Dear Readers, I’ve written about hazel a couple of times before (see below), and so today I wandered out into the garden to see if there were any catkins on the hazel in my hedge. Not a single one! And yet for me, these ‘lambs tails’ shivering in an icy breeze are a sign that spring can’t be far away. I have no idea why I don’t have catkins as the hedge hasn’t been trimmed for ages – maybe like a ‘mast’ year with other trees, it only flowers when it feels the conditions are right. Are you spotting hazel catkins yet in your part of the world?

And for the fungi lovers amongst us, I note that hazel is the sole host for the Rubber Glove Fungus (Hypocreopsis rhododendri) in the UK, where it grows on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland. Interestingly, it’s also found in the Appalachian Mountains of the US, where it grows exclusively on native rhododendrons, hence the scientific name.

And now for a poem, and a bit more on the hazel.

Dear Readers, when I was writing my garden update yesterday, I suddenly wondered if I had ever done a ‘Wednesday Weed’ on hazel, and indeed I had, back in 2015. I remember wandering the streets of East Finchley on a cold and blustery day, and wondering what on earth I was going to write about, when suddenly I noticed the catkins outside Martin School. Writing this blog has really reminded me to pay attention, even on the most unpromising of days.

We are just coming up to the busiest time of the year at work, when it feels like nothing but deadlines, but I am reminded that nature is going on all around us all the time. And because I love it, here is my favourite hazel poem. I always wondered what an Aengus was, but according to the interwebs, Aengus was the god of love in Irish mythology. Yeats himself described the poem as “the kind of poem I like best myself—a ballad that gradually lifts … from circumstantial to purely lyrical writing.”

The Song of Wandering Aengus
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Source: The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

And now, let’s zip back to 2015 and see what I had to say about hazel back then.

Dear Readers, this week the search for a Wednesday Weed sent me in a completely different direction from my usual route. On a rainy, blustery day, I headed off towards our local primary school, to see if the playing fields there had anything growing that I had not already covered. In vain I peered through the fence at the turf, until my eyes refocused and I realised that I’d been looking at my subject all along. For what is more surprising on a January day than a plant that is already in full flower, ready to reproduce when everything else is still in bed?

The male Hazel catkin has the delightful colour of a sherbet-lemon. With every damp gust, invisible clouds of pollen are released. With any luck, they will be captured on by the red female flowers  who wait with open arms, a little like sea anemones.

It is these female flowers that will eventually turn into hazelnuts. They will promptly be nibbled off by squirrels or, if we are extremely lucky, by dormice. Kentish Cobnuts, with their creamy white interiors and little hats of pale green, are a domesticated variety of the hazelnut, but the wild variety is perfectly good to eat, and was, indeed, one of the staple foods of prehistoric peoples. Hazel has grown in the UK for at least the last 6000 years, and only birch was quicker to colonise the country after the last Ice Age. The spread of the plant throughout Europe has been attributed to its being carried from place to place by humans. After all, nuts are a concentrated, portable form of protein and carbohydrate. What better food if you’re embarking on a (very) long walk?

The Hazel growing beside the school playing fields has turned itself into a small tree, but historically it is much coppiced, the stems being used for a wide variety of purposes. They are extremely flexible, and can be turned back upon themselves or knotted. They were woven together to form both hurdles and fences, and were also used as the framework for wattle and daub walls. They are still used in thatching, to hold the thatch down, because the hazel stems can be bent through 180 degrees. A more modern use is in the creation of sound screens alongside motorways.

A plant which has lived alongside us in these islands since the very beginning, Hazel has many associations with Druid and Celtic beliefs. Its stems have been used for water divination, and for the making of shepherds’ crooks and pilgrims’ staffs. A Hazel tree was believed to be the home of Bile Ratha, the poetic fairy of Irish folklore, and it was believed that eating hazelnuts would bestow wisdom. On Dartmoor, Hazel was said to be the cure for snake and dog bites. And, to prevent toothache, you simply have to carry a double-hazelnut in your pocket at all times.

The catkins are shivering in the wintry blast, and so am I. Parents are tearing past me in their cars, hurrying to pick their children up from the school gate and giving me a decidedly funny look as I stand in the rain, peering through the fence with my camera.  I wonder if any of the children will get the chance to admire the catkins, the first sign that the long dark is finally loosening its grip. I hope that someone will take the time to show the little ones the ‘lambs tails’, and explain to them about this plant. After all, we have been living together, side by side, for six thousand years.

Dear Readers, I am currently in a race with my dear friend J to see whose Amaryllis will flower first – I used to do this with my Dad, as you’ll see below, and though it’s sad that Dad’s not around to be competitive with it feels good to carry on the tradition. The Amaryllis is positioned in a spot in the kitchen which I hope is cat-proof (there is some debate about whether Amaryllis pollen is poisonous to cats but I’d rather not take any chances). Yesterday, though, the foster kitties had found a loaf of bread, gnawed on it and knocked it on the floor. I do feed them, you know! Anyhow, here’s the Amaryllis at the moment, doing not very much. It is going to be bright orange when it does arrive – I’m amazed at the new colours that are being developed!

And incidentally, I cannot believe the speed with which Christmas has arrived this year. My Mum used to say that time speeded up as you got older, and now I know what she meant. However, my time in Namibia was so stimulating that the days seemed much longer than usual, in a good way, so my resolution for next year is to try to do more new things. The theory is that time seems long when you’re a child because everything is new, whereas for us tired old adults it can feel like every day is the same. I imagine that’s why I love doing this blog – I have to notice something new every day, otherwise I won’t have anything to share. Highly recommended!

Anyhoo, let’s see what I found out about Amaryllis back in 2018.

Dear Readers, whenever I see an amaryllis I always think of my Dad. His Christmas presents always contain at least one rectangular box containing an enormous amaryllis bulb and a pot, and sometimes I get one too. Then our phone conversations for the next month or so are mildly competitive.

‘Mine is about three feet high!’

‘Mine is so big that it keeps falling over!’

‘Mine has flowers the size of a baby’s head!’

‘MIne’s got flowers the size of a cabbage’.

Dad and I love to cross swords. If we are watching ‘Pointless’, the room echoes to a chorus of answers to Alexander Armstrong’s questions. For a while I was winning, but then, after Dad got his cataracts done, we realised that it was only because he couldn’t actually see what the questions were. Hah! These days we are neck and neck. Or maybe Dad’s slightly in front.

Anyhow, the amaryllis is a most bold and ostentatious plant. In my opinion there is no more spectacular indoor bulb. You can practically watch it growing. For a while it’s rather embarrassing to anyone with Victorian sensibilities, as it looks like a giant Martian willy. I almost feel that i should be covering it up with a lace curtain. And then the blooms form and start to open, and it seems impossible that there should be so much volume of petal in that little crumpled bud, but there it is. This year, my amaryllis is dark red, with petals that are simultaneously as sleek as satin and as plush as velvet. It is utterly glorious.

It’s important to clear up exactly what this plant is, however. The bulbs that we grow at home are not actually amaryllis (this name refers to some South African plants) but are from a separate genus known as Hippeastrum, which hales from Central and South America and the Caribbean. The name was given to the plant by William Herbert, a 19th century botanist and illustrator, and means ‘horse star lily’, for reasons which have faded into obscurity. There are 90 separate species of Hippeastrum and over 600 hybrids and cultivars, with new varieties being offered every Christmas – over the past few years Dad and I have competed with pale-green, stripey red and scarlet varieties. The original Hippeastrum species are normally red, pink or purple in colour.

The leaves on a Hippeastrum appear after the flowers, which is one reason why the developing buds look so extraordinary. The sexual organs of the plant, the stamens and pistil, are long and elegant. The pollen is plentiful but is poisonous to cats, so be careful if you have any moggie companions. As with lilies, the danger is that the pollen comes into contact with the fur and is licked off by the cat during grooming. The bulbs of some Caribbean species of Hippeastrum are used to produce arrow poison, so this is obviously not a plant to be messed with.

I have never yet managed to persuade my Hippeastrum to bloom for more than one year, but then I have been doing it All Wrong. The leaves should be allowed to develop, and the plant given some food on a weekly basis during this time, but then it will need two months ‘rest’ in the cold and dark, without food or water (and preferably with no nibbling by any rodents that may be living in the shed). Then the plant can be brought out into the light and watering re-commenced. The plant should be in a small pot, not much bigger than the circumference of the bulb,  with a good third of the bulb above the surface of the compost. This can make the plant very top heavy, of course, hence the occasional catastrophe when the whole lot falls over and the main stem breaks under its own weight. I can only imagine that the Hippeastrum that grow wild are rather less exaggerated in form, much as a fox stands more chance of survival in the wild than a pug would.

Incidentally, a properly cared-for Hippeastrum can live for 75 years so I really have no excuse.

One thing that  I don’t associate with Hippeastrum is perfume, but apparently there are some scented varieties. The gene for scent is recessive, and is associated only with white or pastel coloured plants – I’ve never grown a perfumed one, but do let me know if you have, I am curious as to what it smells like. Sadly, the English language is very short on words to describe scent, probably reflecting our rather inadequate noses. If dogs could speak I imagine they’d have a very varied perfume vocabulary.

Medicinally, Hippeastrums contain over 64 alkaloid compounds, which as we have already noted are poisonous, but which are also anti-parasitic and have psychopharmaceutical properties. Some species of Hippeastrum seem to have interesting anti-depressant and anti-convulsant possibilities, and experimentation has indicated that the bulb may have possible uses as an antibiotic.

Just to return to the name ‘Amaryllis’ for a moment – Amaryllis was a Greek nymph who suffered with unrequited love for the cold-hearted Alteo. In a paroxysm of passion she pierced her heart with a golden arrow and trekked to his door every day for a month, leaving a path of blood splatters en route. These days we would probably call this behaviour stalking, but on the thirtieth day the blood spots transmogrified into red flowers of stupendous size and hue. Alteo finally fell in love with Amaryllis, her heart was healed, and the Dutch bulb trade lurched into action. The rest, my friends, is history.

You might expect that such a showy plant would inspire visual artists and, before he turned to abstraction, Piet Mondrian produced a number of startling ‘portraits’ of Hippeastrum.

And you might also expect that the amaryllis/Hippeastrum would invite the attention of poets, and so it does. I adore this poem by American poet Deborah Digges, who died in 2009 and who sounds like a most generous teacher of other poets. She explores both the beauty and the absurdity of the amaryllis, a plant which, in its super-abundance, teeters on the very edge of ‘too much’.

My Amaryllis

by Deborah Digges

 

So this is the day the fat boy learns to take the jokes

by donning funny hats, my Amaryllis,

my buffoon of a flower,

your four white bullhorn blossoms like the sirens

in a stadium through which the dictator announces he’s in love.

Then he sends out across the land a proclamation—

there must be music, there must be stays of execution

for the already dying.

That’s how your pulpy sex undoes me and your seven

leaves, unsheathed. How you diminish

my winter windows, and beyond them, the Atlantic.

How you turn my greed ridiculous.

Now it’s as if I could believe in having children after forty,

or, walking these icy streets, greet sullen strangers

like a host of former selves, so ask them in, of course,

and listen like one forgiven to their crimes.

Dance with us and all our secrets,

dance with us until our lies,

like death squads sent to an empty house, put down,

finally, their weapons, peruse the family

portraits, admire genuinely the bride.

Stay with me in this my exile

or my returning, as if to love the tyrant one more time.

O my lily, my executioner, a little stooped, here,

listing, you are the future bending

to kiss the present like a sleeping child.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Averater – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47076787

Photo Two by By Daniel Macher – AmaryllisUploaded by Epibase, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8933832

Photo Three by Pictures taken by Raul654 around Washington DC on May 7, 2005.

Dear Readers, Bug Woman is away, but here I think I set out my gardening ‘philosophy’. I can only say that my side-return ‘garden’ gets more varied by the year….

Dear reader, please ignore the hosepipe, the bags of compost and the other paraphenalia that are cluttering up the side of my house. In the photo above, Greater Celandine and Yellow Corydalis grow, along with a couple of intrepid Buddleia, in conditions of near total darkness, and the scrappiest, most impoverished soil that you can imagine. They have appeared without any help from me, and have thrived where nothing I’ve ever planted has lasted more than a few weeks . So, what’s the story with weeds?

Many of the weeds in London are ‘aliens’.  Just as London  attracts people from all over the world, so it has a plant population that comes from many countries. Some plants have ‘escaped’ from gardens that they were planted in. Some have survived as seeds in shipping containers full of fruit or in the bellies of airplanes carrying goods from overseas. Some are not just tough but beautiful, and many of them have contributed greatly to the biodiversity of our city streets. I decided to take a walk around the block, to see what was growing in my half-mile territory.

Greater Celandine flowers early, with flowers that remind me of a buttercup, even though it is in fact a member of the poppy family. It is  thought to have been introduced by the Romans, who thought of it as a medicinal plant – the orange sap is said to be a cure for warts. It was also said to be a cure for eye infections, but actually it was a surefire way of giving the patient conjunctivitis or worse.

Another great survivor is the Yellow Corydalis.

It came originally from the central and eastern Alps, so it isn’t surprising that it is comfortable in a rocky, nutrient-poor home. It was imported as a cottage garden plant, because it has a very long flowering period, but it has jumped over the wall and headed off into the big city. One survey in South Essex found it in eighteen percent of all the walls in that part of the country. And how pretty it is, with its clusters of elongated yellow flowers.

I like to think that maybe the graffiti artist on this wall chose his colour palette to complement the blossoms….

Enough of all these yellow flowers! As I approached East Finchley library, I discovered this little beauty growing against the entrance to the car park

The Common Field-speedwell is also known as the Persian Speedwell, and it originated in the mountains of the Caucasus and Northern Iran. I am starting to sense a theme – many of the plants that live on our streets were originally from mountainous areas. This makes perfect sense. Mountain soils are impoverished, thin, and subject to extremes of weather – lots of bright sunlight in the short summer, cold and rain for the rest of the year. As far as these plants are concerned, a little crack between paving stones is perfect.

Now, here’s another blue flower.

This is a Mediterranean plant, tough, hairy-leaved and prolific. It produces a red dye from its roots, which is used in southern Europe to colour oil and to deepen the colour of cheap red wine.  It is now one of the commonest ‘weeds’ in my little half-mile patch, but I don’t remember it at all from my childhood in East London – a possible indication of the local nature of many plants, and also the way that plant populations change over time.

I can’t talk about alien plants without giving a nod to the greatest of them all.

Buddleia is another mountain plant, from the scree slopes of the Himalayas. An early visitor to China reported that the buddleia thickets on shingle beside the Satani river was ‘a famous harbourage for tigers’.I have sometimes passed areas of wasteland where the buddleia has formed honey-scented forests, full of the lazy buzzing of bees. These are unique urban woodlands, magical places. Furthermore, they provide a rich source of nectar, and Buddleia may well be responsible for the survival of many insect species in urban areas

Buddleia was introduced into Europe in the 1890’s by the French missionary Pere David, and imported into the UK a few years later. It has light, airborne seed, and quickly escaped, colonising wasteland and, more particularly, railway lines. Every passing train helped to waft the seeds a little further along the line and the clinker that the railways lines rested on was a perfectly acceptable replacement for the mountain slopes of home. I have seen an eight foot tall buddleia growing from a crack in the soot-soiled walls of Liverpool Street Station, where there could not possibly have been more than a few spoonfuls of soil.

My attitude to any plant that appears in the garden is to let it be, at least initially. I have been blessed with all the plants described here, plus comfrey and elecampane, ivy and dandelion, forget-me-not and great willowherb. It seems to me that the division between weeds and ‘proper’ plants is a purely arbitrary one. If a plant is favoured by wildlife, if it is pretty or interesting, I am happy for it to stay. On a grey drizzly spring morning  the unexpected sight of a butter-bright Celandine can seem like a kind of grace.

 

Dear Readers, I went for a walk in Heartwood today with my friend L, and as we drove through the country lanes I saw literally hundreds of Common Toadflax growing alongside the roadside. What a pretty flower this is! It looks so exotic that it’s hard to think of it as a native, but there we go – seeds from the plant were discovered in deposits in East Anglia that date back 424,000 years, so it’s clear that it’s been here a long, long time.

The flowers need a fairly hefty insect to open them, and so the plant’s main pollinator is the bumblebee. A whole raft of moth caterpillars also feed on it, including the striking Toadflax Brocade moth (Calphasia lunula) – in fact, the moth has been introduced to North America to help control Common Toadflax, as it can become invasive if there is nothing to feed upon it.

And here’s a poem, by Jonathan Bracker – I love the image of the young man cycling along,  kitchen knife in pocket in case he sees anything worth ‘relocating’ to the garden of the rented house he and his wife shared. There’s a simplicity to it that I find rather moving. See what you think!

Terence Remembers by Jonathan Bracker

When a man or woman is old
And has been married
And their spouse is no longer alive
That person may spend time remembering.

One old man remembers butter-and-eggs,
The flower he was especially pleased
To find when as a young man he bicycled
Alleys in Terre Haute to look into backyards

On both sides of the alleys, with homemakers
Or husbands sometimes seen hanging wash
On a clothesline or taking out the trash.
That old man recalls the kitchen knife

He had on his person so that if he chose
To attempt to transplant a wildflower he saw before him
He could stop the bicycle, go over and,
If no one was looking, dig up a specimen

To try to grow in the earth in front of the house
He and his young wife rented, for them
And for neighbors walking by, to enjoy.
He is surprised now, and pleased, to recall

Butter-and-eggs, flower which looked like snapdragons.
He liked its yellow-and-white blossoms so!
Intrigued, though there is no good reason for it,
He goes ahead and googles “butter-and-eggs.” He finds

Its Latin name is unflattering: Linaria vulgaris
And is mildly interested to discover
Butter-and-eggs is also known as yellow toadflax or common
Toadflax. But Terence prefers to call it what it was, to him.

And now, let’s have a look at my original post, from 2015….

Dear Readers, this week I have decided to celebrate a ‘weed’ that I have seen a hundred yards from my house in East Finchley, and also in the ravines in Central Toronto – Common toadflax. What a world traveller this plant is. In Canada, it is also known as Butter and Eggs, possibly a reflection on the delicious but dairy-heavy breakfasts that are available everywhere in that noble country. When I was a small child, my brother and I  would pluck the flowers from Snapdragons in my grandmother’s garden and chase one another around whilst pretending to ‘bite’ with the blooms. It comes as no surprise that Common toadflax is also used around the world for the same kinds of capers, and that many of its other names refer to its shape – Calve’s Nose, Puppy Dog’s Mouths, and my favourite, Squeezejaws.

Common toadflax is native to Europe and most of Eurasia, but was introduced to North America about 300 years ago, and is listed in as a noxious weed in several provinces and states. It is certainly a tough, perennial plant, which can even survive hard-pruning, but it is useful for pollinators. Its flowers need a heavy insect to open them, and so, like our domesticated antirrhinums (which are part of the same family) it is a great favourite with bumblebees.

Common toadflax has been used to produce a yellow dye for cloth in Germany, and was boiled in milk as a flykiller in Sweden. It has been used medicinally for liver problems, maybe because its yellow colour indicated that it might be useful against jaundice. Its flowers were also used to make an eye ointment. Although the plant is not native to North America, it has been used by the Iroquois as an ingredient in a potion against enchantment, and by the Chippewa people to counteract congestive diseases. There is something about its elegant shape and delicate colours that makes it look as if it would be health-giving, to my eye at least.

One of the most delightful alternative names for Common toadflax is ‘Imprudent Lawyer’ (sometimes written as ‘Impudent Lawyer’). How on earth this innocent flower came to be associated with the legal profession is anybody’s guess, but I fear that the plant has been given this name because of the size of its ‘mouth’. And while we are on the subject of names, ‘Brideweed’ and ‘Bridewort’ are yet more ways to refer to Linaria vulgaris. Is this because the freshness of the flowers made it perfect for a bride’s bouquet or is it, as described in Andy’s Northern Ontario Wildflowers because the plant was used as a cure for a pig disease called ‘Bride?’ The explanation, as with so many of these things, is lost in history, but how I love that one ‘weed’ can have so many different local titles. It seems to me that we name the things that we love and notice, and on that basis, Common toadflax is a very well loved plant indeed.

Dear Readers, what a splendid year it is for autumnal flowers here in East Finchley! The Michaelmas Daisies are particularly fine, and it’s easy to forget that this ubiquitous plant is not a UK native, but came here originally from North America, as mentioned in my original piece below. There are at least seven Michaelmas Daisy species that are naturalised in the UK, according to Stace and Crawley’s ‘Alien Plants’ – some are attractive (and you can see how they could have graced a garden), while others are not: of the ‘decidedly dull‘ Delicate Michaelmas Daisy (Aster concinnus) the authors remark that ‘the reasons for …. importation must remain a mystery’. I rather like it, but see what you think.

Michaelmas Daisies are named for Michaelmas, the quarter day and feast of St Michael celebrated on 29th September, which is also peak flowering time for these flowers. An old rhyme records this:

“The Michaelmas daisies, among dead weeds, Bloom for St Michael’s valorous deeds …”. 

Incidentally, this is also the day that Old Nick (the devil) was supposed to spit on/urinate on blackberries, so they shouldn’t be harvested after this date. However, I don’t know about where you live, but around here the blackberry harvest has been prolific, but the berries themselves a bit dry and disappointing (not enough rain at the right time, I guess).

And here is a rather sweet poem, by Victorian poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802 – 1838). She published her first poem aged only 9 and wrote four novels and several poetry collections. Alas, much as today, her personal life was the subject of constant cruel speculation, and she died, aged only 36, after drinking prussic acid.

The Michaelmas Daisy by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Last smile of the departing year,
Thy sister sweets are flown;
Thy pensive wreath is far more dear,
From blooming thus alone.

Thy tender blush, thy simple frame,
Unnoticed might have past;
But now thou contest with softer claim,
The loveliest and the last.

Sweet are the charms in thee we find,
Emblem of hope’s gay wing;
‘Tis thine to call past bloom to mind,
To promise future spring.

And now, let’s see what I had to say about Michaelmas Daisies back in (gulp) 2014….

This small, lilac member of the daisy family seems to be popping up all over the place in my half-mile territory. These photos were taken in Coldfall Wood, where it makes the dried-up winter pond look like an Impressionist painting. But this delicate-looking plant has had a long journey. It comes originally from North America (it was introduced to England by John Tradescant in 1633), and it is a prairie plant rather than a woodland one. Nonetheless, it seems to made itself at home in all kinds of damp and neglected places, bringing a wash of pale lavender amongst the green

This is not an easy plant to identify at the species level. We have Common, Confused, Narrow-Leaved, Glaucous, Hairy and Changing Michaelmas Daisies, and every possible hybrid. As I squint at my photographs, I suspect that my daisies are Confused . On a bad day, I know exactly how they feel.

The great thing about Michaelmas Daisies, as anyone who has planted them deliberately will know, is that they are full of energy and colour when most other plants are giving up. They seem to be particularly attractive to hoverflies, a creature that prefers flat, easily-accessible blossoms.

Until 1752, this plant was known as Starwort. But when the Gregorian calendar was introduced, it was renamed the Michaelmas Daisy because its flowering coincided with St Michael’s Day on 29th September. However, I rather like the notion of a patch of Starworts, flowering under the harvest moon in a tiny ancient wood in North London, just as they have done for hundreds of years.