teasel that I saw in the cemetery has also had its part to play – though the spines are weaker than those of Fuller’s teasel, they have still been used for gently carding wool, a process that ‘teases’ out the separate threads for spinning.

Fuller’s teasel was taken to Virginia in the USA by the early settlers for their woollen industry, although there it has proved to be something of a thug. It can grow surprisingly tall given half a chance.

Deer up to her ears in teasel (Hagerty Ryan, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

In a winter garden, or in floristry, Teasels also have a kind of sculptural majesty, especially in autumn, where the low sunlight shows them to their best advantage.

Photo by William Radke, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Public domain)

One very interesting feature of the teasel is that when young, the leaves of the plant form a kind of continuous cup, which holds water when it rains. This prevents insects from climbing up the stem, and drowns a good number of those who try. There is some evidence that the insects that are thus left rotting are absorbed by the plant, in a form of partial carnivory – plants that have such ‘food’ seem to have a larger seedset than those who don’t.

Water storage at the base of the teasel plant (“Dipsacus-fullonum-water-storage”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also interesting that this is the very water that is said to have rejuvenating powers: it has also been used to remove freckles, and as an eye bath for those suffering from hay fever.

The structure of the Teasel seed head fascinates me. It looks a little like a small hedgehog, or some kind of many-spiked sea creature. It doesn’t surprise me at all that there is an Irish belief that a teasel head left on a grave will distract the Banshees, who will use it as a hairbrush. It is one of those plants which look almost otherworldly, a spiky character full of strange secrets and a most particular beauty.

By Radio Tonreg from Vienna, Austria (Dipsacus fullonum Uploaded by Jacopo Werther) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Firethorn (Pyracantha) in the Sunshine Garden Centre car park

Dear Readers, having written about waxwings and their taste for berries yesterday, I wanted to have a quick revisit of Firethorn, or Pyracantha. This has become an increasingly popular garden plant, as the number of colour varieties increase. And it forms a very fine prickly hedge, which is not only full of flowers in spring, and berries in autumn, but would keep out anything less determined than a grizzly bear (see the story about the man who bought my previous house below.

And here is an interesting poem by Jane Hirshfield, an American poet whose work I like very much. See what you think of this enigmatic little piece. And then, on to my original Firethorn Wednesday Weed, from 2015. Gosh, such a lot has happened since!

Pyracantha and Plum by Jane Hirshfield

Last autumn’s chastened berries still on one tree,
spring blossoms tender, hopeful, on another.
The view from this window
much as it was ten years ago, fifteen.
Yet it seems this morning
a self-portrait both clearer and darker,
as if while I slept some Rembrandt or Brueghel
had walked through the garden, looking hard.

Firethorn (Pyracantha sp) growing in Coldfall Wood

Dear Readers, this week we have something of a mystery on our hands. Growing at the edge of Coldfall Wood is what appears to be a Firethorn (Pyracantha) bush. This native plant of southern Europe through to south-east Asia is a common garden plant, but the clue to its normal form is in the name. Firethorn normally has the most impressive array of thorns of any common shrub, but this  individual appears to be thornless. What is going on?

I used to live in Chadwell Heath, which is in the hinterland between Essex and Greater London. I had two Pyracantha bushes, one with yellow berries, and one with orange ones, much like the one in the picture below.

A fine orange Pyracantha („Pyracantha-coccinea-berries“. Lizenziert unter CC BY-SA 3.0 über Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyracantha-coccinea-berries.JPG)

As you might expect, my garden was wild and overgrown by suburban standards, but it was a home to sparrows and bumblebees, toads and foxes. The sparrows in particular would chirp from the depths of the Firethorn, safe from predators, for none would dare the Firethorn’s spiky tracery. When I sold the house, there was a mix up with the moving vans, and we were marooned after the transaction was completed. The new owners took possession, but we had nowhere to go while we waited for transport to move all our stuff. We had to watch as the new owners of the house started to hack the garden about. For reasons which puzzle me even now, the new man of the house took his shirt off before he started in on my beloved Firethorn. As anyone who has ever encountered one knows, pyracantha fights back with a vengeance. Within half an hour, the plant was half its previous size, but its attacker had so many cuts on his torso that he looked as if he’d been whipped. The Firethorn might have been going down, but it left its opponent bloodied and resentful.

Pyracantha flowers and fruit (“Starr 021126-0030 Pyracantha angustifolia” by Forest & Kim Starr. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons )

Pyracantha has many advantages as a wildlife garden plant, and has been cultivated in the UK since the Fifteenth century. We have already mentioned its thorns, so useful as a deterrent to would-be burglars. Its flowers attract bees, and its berries attract birds. In fact, the fruits can be such a draw that the municipal planting of Pyracantha and its close relative, Cotoneaster in supermarket car parks sometimes summons that most colourful and iconic of winter birds, the Waxwing.

Waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus) (“Bohemian Wax Wing” by Randen Pederson – originally posted to Flickr as Cedar Wax Wing. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org

Of course, none of this explains exactly why this thornless, berryless, flowerless specimen has popped up in the wood.

We have seen numerous examples of plants who have escaped from gardens and established themselves (no doubt with great glee) in the ‘wild’. And as Coldfall Wood backs onto many gardens, it would be a simple thing for a passing blackbird to gobble down a berry, perch in a hornbeam tree and deposit the seed amongst the fallen leaves. But living in the deep shade of the uncoppiced part of the wood is not ideal for a plant that needs at least some direct sunlight. I have a hypothesis that, because thorns are expensive for a plant to produce, maybe this individual is putting all its energy into producing leaves at the moment. Maybe it is too young and innocent to have thorns. Or maybe, in my infinite wisdom, I have misidentified it and it is, in fact, some errant Cotoneaster (though my botanist friends agree that it is a Pyracantha).

Not everybody is fond of Pyracantha.  Like Hawthorn, its flowers are said to smell a little like sex, and so it has come to have something of a wicked reputation. Indeed, it is said that some churches will not have Firethorn berries included as part of the Harvest Festival flower arrangements because it is associated with the Devil. Terrible woman that I am, this makes me admire it even more. Who could not love this fierce, beautiful, generous plant? It is as much a force of nature as a tiger or a kestrel. And in the uncertain, tumultuous days ahead, maybe this is exactly what our struggling pollinators and birds will need.

Pyracantha hedge from Sandhill (north of Leeds).  © Copyright Christine Johnstone and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Sources this week include the Plantlore website, the Plant Lives website and Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica.

Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea)

Dear Readers, dogwood is one of the few garden plants that’s more interesting in the winter than at any other time of year, especially when seen against a grey sky or, even better, snow. I wrote the piece below back in 2018, when dogwood was my Wednesday Weed. See what you think. 

Dear Readers, every gardening magazine  has a section on ‘winter colour’ in September (along with instructions on bulb planting), and one of the plants that is always mentioned is the dogwood (Cornus sanguinea). This is a shrub which is native to the UK and most of Europe and western Asia, and it is largely grown for the colour of its stems in winter – the species name sanguinea  meaning ‘bloody’ rather gives the game away. It is the youngest growth which has the brightest colour, and in many municipal parks and gardens the plant is cut right down to a few inches every year. There are many cultivated varieties of dogwood, with stem colour varying from crimson red to sunset orange.

Dogwood for sale in the garden centre last week.

However, dogwood is more than its stems. Although the white flowers are not particularly showy, the berries (sometimes called dogberries) are irresistible to birds, one reason that I don’t butcher my shrub every year. In fact, some organic gardens grow dogwood as a way of keeping the thrushes from the soft fruit, as it’s said that they prefer dogberries to any other fruit. I shall have to see if my bush proves to be interesting to our avian friends when it gets a bit bigger.

Dogwood berries (Photo One)

According to Richard Mabey’s ‘Flora Britannica’ the name ‘dogwood’ is not disparaging (unlike, say ‘Dog’s Mercury’), but comes from the name ‘dagwood’, a ‘dag’ being a wooden skewer. This is borne out by some of the other common names, such as ‘prickwood’. When the prehistoric man Otzi was discovered on the borders of Austria and Italy, he was carrying arrow shafts made of dogwood and viburnum, and an axe with a handle made of yew. He was estimated to have been buried in about 3400 BCE, and was approximately 45 years old when he met his violent death. The story of the discovery, and of what has been ascertained about Otzi’s way of life, is a fascinating one. Furthermore, the fact that the body is in a museum in Italy and not in Austria is still a source of some disgruntlement in Austria to this day.

Reconstruction of Otzi the Ice Man from the Museum of the South Tyrol in Bolzano, Italy (Photo Two)

Dogwood is mentioned in classical literature: in the Aeneid, Aeneas finds a haunted copse of dogwood and myrtle, and when he breaks off branches to make an altar, the dogwood bleeds black blood.

There is also a legend that Christ was crucified on a cross made of dogwood, and that the flowers became cruciform as a result.

Finally, it’s said in the UK that when the dogwood flowers, there will be no more frosts.

Dogwood flowers (Photo Three)

The fruit of dogwood was also used to produce a dye called Vesica green, until it was replaced by more exciting substitutes such as, er, arsenic. For a rather wonderful account of how THAT particular decision went down, have a look at the Racked website here.

Dogwood is one of the many foodplants of the larvae of the green hairstreak butterfly. As this is a) the UK’s only green butterfly, and b) as its Latin name means ‘beautiful eyebrow’ I thought that we should have a photo. What a delightful creature!

Green hairstreak (Callophrys rubra) (Photo Four)

And, to return to the subject of ‘winter fire’, here is a wonderful poem by American poet Hyam Plutzik, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who died at the age of 50 in 1962. This really touched a chord in me, and I hope it does the same for you.

Because the Red Osier Dogwood

Because the red osier dogwood
Is the winter lightning,
The retention of the prime fire
In the naked and forlorn season
When snow is winner
(For he flames quietly above the shivering mouse
In the moldy tunnel,
The eggs of the grasshopper awaiting metamorphosis
Into the lands of hay and the times of the daisy,
The snake contorted in the gravel,
His brain suspended in thought
Over an abyss that summer will fill with murmuring
And frogs make laughable: the cricket-haunted time)—
I, seeing in the still red branches
The stubborn, unflinching fire of that time,
Will not believe the horror at the door, the snow-white worm
Gnawing at the edges of the mind,
The hissing tree when the sleet falls.
For because the red osier dogwood
Is the winter sentinel,
I am certain of the return of the moth
(Who was not destroyed when an August flame licked him),
And the cabbage butterfly, and all the families
Whom the sun fathers, in the cauldron of his mercy.

Photo Credit

Photo One (Dogwood berries ) by Sten Porse – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92313

Photo Two (Otzi reconstruction) by By Thilo Parg – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35621968

Photo Three (Dogwood flowers) by By Kurt Stüber [1] [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Four (Green Hairstreak) by By Charlesjsharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39829980

Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica)

Dear Readers, the Crape (or Crepe or Crêpe) Myrtle is originally from India, China and other areas of eastern Asia, though I think of it as being a tree that is synonymous with the southern states of the USA. I was in Washington DC a few years ago, and between the singing of the cicadas and the flowers on the Crape Myrtles it felt very sultry. All I needed was a mint julep and I’d have been in my element.

In China, the tree is known as Pai Jih Hung, which apparently means ‘100 days of red’, after the plant’s long flowering time and red flowers (the pink, mauve and white varieties are cultivars). It was also known as the ‘monkey tree’ because the bark is smooth and difficult to climb. So I suppose it should be called the ‘no monkey tree’. Or possibly the ‘monkey puzzle tree’, except that we already have one of those.

But what is this tree doing in East Finchley, parked at the end of Huntingdon Road in the County Roads and blooming away to its heart’s content? A while back I mentioned that the council was getting much more ambitious with its street trees, and Crape Myrtle was one of the trees mentioned. It really is spectacular, and most unexpected. In his book ‘London’s Street Trees’, Paul Wood mentions that in previous years the tree was considered only half-hardy in London’s winters, but as climate change kicks in, it seems to be thriving. Crape Myrtle doesn’t flower every year, so when it does it’s a real treat.

The fact that the tree doesn’t flower annually has led to some brutal pruning practices (actually known as ‘crape murder’) particularly in the US. All the outer branches are cut off in the autumn, leaving just a stump. In fact, the tree will flower whenever conditions are right and it has the resources to do so, and pruning that hard leads to soft growth, which can attract aphids and mildew, and suckering from the bottom. Be kind to your Crape Myrtle, people! It will flower when it feels like it!

An example of Crape Murder from https://aggie-hort.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/publications/stopthecrape.html

Crape Myrtle is a member of the Lythraceae family, which also includes purple loosestrife of all things. Who knew? I guess they’re both pink (though bear in mind that Crape Myrtle comes in a variety of colours, including bright red.

As far as pollinators go, Crape Myrtle doesn’t have a lot of nectar but it is said to have two types of pollen – the usual stuff, which is full of protein, and ‘false’ pollen, which is generated specifically to attract pollinators. As it blooms in September/October in the UK, it could potentially be a good source of late pollen for any bees who are still active. I shall keep an eye on the one on our street to see if anyone is popping in for a bite.

What I’ve found interesting from reading some of the legends about Crape Myrtle is how, all of a sudden, it’s associated with Aphrodite. What? This is a plant originating in eastern Asia and then heading to the US without so much as a stopover in Europe. What’s happened (I think) is that people are getting confused with a European plant that is interwoven with myth called Myrtle. This is a completely different plant, associated with love and marriage and all those other pleasant things. It is not, however, a Crape Myrtle, so enough already. This is where (Pedant alert) those so-called  boring, elitist Latin names come in so handy when we are trying to identify something precisely.

Common Myrtle (Myrtus communis) Photo By LIGURIAN VASCULAR FLORA – https://www.flickr.com/photos/196946800@N04/52505075873/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125783445

Back to Crape Myrtle. This really is an excellent tree for a small garden if you want something that has more than one season of interest (though for wildlife value I think there are better choices) – the bark of the tree is apparently very smooth (as mentioned above), and I must go and inspect the East Finchley tree to see what it looks like. The author of the photo below says that you have to actually stroke the tree to appreciate the smoothness (from the Wild in Japan blog, which is a very good read). In the photo below it looks rather like a more-refined London Plane, which is anything but smooth, as we know.

Crape myrtle bark – ‘as smooth as a baby’s bottom’ (Photo from https://wildinjapan.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/even-monkeys-fall-from-trees/)

And then there’s the autumn foliage colour, something else for me to look out for later in the year.

Crape Myrtle leaves in autumn (Photo Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Medicinally, Crape Myrtle is one of those trees that is literally meant to cure everything from diabetes to cancer. stroke to heart attack. A more reasonable assessment is given over on the Plants for a Future website, where it seems to be more use as a ‘drastic purgative’ (yikes!), as a paste for the treatment of wounds, and as a treatment for colds (if you use a decoction of the flowers). As usual, Bug Woman advises extreme caution.

And finally, here’s a poem by Evie Shockley, a black woman who grew in in the Deep South of the US. Here’s what she says about being ‘a southern poet’ –

I grew up: hearing certain accents and vocabularies and speech patterns that were the aural essence of ‘home’ or the audible signal of danger, depending; thinking that racism wasn’t much of a problem in other parts of the country; eating a cuisine that was originally developed under conditions of make-do and make-last; enjoying five- or six-month summers and getting ‘snow days’ out of school when the forecast called for nothing other than ‘possible icy conditions’; knowing that my region was considered laughable almost everywhere else; assuming there was nothing unusual about finding churches on two out of every four corners; and believing that any six or seven people with vocal chords could produce four-part harmony at the drop of a dime—and that all of this informs my poetry, sometimes directly and sometimes in ways that might be unpredictable or illegible.”

I love this, and I love this poem. See what you think.

Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima)

Dear Readers, some people might dispute whether this common London street tree is actually a tree of hell rather than heaven, largely because male trees have enormous leaves that  smell of old trainers. Lovely! The tree also reproduces with abandon, and suckers pop up in cracks in the pavement, in drains, in patches of wasteland and anywhere with a tiny bit of soil.  Nonetheless, this is an extremely resilient if short-lived street tree – it shrugs off pollution, drought, graffiti and general misuse happily for the roughly seventy years that it lives, and I think it’s actually rather graceful and attractive. The leaves, which can grow to 60-70 cms long look like those of a giant ash tree, and the seeds can be orange, yellow, rust-coloured or even bright red. As the male flowers also have that delightful odour of sweaty feet, it’s not surprising that most trees planted in urban settings (like the one opposite Martin School in East Finchley, above) are female.

Leaves and seeds of Tree of Heaven

Tree of Heaven originated in China, and was first planted in the UK in the late 18th Century when there was a fashion for all things Chinese. Once the trees’ reproductive enthusiasm was noted, it was abandoned in favour of the London Plane, until the pollution levels of industrial London killed off most smaller trees, and it started to be planted again. Ada Salter, who became Mayor of Bermondsey in 1922, was determined to make her desperately-deprived borough more beautiful, and succeeded in planting over 7000 Trees of Heaven, a number not to be exceeded until the urban tree. planting boom that’s happening at the moment. Most of the planted trees will not be Trees of Heaven, but I note that a new one was planted alongside the statue of Ada Salter that was set up in Bermondsey Spa Gardens.

Statue of Ada Salter

Ecologically, Tree of Heaven has another trick up its ‘sleeve’ – it produces a chemical called ailanthone, which inhibits the growth of other plants in the vicinity, but which doesn’t impact upon its own seedlings. Plants that produce these chemicals are called allelopathic, and it’s clearly a great advantage to invasive plants: another species which can lessen the success of competitors is garlic mustard, which might explain why it takes over so easily in new environments. In addition, the leaves are eaten by the Spotted Lanternfly, which is indigenous to China and parts of Vietnam but which has been imported into North America, where it is now cheerfully munching its way through fruit trees, grape vines and timber in addition to Tree of Heaven.

Spotted Lanternfly (Photo By Rhododendrites – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109883095)

Tree of Heaven has a long cultural history too – it is the tree in ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ by Betty Smith. See if you can spot the metaphor…

“There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly…survives without sun, water, and seemingly earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.”

And in Chinese stories, a mature Tree of Heaven represents an ideal father, while a stump represents a spoiled child. Apparently (and this not something my mother ever scolded me with), it’s perfectly fine to call a careless child a ‘good-for-nothing ailanthus stump sprout’.

A Tree of Heaven stump, sprouting (Photo Hexafluoride, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

And finally, I realise that it’s been a while since we’ve had a poem, so here we go: this one, by Naomi Long Madgett, seems to sum up the Tree of Heaven’s tenacity. I do think it has rather more redeeming features than Madgett seems to think, but then I’ve always loved tough, adaptable, ‘common’ plants. This is the Wednesday Weed, after all.

Tree of Heaven
Naomi Long Madgett

I will live.

The ax’s angry edge against my trunk

cannot deny me. Though I thunder down

to lie prostrate among exalted grasses

that do not mourn me, I will rise.

I will grow:

Persistent roots deep-burrowed in the earth

avenge my fall. Tentacles will shoot out swiftly

in all directions, stubborn leaves explode their force

into the sun. I will thrive.

Curse of the orchard, blemish of the land’s fair

countenance,

I have grown strong for strength denied, for struggle

in hostile woods. I keep alive by being troublesome,

indestructible, stinkweed of truth.