Dear Readers, I hear so many people complaining about green alkanet, the way that it takes over, the way that its tap roots go down to the centre of the earth etc etc. But the blue of its flowers is pretty much unmatched, especially at this time of year, and it is much favoured by pollinators, so that seems like a win to me! In Alien Plants, Clive Stace and Michael Crawley point out that in sensitive habitats, green alkanet can form a monoculture that excludes other plants, and it’s certainly vigorous. They also, however, point out that no native plant in the UK has ever gone extinct because of an alien ‘invader’. For me, I think it’s all about the vulnerability and fragility of the habitat – I love seeing green alkanet in the city, where there’s already an ecosystem of outrageously tough, prolific and hardy plants, but if it took over the undergrowth of my local ancient woodland I would be a little bit less impressed.

In London, green alkanet is the 6th commonest non-native plant (Buddleia is the commonest, you’ll be pleased to hear), and in suburban Berkshire it’s also the 6th commonest, with sycamore being the most often seen. In East Sutherland in the North of  Scotland, however, it doesn’t appear on the list at all – we know that it doesn’t like acidic soil (see below), so this might be the main reason. It might also not be suited to the colder habitat – it comes originally from Western Europe, so I imagine that it’s used to a milder climate. It seems to like urban streets and also motorway verges, so it’s clearly not scared of a little concrete. Stace also describes it as a ‘wall alien’, meaning that it’s a plant that is often found along the bottom of walls, a most peculiar habitat but one that a variety of London ‘weeds’ have taken a liking to, including yellow corydalis and ivy-leaved toadflax.

Incidentally, green alkanet’s Latin name, Pentaglossis sempervirens, means ‘five-tongued’ and ‘ever green’. I’m guessing that the five tongues refers to the petals, and the ‘ever-green’ to the plant’s habit of popping up at any time of year. Seen amongst the dead leaves of autumn, it really is a most toothsome colour.

And look what I found! A poem, and a good one too. See what you think.

Green Alkanet by Meryl Pugh (from her book Natural Phenomena)

From the hot flank of the bus to the pavement lunch between meetings
in the dazed, hot, infinite day of August:
green alkanet in profusion, persistent, taken for granted
between brick wall and tarmac, on vacant sites,
untended verges.
The hairy, blistered leaves,
the robust, fluted stalk; green alkanet in flower stares
with clarity brewed in a white day-for-night pupil – where world
is altered, reversed – and holds in its blue, pitiless iris
the same, blue intensity that drags us, thrashing, on –

And so, let’s move on and see what I said about green alkanet in my first Wednesday Weed, back in 2015.

Green Alkanet (Pentaglossis sempervirens)

Dear readers, if the county plant of London is the Rose-Bay Willowherb, then the Postal Code Plant of East Finchley must be the Green Alkanet. As I wander the streets, it seems to be obligatory to have at least one of these hairy-leaved beauties peering out from under the Buddleia, or popping forth boldly from the bottom of a fence. And yet, I cannot remember it from my childhood in East London, so I wonder if it has a preference for the heady heights of North London.

It is, in fact, a member of the Borage and Comfrey family, and, as you might expect, is popular with bees, especially early in the season when there isn’t much else about. Its leaves survive right through the winter, hence its Latin moniker, sempervirens, which means ‘always green’.

Green Alkanet was introduced into gardens before 1600, and was first recorded in the wild in 1724, so it has been with us for a long time. It is a true Londoner inasmuch as it can’t abide acidic soils, and so the cold, claggy clay of the capital suits it down to the ground (literally). It is a very hairy plant – the stems are hairy, the lavender buds are hairy, the leaves are hairy (and sometimes feature white spots as well). It is readily attacked by rusts (as in the specimen above). All in all, it is something of a bruiser, a street-fighter of a plant whose toughness belies its delicate flowers.

‘Alkanet’ is an interesting word, thought to derive from the Arabic word for the plant-based red dye Henna. The word is also the root of the names of Dyers’ Bugloss (Alkanna tinctoria) and Common Bugloss (Anchusa arvensis), to which Green Alkanet is closely related. In fact, Anchusa is derived from the Latin word for paint. The  books that I’ve read seem to agree that a red dye can be extracted from the sturdy root of the plant, and the WildflowerFinder website, which has a special interest in plant chemistry, goes further, suggesting that the extracts from the root can be used to make a purple or burgundy dye, with alkaline compounds being used to increase the blue pigment, and acid ones turning it red again. There is also a strong suggestion elsewhere that the plant was deliberately introduced to provide dyes for cloth, being cheaper than true Henna, which is extracted from the Henna tree (Lawsonia inermis).

The Henna Tree (Lawsonia inermis)

Green Alkanet has several other uses – the flowers are apparently edible, and I can just imagine them frozen into ice-cubes and clinking away in a gin and tonic. Being a member of the comfrey family, the leaves can also be composted, or rotted down to provide liquid fertiliser. But it’s as a plant for pollinators that it finds its true vocation, the white heart of the flower acting as a target for all those thirsty early bees. It is yet another of those plants that we would be delighted with if we planted it deliberately, but which is undervalued because it’s just a ‘weed’. It seems as if we find it difficult to appreciate the beauty that comes to us for free, like grace.

Gallant-Soldier (Galinsoga parviflora)

Apologies to those of you who saw this when I posted it a day early yesterday, it’s been one of those weeks!

Dear Readers, I hope that you’ll forgive me for revisiting another ‘weed’, this one from 2014. Whenever I go back to Islington, I am astonished at how much Gallant Soldier there is growing in the tree pits and popping up from cracks, but until recently I had never seen it in East Finchley, even though it’s just a few miles up the road. Then, I noticed that it was living happily in some plant pots outside the Turkish restaurant, and I fully expect it to take up residence at any minute.

I have been doing a bit of extra research on this rather inconspicuous little weed, mainly in my copy of ‘Alien Plants’ by Stace and Crawley. The authors add a little more to the story of the plant’s name (see below) – they believe that ‘Gallant Soldier’ did come from the name of the discoverer, Mariano Galinsoga, but add that a close relative of the plant, which is rather hairier, has picked up the epithet ‘Shaggy Soldier’. Indeed, I shall have to check the next patch of the plant that I come across, as the shaggy version is apparently now commoner than the gallant one.

Shaggy Soldier (Galinsoga quadriradiata) Photo by Dalgial, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Stace and Crawley also point out that Gallant Soldier is one of the few well-documented cases of plants from collections escaping into the wild. It escaped from, of all places, Kew Gardens in 1861, and  by 1863 it had naturalised on the pavements and wasteland of an area from Richmond to East Sheen. Gradually it advanced, until it is now found across London, and in other spots in the south of the country. However the ‘soldiers’, both Shaggy and Gallant, appear to have done no harm to native flora, being rather discreet in habit and fond of ‘low value’ areas like wasteland (though with the house prices in Islington it’s difficult to argue that there is anything ‘low’ about their values).

When I wrote this original post, I wasn’t looking for poems, but as I idly paged through the interwebs looking for ‘gallant soldier’ verse, this leapt out of me, though it is a bit tangential. When I think about the state of things, this doesn’t seem so far from the truth, though the ‘angry and defrauded young’ have been joined by a chorus of those who’ve died through the mishandling of Covid, cuts to health services and benefits and sheer poverty.

A Dead Statesman

by Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936)

I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Anyway! Back to Gallant Soldier. Here’s the piece that I wrote back in 2014.

I am rather excited about this little plant. I discovered it drooping rather sadly from the bottom of a wall in North London, and was intrigued when I discovered that it had the enigmatic name of ‘Gallant Soldier’. It’s nothing much to look at – a small, greenish daisy with five petals and a rather straggly, dangly habit – but it is a world traveller, an escape artist, a component of a South American stew and a potential drug for high-blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. Not bad for such an inconspicuous ‘weed’.

Gallant-Soldier was originally taken to Europe from the Andean regions of Peru, by a Spanish botanist called Mariano Martinez Galinsoga, hence the plant’s Latin name, and its eventual English corruption to ‘Gallant Soldier’. Richard Mabey thinks that ‘Gallant Soldier’ may be an example of typical London sarcasm – there is nothing martial or upstanding about this diffident little plant. On the other hand, as we shall see, it has ‘marched’ unobtrusively across most of the planet, setting up home everywhere from the USA to Africa.

The plant lived inoffensively enough in the Madrid Botanical Gardens for many years, and a speciman was then taken to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in 1796.

In Colombia, the plant is called Guascas, and is used in a rather delicious stew called Ajiaco Bogotano. This features chicken and no fewer than three types of potatoes. As a lover and connoisseur of potatoes myself (like most Cockneys) this sounds delicious, especially as there are small yellow potatoes, floury white potatoes and a few blue potatoes thrown in for colour. As a vegetarian, though, I would probably skip the chicken. Then, a few handfuls of Gallant-Soldier are thrown on top to give what is described as ‘a unique flavour’. Colombian ex-patriots can buy Guascas dried, but this is said to be a poor substitute for the delicious fresh herb. I find it so interesting how, again and again, a plant can be a ‘weed’ in one country, and an invaluable resource in another. As we have become more detached from the plants around us, we have become less curious about what properties they may have, and even what they may taste like.

Ajiaco, thanks to Morten Johs for the photo https://www.flickr.com/photos/mortenjohs/2503485720

On the other hand, the plant is said to be poisonous to goats.

The plant has since spread to Africa and to North America. In Tanzania, Malawi and other areas it is planted amongst the crops to act as an alternative host for pests and viruses. However, it maintains its meek and humble reputation here too: in Malawi, its name is ‘Mwamuna aligone’, which means ‘my husband is sleeping’ (Richard Mabey, Plants Britannica).

In 2007, a study at the University of Kwa-Zulu in Durban, South Africa, investigated a number of plants for their properties as ACE inhibitors – plants that reduce hypertension. Gallant-Soldier was found to help improve blood flow, and to also be helpful in cases of hyperglycaemia, along with other common herbs such as Wild Garlic and Fat Hen. Herbalists have always known that there are a whole range of useful plants growing around us, but we have forgotten so much of the lore of our grandparents. Sometimes, it seems as if science is ‘discovering’ things that have been known by observant ‘ordinary’ people for centuries.

The little flowers of Gallant-Soldier

Dear Readers, so many people commented on yesterday’s post about the Mexican Fleabane that I found during my lunchtime wander that I felt it was due for a revisit. This piece dates back to 2014, when I was just starting out on my blogging adventures, and I regret to say that I no longer have the plant in its original position, though as I mentioned yesterday it is now in my windowboxes, so will hopefully spread from there.

I have had a quick look in my Alien Plants book by Clive Stace and Michael Crawley, and the authors mention that Mexican Fleabane is one of the plants with the highest tolerance for dry soil, which makes it perfect for those little pockets of stony-dry soil at the bottom of walls, or in the cracks between paving stones. The authors also mention it as being a plant of villages, especially those where ‘cottage garden’ style front gardens are cultivated:

“ These plants are often found as fly-tipped garden waste on roadsides at the edge of the village, and as self-seeded individuals on paths, banks and walls.“(Page 475).

And it’s not just villages, clearly – we often find garden rubbish dumped in our local ancient woodland, and this might be one reason why we have hybrid bluebells rather than the original native species.

Stace and Crawley note that the plant is often found in urban areas as well, as we’ve seen. They associate Mexican Fleabane as a plant that appears where people actually have gardens for it to escape from – it’s interesting how the flora of an area can change according to whether people have access to their own greenspace or not.

And now onto my original post on Mexican Fleabane, from what now feels like a lighter, more innocent time. Over the past eight years I have written about hundreds of ‘weeds’ and garden plants and foodstuffs of various kinds, but if there’s something you’d like to know more about that I haven’t covered, do drop me a note in the comments – I am always open to inspiration!

Mexican Fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus)

On Sunday, I decided that things in the garden had gone too far. My deciduous hedge was slapping me in the face with a wet branch every time I went to the shed to get the  bird food. I’d been allowing the stinging nettles to do their thing in a quiet corner, but they had busted out and were popping up all along the path, patinating my ankles with blisters. The branch on the whitebeam was so low that my husband nearly brained himself everytime he went to collect the washing. A little judicious, gentle pruning and a modicum of cutting down and pulling up was required, just to make the garden habitable for people, plants and animals.

I went to collect the green wheelie bin for the bits that we couldn’t compost or put in the log-pile. It lives in the dark alley at the side of the house, which attracts a wide variety of volunteer plants: Yellow Corydalis and Greater Celandine, Buddleia and even an intrepid Foxglove. But as I got to the darkest, dreariest part of the path, a little plant glowed up at me as if lit by moonlight: a Mexican Fleabane.

Mexican Fleabane by the wheelie bin

The flowers of this little plant are very similar to those of our native daisy, but it has very different habits. While our daisy is low-growing and short-stemmed, keeping its head down to avoid the blades of the mower, the Mexican Fleabane is straggly and dangly, and is most at home in tiny pockets of soil. In some parts of the country, it can be seen clinging to the gaps between the bricks in a wall, tumbling down like a floral waterfall.

Like so many of the plants I’ve discovered, it has come a long way. It was named after a Hungarian botanist and explorer with the magnificent name of  Baron Wilhelm Friedrich Karwinski von Karvin (von Karvin Karvinski). He found his sample plant in Oaxaca, Mexico. It arrived in the UK some time during the nineteenth century, and promptly ‘escaped’. Today, it is found on the west coast of North America, all over Europe and even in Japan, where it is categorized as an undesirable alien. One person’s dangerous weed is, as always, someone else’s desirable garden plant, and indeed, if you fancy a Mexican Fleabane for your garden, the online garden centre Crocus will provide you with one for 7.99 GBP.

When I look at this plant, it makes me ponder on why we call somebody ‘weedy’. Are we complimenting them on their adaptability, toughness, resilience and savage beauty? Sadly, we are usually talking about a young man who has grown a little too tall for his girth, someone who is always picked last for the soccer team. I suppose that the Mexican Fleabane is a typical ‘weed’ in this regard – it is a droopy, unassertive little plant, a literal ‘wallflower’. Like many a human ‘weed’, however, it has the last laugh, having quietly succeeded in populating most of the planet where more aggressive, obvious plants have failed.

Furthermore, it appears that it is not called ‘Fleabane’ for nothing. In less hygienic times, dried fleabane would be put into mattresses to deter biting insects, and it has been suggested that the same can be done today in the beds of dogs and cats to keep the fleas away. Certainly it’s worth a try – I know that Roundup and such chemicals work, but I always worry about how they work, and whether they have any deleterious effect on the creatures that they are used on. If any one has a go, do let me know!

So, in my brief stint of tidying up, I managed to discover a new plant. I will be delighted if it spreads – a bee was investigating the flower as I left to write this piece. I might even give it a little encouragement.

Angel’s Trumpet (Brugmansia sp.)

Dear Readers, I spotted this plant in Regent’s Park at the weekend, and was amazed at its beauty, but there’s more to this shrub than meets the eye. Angel’s Trumpet (and the closely related Datura) are some of the most poisonous ornamental plants in the world, containing the same poisons as those found in Deadly Nightshade (not surprisingly as they’re in the same family, the Solanaceae). Like many poisonous plants, however, their toxins have proved to have many uses. Medicinally, the alkaloid chemicals that they contain have been used for everything from anaesthesia and sedation to treating asthma. However, the plant was originally found in Central and South America, and here the local people used the plant mainly for external complaints such as rashes and arthritis. They were much more circumspect about using the plant internally, although it was sometimes used to induce vomiting and to kill parasites such as tapeworms.

However, Angel’s Trumpet is probably most famous for its hallucingenic properties. The effects of the plant have been described as ‘terrifying rather than pleasurable’, and I read with a certain amount of horror that children in some South American tribes would be given a drink containing Brugmansia so that they could be admonished directly by their ancestors in the spirit world. It was also used to drug slaves and the wives of important people so that they could be buried alive with their dead lords. And if that doesn’t make you shudder, I don’t know what will.

Angel’s Trumpet was also used by South American shaman for a variety of initiation and magical ceremonies. Apparently ‘bad shamans’ will add the plant to the brew served to gullible Westerners who want to take part in Ayahuasca ceremonies, seen as a way of raising consciousness, altering perception and as a cure for depression. As vomiting is seen as part of the ceremony, I guess that the Angel’s Trumpet is likely to make you vomit a whole lot (if it doesn’t kill you).

For a plant that can be seen in cultivation on a regular basis, Angel’s Trumpet is listed by the IUCN as extinct in the wild. How so? It appears that the plant had a long-standing relationship with some large species of megafauna which probably ate the seeds and dispersed them. The animal has since become extinct itself, and so it’s the shamans (and latterly the gardening industry) that have kept the seven species in the Brugmansia family alive.

Incidentally, the way that you tell a Brugmansia from the closely-related Datura is that in Angel’s Trumpets, the flowers hang down, whereas with the Daturas (such as the American Jimsonweed) the flowers stick out or up. They are just as poisonous as their dangly relatives.

Sacred Datura (Datura wrightii) from Joshua Tree National Park

Another reason to grow Angel’s Trumpets has been their sweet scent, which is especially pronounced at night. As you might surmise, this indicates that the plant is moth-pollinated (and by moths with very long tongues, presumably). One red species (Brugmansia sanguinea) has no scent, and is pollinated instead by hummingbirds. Some butterfly larvae also feed on the leaves and are able to utilise the poison in the plant to make themselves distasteful to predators. The poison lingers on not just in the caterpillars, but through the pupal stage and into the adult butterfly.

Brugmansia sanguinea (Photo by By Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18092796)

So, Angel’s Trumpet is a plant of contradictions – exquisitely beautiful and sweet-smelling, but also so poisonous that a woman who pruned her plant and then rubbed her eye with her hand was blinded in that eye for 24 hours. It’s not surprising that Jimson Weed, with all of its strange, exotic beauty, was painted numerous times by Georgia O’Keefe. She frequently painted flowers which were common, but she had this to say, and I couldn’t agree more.

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment, I want to give that world to someone else.”

Jimson Weed by Georgia O’Keefe (1936)

The Marylebone High Street Elm

Dear Readers, whenever I go to Marylebone High Street (almost always to visit Daunt Books, easily my favourite bookshop in the world), I always pause to check up on the Marylebone High Street Elm. This tree is designated as a ‘Great Tree of London’, and so it should be – the Dutch elm outbreak in the 1970s put paid to most of the elms not only in London, but in the UK, so this tree is a real survivor. It is a Huntingdon Elm (Ulmus x hollandica ‘Vegeta’), a natural hybrid between the wych elm and the field elm that was once common across the east of England, but is now extremely rare as a mature tree, especially in London and environs. ‘Nine Elms’ (now home of the US Embassy) was named for its trees, and Seven Sisters was also named after 9 elm trees that used to grow there, plus there are hundreds of street names with ‘Elm’ in them. That a plant that is so much part of our history could be wiped out in less than a decade is a stern warning to us about lapses in biosecurity, especially with the shadow of ash dieback about to destroy another iconic tree. The bonfire of regulations that is currently promised will no doubt make things even worse.

But still, the Marylebone Elm is doing extremely well, providing passersby with some much-needed shade, and growing a little every year. Long may it thrive, in spite of the cars and taxis swooshing past, climate change, drought and flood.

Sunjlight through the leaves of the Marylebone Elm

To see elms in all their glory it’s well worth a visit to Brighton, which has managed not only to hold onto many of its street elms, but also has the National Elm collection. Brighton’s location, between the South Downs and the sea, and the rigorous attention of its arborists, has managed to protect the trees when so many others were lost.

This was the tree often seen in Constable’s paintings. The loss of mature elms must have been heartbreaking for those who knew the countryside well. Carol Ann Duffy sums it up beautifully in her poem ‘The English Elms’.

Seven Sisters in Tottenham,
long gone, except for their names,
were English elms.

Others stood at the edge of farms,
twinned with the shapes of clouds
like green rhymes;
or cupped the beads of the rain
in their leaf palms;
or glowered, grim giants, warning of storms.

In the hedgerows in old films,
elegiacally, they loom,
the English elms;
or find posthumous fame
in the lines of poems-
the music making elm-
for ours is a world without them…

to whom the artists came,
time after time, scumbling, paint on their fingers and thumbs;
and the woodcutters, who knew the elm was a coffin’s deadly aim;
and the mavis, her new nest unharmed in the crook of a living, wooden arm;
and boys, with ball and stumps and bat for a game;
and nursing ewes and lambs, calm under the English elms…

great, masterpiece trees,
who were overwhelmed.

‘The Cornfield’ 1826 (John Constable)

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Dear Readers, I am seeing a lot of yarrow about at the moment, and I thought that this underappreciated little ‘weed’ deserved a moment in the spotlight. So, I have chosen it as ‘my’ plant in a team Bioblitz that we’re doing for my OU course at the moment. A Bioblitz is where a specific area is investigated in depth, to determine which plants and animals live there – I did a quick survey of Oxleas meadow (which we visited during our Capital Ring walk on Monday). It’s interesting to see the different plants that this grassland throws up, and I suspect that most areas of dry sward in England would quickly be populated by this plant if left to their own devices. Anyhow, yarrow was one of the very first plants that I treated as a Wednesday Weed, way back in 2014. See what you think!

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

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.

Pale Pink Wild Yarrow ( © Copyright Evelyn Simak and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

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.

© Copyright Ian Cunliffe and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Fleabane (probably Canadian) with ragwort at Woolwich Dockyard

Dear Readers, Canadian Fleabane (and its close relatives Bilbao’s Fleabane and Guernsey Fleabane) are such weedy weeds that it’s easy to pass them by without so much as a second glance. Members of the Asteraceae (Daisy) family, they have tiny flowers and a whole lot of fluffy seeds and are annuals of such fecundity that once you have the plant on a patch of rough ground or, as here, along a riverside, you are probably going to have it forever. Experiments outlined in my book ‘Alien Plants’ by Clive Stace and Michael J. Crawley suggest that grazing with rabbits seems to be a way to keep the Fleabane (Conyza) genus in check, but there’s a grave lack of small furry grazing animals in Woolwich, clearly.

Fleabanes tend to grow alongside buddleia, as I noticed from the Woolwich walk.

Buddleia!

The name given to the community of plants established by buddleia and fleabane is the Buddleia-Conyza scrub community, and you can see it popping up in many urban sunny sites, frequently on builder’s rubble or tarmac – we have a great example of this just up the road from here in East Finchley on the site of an old petrol station which has been landbanked by developers for years, but you can also find great examples on railway embankments. Fleabanes tend to be the first colonisers, along with mugwort, American willowherb, bristly oxtongue and evening primrose, but soon the buddleia and the sycamore start to take over, with the fleabane tending to die out where it’s overshadowed by the buddleia. This feels like such a very urban habitat that I’m glad that it has its own name and now has people studying it. Colonisation can start within a year of a site being left derelict, and the habitat can persist for up to twenty years. It will be interesting to see how long the example of the Buddleia-Conyza complex in East Finchley lasts before someone decides to actually build there.

And when I looked back at the last time that I wrote about Canadian Fleabane, I mentioned that there was a patch at the side of my house. When I looked early this week, there was still some there, probably descended from the seeds that were dropped by the parent plant back in 2014. You have to admire the plant’s sheer persistence.

So, this is from my original post back in 2014.

A thicket of Canadian Fleabane has erupted in the alley at the side of our house, and I am delighted. I know this is not the reaction that most people would have, but then, this week is the thirteenth anniversary of my marriage to my Torontonian husband, so a little reminder of the country that he came from is very welcome. Plus, although this plant comes from so far away, it has put down firm roots in London, and is more commonly seen in the Capital than in any other city, so in that respect it is a little like me.

There are lots of plants that resemble Canadian Fleabane, but none have such a mass of tiny flowers, which at this time of year are rapidly turning into fluffy seeds. The plant was apparently brought to the UK as seeds in the innards of a stuffed bird, back in the sixteenth century (unlike my husband who arrived into Heathrow in a big metal bird twenty-odd years ago).

In many ways, Canadian Fleabane is a ‘proper’ weed – it’s an annual which produces thousands of seeds, and which can grow in the most unpromising of spots, as its appearance in my dark, soil-less side alley proves. But, as with so many plants, it has a myriad of helpful uses. A tea made from the plant is said to be helpful for arthritis and for diarrhoea, and it has also been used to combat hay-fever. Like so many fleabanes, it is also said to be good for deterring insect parasites.

Some wind-blown Canadian Fleabane

I can’t help but admire a plant that can erupt from a crack a hairs-width wide and grow to four feet high in a single season.  This afternoon, the little seeds were flying away in the breezy weather, taking their chances on a new land far from where they started. And, thinking of my soulmate who flourished so far from his native soil, I find myself wishing them luck.

Dear Readers, you might remember that, in our discussion on bracken, it was stated that it was known as ‘eagle fern’ because of the pattern in a transverse section of the root. Some people also thought that it looked like the oak tree that Charles II was said to have hidden in after the Battle of Worcester in 1651 (thanks to Sara for pointing out that I’d put down the wrong monarch (again)). Once I’d sorted out my Charles I’s and Charles II’s , I was delighted to be sent the botanical print above by long-time reader Anne Guy. It shows a cross-section of the root of the plant, and indeed it does look rather like a flying bird. However, as with all things it does rather depend on how you look at it. The root cross-section below (from a paper on hemorrhagic disease in Belgian cattle) is thought by the authors to resemble a double-headed eagle, but if you tilt your head and look at it upside down, it also looks very like a tree.

Cross-section of bracken root

And how about this one, from the book ‘Scandinavian Ferns’ by Benjamin Øllgaard and Kirsten Tind, Rhodos, 1993 (the root is in the bottom right-hand corner). Double-headed eagle or tree?

Root cross section in bottom right-hand corner

So, it seems as if the ‘eagle fern’ moniker for this plant is perfectly understandable. I wonder if it should also be known as ‘oak  fern’ as well, though? As with so many things, I suspect that it just depends on how you look at it.