Dear Readers, my local greengrocer, Tony’s Continental on the High Road in East Finchley, London, is my go-to spot for unusual produce. Some fruits and vegetables come in and out of season at such a rate that you might miss them if you blink. And now is the season for plums of all kinds: the golden-skinned Victoria, the olive-coloured greengage, and our subject today, the night-hued damson. Unlike other plums, the damson errs on the side of astringency, giving it a mouth-puckering flavour that, when tamed down a bit with something sweet, makes it one of my favourite subjects for jam.

The name ‘damson’ is thought to come from the name ‘damascene’, meaning ‘Plum of Damascus’, and one theory suggest that the plant came to the UK with the Romans. Certainly damson stones have been found at some Roman sites during archaeological digs. Damsons are probably a domesticated variety of a subspecies of the wild plum known as the Bullace, and their full species name is Prunus domestica subspecies insititia variety damascena. Wild damsons occasionally pop up in hedgerows or on woodland edges, but all wild plums are extremely variable and difficult to identify. The fruit of the damson is dark indigo, with a slight bloom of pale blue and sometimes with small patches of rust. The ones in the photo below remind me of Europa, the moon of Jupiter, although I’ll admit that they are rather more ovoid. Damsons are, as anyone who has attempted to make jam with them will tell you, of the ‘clingstone’ variety – this means that the flesh clings to the stone, making them something of a pain to prepare for jam. However, many cooks boil them up intact and remove the the stones at the end, once the fruit is pulped and split. The stones are said to impart a subtle almond flavour, largely due to the small quantity of cyanide that they contain.

At one time, damsons were an extremely popular food crop – they are said to be the only plums planted north of Norfolk, and were used extensively for commercial jam-making. The plants were also used as hedging in orchards to protect more delicate trees. They were taken to North America by English settlers in the eighteenth century and were thought to thrive better in the local conditions than other plum varieties. In some places, such as Idaho, the plant naturalised and can be found growing wild.

With its dark colour, it’s no surprise that damsons were reputed to have been used in local dyeing industries. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey reports how a variety of damson called the ‘Edlesborough Prune’ (from a village near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire) was used to provide dye for the Luton hat trade, while the ‘Aylesbury Prune’ was unique to the village of Weston Turville, and was used as a dye on the straw plaiting that was a cottage industry at the time. However, contemporary experiments with using damsons as a dye have been rather disappointing in terms of the colours produced – see this post from Jenny Dean’s Wild Colour for example. One conclusion is that the fruit was probably used primarily for eating, with only damaged fruit being used for dye as a side line. Another is that the ‘damson’ used for dyeing might have been a completely different plant, or that there might have been some trick to extracting the colour. It is clear, however, that there are a multitude of different, very local varieties of wild plum with varied characteristics. What a treasure of genetic diversity they could be!

Now, to return to the subject of jam. I have three books on preserving (my cookbook collection is only outnumbered by my collection of field guides and nature books) and they all have a different approach to this fruit. In ‘Five Seasons of Jam’, Lillie O’Brien suggests making a virtue of the damson’s high pectin content to make damson ‘cheese’ (a bit like quince paste). This also has the added benefit that the fruit is cooked with the stones in and then sieved, avoiding all that tedious stoning. In my second book, ‘Salt, Sugar, Smoke’ by Diana Henry, there is a gratifying concentration on alcohol, with a recipe for damson and gin jam (the damsons are cooked with the stone in, and these are then skimmed off). She also has a recipe for damson gin, which is very similar to sloe gin, one of my all-time favourite tipples. This involves piercing each damson with a skewer, but it produces a most delicious, warming drink that I associate with winter and with Christmas in particular. In my final book, ‘The Modern Preserver’ by Kylee Newton, there is a recipe for damson and orange jam. Kylee suggests using the preserve instead of raspberry jam in a Bakewell tart, a thought that gets my mouth watering. Apparently damsons also freeze well, so I think I shall have to rush to Tony’s and get a bag full for one of those days when I’m not run off my feet. Making jam is a most meditative and gratifying process, but it does take a bit of time.

Incidentally, damson wine was once a common drink in England: a nineteenth century source stated that ‘good damson wine is, perhaps, the nearest approach to good port that we have in England. No currant wine can equal it.'(Damson Wine”, in Hogg and Johnson (eds) The Journal of Horticulture, Cottage Gardener, and Country Gentleman, v.III NS (1862), 264)

Now, in my research for this piece I came across the most delightful website, called ‘Damson Plums‘ by Daiv Sizer. They moved into a house with an old damson tree in the garden, and were immediately smitten by the abundance of the fruit and the low-maintenance required by the plant. Daiv has created a complete guide to everything damson related, including history, recipes and the culture surrounding the plant. I had no idea that it had featured in so many poems by so many authors, from last week’s favourite Seamus Heaney to Shakespeare and Chaucer. The fruit also appears several times in the books of George Eliot, and in Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Woodlanders’ the character Suke Damson, a wild and buxom village maiden, is seen by one critic as being ‘the juicy plum is ripe for Fitzpier’s plucking’ (Landscape and Gender in the Novels of Bronte, Eliot and Hardy, by Eithne Henson). But for this week’s poem I shall return to another favourite, Edward Thomas. Thomas wrote this poem in 1915 while he was in Essex, teaching map-reading to officers. He had been encouraged to sign up (although he was a mature man who didn’t need to enlist) after reading his friend Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Less Travelled’ – Frost intended the poem to be a way of gently mocking Thomas’s indecision during their woodland walks, but Thomas took it much more seriously. In 1917 he died at Arras in France, having been shot through the chest. Rarely can a piece of poetry have had such a devastating effect.

‘There’s nothing like the sun‘

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, anyone who has ever visited a tropical butterfly house will have come across lantana. There are about 150 species, but the one that’s mostly seen is Lantana camara, otherwise known as Spanish Flag. It comes in a wide variety of colours – the orange one shown above seems to be the commonest. The flowers change colour as they mature, leading to multicoloured umbels – in the plant above they varied through apricot to tomato-red, with the lighter-hued blooms being the ones that have not yet been pollinated. There are many, many varieties, including the rather more demure one below.

One thing is for sure: these plants are a butterfly magnet. They form part of a genus of 150 different species in the Verbena family, and are native to tropical regions of the Americas and Africa: I saw Lantana growing wild when I was in Costa Rica. A wide range of butterfly and moth species feed on the flowers, especially swallowtails and birdwings, skippers and brush-footed butterflies such as the glasswing butterfly (Greta oro) of Central America, shown below.

 

Furthermore, the seeds of lantana are loved by birds, and herein hangs a tale. Lantana is considered a noxious weed in many parts of the world where it has been introduced, notably Australia, South Africa and some parts of Asia. It has also become naturalised in the warmer parts of North America. Because the leaves of the plant are toxic to herbivores, most grazers and browsers won’t eat them (and become sick if they do). Meantime, the birds eat the berries and distribute the seeds in their droppings. Among the species that eat the seeds are the superb fairy wren (Malurus cyaneus) of Australia;

and the endemic Mauritius Bulbul (Hypsipetes olivaceus)

In Australia, lantana has become so prevalent that various insect controls have been tried in order to reduce its vigour. Of the thirty species introduced, some have become problems in their own right. The rather handsome Mexican lantana bug (Aconophora compressa)  was brought to Australia in 1995, in the hope that it would munch its way through the plants that it was named after. Alas, the lantana bug has extensive and varied tastes, and has eaten many plants that were not supposed to be on the menu, including the popular ornamental trees fiddlewoods (also from the Americas), which are related to lantana. The case of the lantana bug led to much greater testing of the appetites of proposed bio-remedial species: this insect was tested with 62 species to see if it ate any of them, but fiddlewoods were not included.

So, lantana continues to run riot in many parts of the world where there are no pests to contain it, though I was cheered to hear that the swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) is one of the few mammals that can eat the leaves without keeling over.

I was also happy to hear that in some places in Australia, lantana is actually increasing biodiversity. In urban green spaces, it provides nesting cover for birds such as the fairy wren in the absence of native species that will do the same thing, and so provides a refuge for these attractive little birds to reproduce. Urban areas are not pristine habitats, as a brisk walk around East Finchley will show: we have plants from all over the world here, and the insects and birds take advantage of the longer flowering period and range of different microhabitats. It’s a very different thing in an endangered habitat. As Stace says in his book ‘Alien Plants’:

‘In disturbed native forests, Prickly Lantana can quickly become the dominant understorey species, disrupting succession and decreasing biodiversity. At some sites, infestations have been so persistent that they have completely stalled the regeneration of rainforests for more than three decades‘.

A plant out of its own habitat, without the native pests that keep in check, can quickly become an environmental disaster. Plus, lantana produces chemicals in its roots that check the growth of other plants. In areas with cold winters, the plant doesn’t survive, but if I was planning on growing it, I would choose one of the sterile varieties that are available that don’t produce fruit.

Lantana leaves have been used medicinally for a wide range of complaints, including malaria, tetanus and rheumatism. They are also believed to be efficacious in cases of snakebite. In India, where lantana is particularly invasive in mountain regions, local people have been making furniture from the plant, as it is considered a good substitute for traditional materials such as bamboo. Because of the toxicity of the lantana, the furniture is also not eaten by termites and beetle larvae. In an IUCN report, it indicates that using lantana in this way has increased income and productive work days for the villagers who are involved. The problem now is a shortage of people with skills to create the furniture.

Now, have a look at the image below and see if you can guess who it’s by.

At first glance, I thought it was a photograph, but subsequent research revealed that the image, called ‘Tithorea harmonia in Lantana’ from 2009-10, is actually a faithful reproduction in oils of a photographic image. And I was very surprised to find that the artist was Damien Hirst. Of this series of paintings that aim to reproduce photographs, Hirst says;

“I want you to believe in them in the same way as you believe in the ‘Medicine Cabinets‘. I don’t want them to look clever, but to convince you. I’m using painting to produce something that looks like a bad quality reproduction – the painting process is hidden as it is in my work ‘Hymn’, which looks like plastic, but is bronze underneath.”[2]

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised: Hirst has long been fascinated by butterflies and other insects, and has used them extensively in his art. Usually, it hasn’t ended very happily for them, as in the image below, where real dead butterflies are stuck onto gloss paint (to be fair, I believe that Hirst acquired them when they were already dead).

To me, his relationship with animals has always been strictly functional – he uses them to prove a wider philosophical point, as in his famous piece ‘A Thousand Years’, where maggots hatch, feed on a cow’s head and are killed in an Insect-o-cuter. Another exhibit at Tate Modern in 2012 featured live butterflies who hatched, flew around and died, next to an exhibit of the gloss paint and dead butterfly paintings. And then, of course, there was the shark.

It’s interesting how Hirst has gone from being the Enfant Terrible with the shark in a tank to someone who reproduces photos in oil paints, but he has never been afraid to experiment and to change. I suppose that his early work, in particular, is difficult to ignore – I saw his ‘Mother and Child Divided’ in an exhibition in Oslo in the ’90’s, and found it both fascinating and deeply distressing. For me, he sums up everything that is wrong with our attitude to the rest of the living world; everything is there to be plundered and used for our entertainment. But for others the fact that he raises these questions is part of his appeal. He has always been polarising: for some, the most interesting of the Young British Artists of the 1980’s, for others a cynical showman. I would be very interested to hear what you think!

And finally, a poem. I can’t tell you how much I love this work by Grace Paley, especially her evocation of ‘sadness and hilarity’. I know exactly how that feels, having been alternately laughing and weeping for most of the past six months.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Eddy Van 3000 from in Flanders fields – Belgiquistan – United Tribes ov Europe – the wings-become-windows butterfly., CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3479928

Photo Two by By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12075434

Photo Three by By Josh Noseworthy – Mauritius Bulbul, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36538595

Photo Four by By James Niland from Brisbane, Australia – Lantana TreehopperUploaded by Lymantria, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24777384

Photo Five by By Vinayaraj – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27369697

Photo Six by By jjron – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4022225

Photo Seven by By RickP 12:16, 3 May 2006 (UTC) – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=753347

Photo Eight from https://tudelft.openresearch.net/page/15576/15-lantana-furniture-siruvani-india

Photo Nine from www.damienhirst.com/tithorea-harmonia-in-lantana

Photo Ten from http://www.damienhirst.com/for-boys-and-girls

Photo Eleven from http://www.damienhirst.com/the-physical-impossibility-of

Photo Twelve from http://www.damienhirst.com/mother-and-child-divided-ex

 

Dear Readers, there can’t be many late-summer plants that attract as many insects as the cardoon, a massive Mediterranean thistle that is suddenly very popular in bee-friendly flowerbeds. You might know it as the globe artichoke, and you would be right: the cultivated variety of the plant, Cynar cardunculus var scolymus, has been systematically bred for larger, juicier flowerbuds, while the cardoon was grown more for its edible stems. There are now many decorative varieties of the plant , and with its architectural grey foliage and fist-sized flowers there are few more imposing things to stick at the back of the border.

The cardoon has a long and illustrious history as an edible plant. It was mentioned by the Greek writer Theophrastus who lived during the fourth century BCE. It was also popular with the Romans and the Persians, and was eaten in many places in medieval and early modern Europe. It was taken to North America by settlers during the colonial era, and can also be found in Argentina and Australia (it is considered an invasive weed in both countries). However, it fell out of favour throughout most of its range and by the twentieth century it had become rare, except in a few regions.

In North Africa the leaves and stems are often added to couscous, but it really comes into its own in Lyonnaise cuisine, and in the recipes of Navarre and Aragon in Spain. Only the tenderest, innermost leaves are considered edible, and these are traditionally blanched by being surrounded by earth to keep the light out. This reminds me somewhat of the ‘forced rhubarb’ of Yorkshire, though here the plants are grown in sheds in the dark to achieve the same ends. Sadly, the blanching is now more often achieved by wrapping the plant in black plastic.

Some people do eat the buds, in the same way that you might eat baby globe artichokes, but when I look at the wild plant this seems like a daunting prospect. The stems of the cardoon are also covered in small painful spikes, which need to be removed, although some commercial varieties have been bred without them.

The buds can, however, be used for cheesemaking, as can the pistils of the flower: they contain a kind of vegetable rennet which helps to coagulate the milk. Both Spanish and Portuguese cheesemakers use cardoon for this purpose.

The cardoon is also an ingredient of the Spanish national dish Cocido madrileño, a substantial dish made with chickpeas, meat (usually pork) and vegetables. Traditionally, this is eaten in three parts: first the stock, with some noodles added, then the vegetables and pulses, and then the meat. The dish was originally called adafina, and was a staple of the  Sephardic Jewish community, without the pork but with eggs. It was valuable because it was cooked very slowly, and therefore didn’t need to be attended to during Shabbat. Sadly, the growth in anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jewish population during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries led to the dish incorporating pork, as a way for Christians and converted Jews to prove that they weren’t Jewish. The history of cuisine is so often a history of the peoples who originated it.

In New Orleans, the stems are traditionally served battered and fried on the altars on the Feast of St Joseph (19th March).

Of course, I couldn’t leave the subject of the culinary uses of cardoon without mentioning the alcoholic beverages that it is associated with. The Italian liqueur Amaro uses cardoon as a principle ingredient, but if you really want an artichoke hit, there is a drink that I saw being quaffed in Venice: cynar spritz. The cynar is made with globe artichoke rather than cardoon, but it seems to appeal to the Venetians, who have a taste for the bitter rather than the sweet. Maybe it’s all those blessed tourists and cruise ships that tend them towards the darker side of life. At any rate, on any sunny evening you will see Venetian matriarchs of all ages knocking this back (along with bright orange Aperol spritz, which always reminds me of Lucozade, at least in colour) and discussing the abominations of the age, and who can blame them?

Cardoon has also come to the attention of the biofuel industry, and in Sardinia, the site of an old petrochemical factory is being turned into a biorefinery which  which will take the oil from the thistle seeds and turn it into bioplastics. It is planned to use the rest of the plant too: the biomass can be turned into high-protein flour and animal feed, and during the flowering season it’s hoped to create cardoon honey. As you can see from the photos, there is no shortage of bees waiting to take advantage of those enormous flowerheads.

In my ever-helpful ‘Gardening for Wildlife’ book by Adrian Thomas, Cynara species are described as some of the most useful plants for the August to November season, just when the queen bumblebees are fattening up and the honeybees are gathering in their stores for the winter. However, he does mention that, as it can grow to 2.5 metres tall and have a spread of the same dimensions, it probably needs a large garden. Like most Mediterranean plants, it loves full sun and a well-drained soil. I fear that I am going to have to admire it in other people’s gardens for the time being. I have tried to grow it in mine, but it languished droopily and finally succumbed.

So, what impact has the cardoon had on the arts? I was delighted to find this still life by Spanish painter Felipe Ramirez from 1628, which is currently in the Prado in Madrid. Note the blanched stems of the cardoon, looking for all the world like celery after it has been in the fridge for a little too long. The francolin is a kind of quail. We know absolutely nothing else about Snr Ramirez, but this painting lives on. I  love the way that he has captured the bloom on the grapes, and the blemishes on the cardoon.

There is, however, speculation that Ramirez was a student of the master of Spanish still life painting (known as ‘bodegones’, meaning, ‘from the bodega (a storeroom or tavern), Juan Sánchez Cotán. He was working in Toledo in the seventeenth century, and raised ordinary everyday things, such as fruit and vegetables, to the status of objects to be artistically appreciated. This appeals to my own sensibility – everything is worth paying attention to, and I know that when I was taking a drawing class, I fell in love with everything that I turned my charcoal to, particularly the imperfections that made a carrot or an apple or a bottle individual and unique.

And finally, a poem. I have been so busy thinking about bees that I forgot that goldfinches love thistle seeds of all kinds, and the cardoon must provide a bumper crop. Here is a poem from the London Magazine by Peter Anderson. I love the sense of the morning after the night before amidst the ruins of Rome.

The Goldfinches of Rome by Peter Anderson

Dawn on the Palatine:
planets bow out, stars pick their way
through rat-traps and incident tape.
The morning after the party of all time.

The sun loves me like a cat
wanting my sleep. I am trying to sleep
in the lee of a wall in the wilderness
backyard of an emperor.

There is a lyric of ruins. It is a song
sung in that dream of eating your own teeth.
Red brick turns its flank to the sun.
BAX BUNNY tattooed there.

Scudding across tufa and tramlines
glittering like straights
goes just the one scooter.
Ciao, bella.

This letter comes by goldfinch,
the first I ever saw,
blooding its face on the Palatine
at dawn, terrible

as a princeps, pontifex, come
down into gardens of citrus and cypress
in the first heat of the day.
A blood god busy in the cardoons.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Lusitana – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2160162

Photo Two by By MollySVH – Torta de Casar cheeseUploaded by Diádoco, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9917414

Photo Three by By Adriao – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6635351

Photo Four by By Tnarik – Flicr [1], CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2547841

Photo Five by Christopher Scafidi.Original uploader was ChrisQuint at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia(Original text : Christopher Scafidi), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8916438

Photo Six by Trekkiedane – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57028294

Dear Readers, when I rented my very first flat, I had no garden. Instead, I became obsessed with house plants. I bought a packet of mixed coleus seeds, and soon there was no corner of the living room or kitchen that didn’t have a gaudily-leaved plant sitting on it. Friends, neighbours, even the postwoman were not safe from having a plastic pot thrust into their hands. What with all the pinching out of the top shoots and the constant watering, it was a busy summer. Sadly, my coleus soon grew leggy in spite of all my ministrations, and they showed a determination to produce their pale-lavender flower spikes (which marked the end of their lives) that was too much for my hard-working, hard-partying ways. Suffice to say that the following year I grew spider plants instead.

But today, as I walked through Regent’s Park, I grew nostalgic. For a sudden splash of colour in a bedding scheme, it’s hard to beat the sheer variety of the coleus, and I suspect that they are good value for money too. Although they are not beloved by pollinators, like other plants, they are also remarkably pest free. Plus, the variety is astonishing. Here are just some of the coleuses (coleii??) that I spotted yesterday:

But then I realised that I had no idea whatsoever what a coleus actually was, and there is still some scientific confusion about the plant. It is agreed that the most commonly cultivated variety, previously known as Coleus blumeii, is now known as Plectanthrus scutellarioides. It is a member of the Lamiaceae or deadnettle family, and one common name is ‘painted nettle’. In the ‘wild’, this species is native to a swathe of countries from India in the west to Australia in the south and east. It is a woodland plant which even when not cultivated displays a wide variety of leaf colours and shapes. Here is the ‘original’ plant (here naturalised in Puerto Rico). The small purple-blue flowers look very familiar.

Coleus arrived in Europe in 1851, and the US by 1877, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that breeders realised the plant’s colourful potential. By the 1980s the plant was the tenth most important bedding crop in the US. It is a great, cheap, low-maintenance choice for municipal beds, and as anyone who has ever grown them will know they are very easy to propagate by cuttings. Although the plants like high temperatures, their colours are brightest in shade, which is the opposite of my experience with most variegated plants, who need sunshine to keep their colour. Apparently it can be grown as a perennial in colder climates where it shows less tendency to bolt, but in the UK most coleus are used as annual bedding and, as this chromolithograph from the turn of the last century illustrates, it has been this way for a long time.

Apparently the plant has psychotropic effects, and is used as a hallucinogen by the Mazatec Indians of southern Mexico (their shamans also use psilocybin and Salvia divinorum to conjure visions and enable psychic journeying). I am somewhat surprised as the plant is not native, but it has been very widely naturalised in the Caribbean and Central/South America.

I was fascinated to find that people who grow the ‘wasabi coleus‘ (which has plain acid-green leaves) and the ‘chocolate mint’ coleus (as you might have guessed, brown leaves with green edges) wondered if the plant might taste like their names. The answer, of course, is ‘no’, though it’s a nice idea. There are, however, some species of coleus that are edible, and I’m indebted to the Dave’s Garden website for pointing this out.

One is the ‘country potato’, a group of three coleus species (with Plectranthus rotundifolius being the most important) that are native to Africa but have more recently been grown in southern Asia as well. Their food value comes from their tubers – these are said to be blander than a ‘real’ potato and they are normally used as a subsistence crop, though in Burkina Faso they are milled to produce flour.

The other coleus species, Indian coleus( Plectranthus barbatus) is grown, as the name suggests, in India, partially because the root is edible and can be used in pickles, but mainly because the plant contains a chemical compound called forskolin. This has long been used in Ayurvedic medicine, and is sometimes marketed as as a diet aid, because it is believed to burn fat. There is currently no scientific evidence to support this idea, although there are several studies that are looking into the possible medical uses of this plant and several other Asian coleus (you can find extensive information here).

Now, as you know I am fascinated by the superstitions that grow up around plants. For the coleus, I have had to turn east to the plant’s home range, and here it appears that to have a plant in the house may a) attract bankruptcy, b) attract fire (probably because of the plant’s flame-coloured leaves or c) attract poverty if it starts to bloom in the winter. Coleus is also believed to take revenge on its owner if it isn’t looked after properly. All in all I seem to have had a flat full of trouble, which I then visited on all my friends and relatives. Goodness! Maybe it’s best kept as a bedding plant after all, though to be fair the article that also points out that the coleus has ‘a powerful positive energy and can bring success in business’. I find it difficult to believe that such a bright and cheerful-looking plant can bring many disasters.

And here is a rather fine poem by Richard Swanson, who lives in Wisconsin. Who among us hasn’t tried to protect our garden from the inevitable onset of winter? Some of us (ahem) have been known to sneak out in the soon-to-be-frozen garden with buckets to protect the frogspawn from the promised frost, regardless of what the neighbours think….

First Frost Night by Richard Swanson

We’re frantic, trying to save them, our summer’s offspring, our garden children.We’re cloaking the roses with deer hunter ponchos, spreading old denim shirts on pumpkins, capping Swiss chard with grocery store bags. Maybe — can’t go there but we will — we’ll sneak out Heather’s prom dress to shield a squash vine.The neighbors recoil at our refugee draping. Who cares! We’ll pretend we’re rich eccentrics, beyond the rules of normal behavior. We’re hauling in pots, that begonia, this foxglove, a coleus now in an armchair. The cats, displaced, are spooked. We’re their mewling hiss, not their meow. Begging forgiveness, out the door we go, on one more rescue mission.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Bjoertvedt – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48784530

PhotoTwo by Raw PIxel from https://www.flickr.com/photos/vintage_illustration/43332091102

Photo Three by By Manojk – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17497669

Photo Four by By mauroguanandi – https://www.flickr.com/photos/mauroguanandi/3197358136/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11878867

Dear Readers, there appear to be fashions in plants, just as there are in most other things, and in the south-facing gardens of Bedford Road in East Finchley there is pot after pot of Agapanthus. Some of the pots are elegant in Majorelle blue, which nicely highlights the sky blue of the flowers. There are lots of bees about too, which always makes me happy. My  book ‘Gardening for Wildlife’ says that only a few cultivars are actually liked by pollinators, however, so if you’re thinking of getting some I would apply the Garden Centre test – watch to see which ones the bees visit, and go for one of those. In my experience, plants which are closest to the original wild plant always work better than those which have been ‘messed about with’, so I’d go for a blue one, rather than the pink and white ones that seem to be popping up. There is a Dutch grower who specialises in Agapanthus if you want to have a look at some of the varieties that are available. And do let me know your experience! I always think of this blog as a communal effort.

Also known as ‘blue lily’, ‘African lily’ or even ‘Lily of the Nile’ (although the plant isn’t actually a lily at all),  Agapanthus plants in the UK are normally of the Agapanthus praecox species, which comes originally from Natal and the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. The very name ‘Agapanthus’ comes from the Greek for ‘love flower’, and there is a lot to love about the plant: it can live for up to 75 years, can withstand drought, wind and frost down to -15 once established, and flowers for a long time. The young shoots need to be protected from slugs and snails but once an agapanthus is ‘up and running’ you’re in business. I really like these plants en masse in a border – they echo the colour of the spring bluebells. The plants grow from a rhizome, which resembles a piece of ginger, and which helps to store water when there isn’t much about.

I didn’t expect to find that Agapanthus was a naturalised species, but as usual I find myself surprised. In the Isles of Scilly, the Agapanthus has taken to the local sand dunes with great gusto – maybe the light soil and sunny conditions remind the plant of its home, and as it spreads via rhizomes it can quickly establish itself. It also appears to have be naturalised in Australia and New Zealand – in the former, it was widely planted in municipal beds because it was drought-tolerant, but this now seems to have been discontinued, although it is apparently a popular cemetery plant in the Antipodes, probably because it is relatively low maintenance.

In its native South Africa, the Xhosa people believe that the Agapanthus helps to enhance the well-being of pregnant women, who drink a tea made from the plant during their third trimester, and wear a necklace of dried Agapanthus root during pregnancy to protect the baby. When the baby is born, it is bathed in a solution of Agapanthus, which is believed to make the infant strong and healthy. For the Zulu people, the plant is used to cure a whole variety of ailments, including heart conditions, paralysis, colds and flu. The leaves are plaited into bandages for tired feet. However, the Agapanthus root is thought to be purgative if ingested, according to an interesting study of poisonous plants in New Zealand, though eating a few flowers or leaves was not thought to do much harm. There is also some thought that the sap may cause skin irritation in susceptible people.

Agapanthus is also traditionally used to ward off thunder, though there is plenty about in East Finchley today. I think the plant should pull its socks up.

It will probably come as no surprise that a plant as beautiful as the Agapanthus has inspired artists – Claude Monet painted the plant in his garden at Giverny many times. Monet spent the last years of his life here, following the death of his second wife and his son. In 1926, Monet himself died of lung cancer and at his funeral his long-time friend, George Clemanceau, removed the black cloth that had been draped over his coffin and, saying ‘no black for Monet!’ replaced it with a floral one.

And just to end on a classy note, here is a poem by Pam Ayres. She was such a feature of my childhood, with her works including ‘I wish I’d looked after me teeth‘ ( to get the full effect, you should hear her reading it herself here). Ayres lives with her husband in the Cotswold and has a small holding with rare breeds of farm animal. She is also patron of several animal welfare organisations and sanctuaries, and her love for creatures is very clear in her poems.

Dog Gardening Poem

I  love to do the gardening,

I roll on the acanthus,

Do flops across the echinops,

And trash the agapanthus.

Ah yes, this reminds me of trying to do any serious gardening with our family dog Spock when I was growing up.

But Ayres also has a serious side. I really love this poem. See what you think.

WOODLAND BURIAL by Pam Ayres.

Don’t lay me down in some gloomy churchyard shaded by a wall

Where the dust of ancient bones has spread dryness over all.

Lay me in some leafy loam where, sheltered from the cold

Little seeds investigate and tender leaves unfold.

There kindly and affectionately plant a native tree

To grow resplendent before God and hold some part of me.

The roots will not disturb me as they wend their peaceful way

To build the fine and bountiful, from closure and decay.

To seek their small requirements so that when their work is done

I’ll be tall and standing strongly in the beauty of the Sun.

Dear Readers, petunias are popping up in the hanging baskets and pots of East Finchley. I must confess that I have never been a big fan of the plants, but the great thing about the Wednesday Weed is that it’s made me question everything that I’ve ever known. After all, what is a petunia, and how has it become so popular? What is it related to? Do any insects like it?

Well, petunias come originally from South America – there are about 20 separate species. The plants are members of the Solanaceae or nightshade family, which includes tobacco, tomato and potato, and their name ‘petunia’ comes from the word ‘petun’, meaning ‘tobacco’, in the local Tupi-Guarani language. The Maya and the Inca believe that the plant has the ability to ward off underworld monsters, and there is a belief that petunias bring happiness to a house. They are certainly the most generous of plants, pouring forth their blooms for months at a time. No wonder they are many people’s first choice for a hanging basket.

The ‘domesticated’ petunia is a hybrid between two species, Petunia axillaris (the white moon petunia) and Petunia integerifolia (violet petunia). The white moon petunia has a sweet smell which has been inherited by some forms of the cultivated petunia, while the violet petunia is said to be used as a hallucinogen in Ecuador, giving a sensation of flying.

The cultivated petunia is known as Petunia x atkinsonii. Incidentally, this is an example of a nothospecies – a new word to me, so I had to investigate. A nothospecies is a hybrid between two plants in the same genus, as here. If a plant is a hybrid between two plants of different genuses, it’s known as a nothogenus. Who knew? Certainly not me, who has enough trouble finding two matching socks at the moment.

Anyhoo, back to the petunia. It seems to tolerate drying out better than some other plants, which makes it ideal for the exposed environment of a hanging basket. It isn’t overfond of conditions that are too damp or shady – it is said to need at least five hours of full sunshine every day. It pairs beautifully with pelargoniums (which need similar conditions) and there is definitely a petunia for every colour scheme. There are the ones which are divided into segments:

..the ones where the edge of the petal is a different colour from the middle…

the ones with defined veins in the petals…

and my favourite, the ones that look like starry skies….

One definite disadvantage of the petunia from my point of view is that, pretty as it is, it doesn’t seem to attract many insects. All the species bar one are pollinated by insects, and rumour has it that petunias are sometimes visited by hummingbird hawk moths, as evidenced by several photos.

Being a plant of hanging baskets, the seeds of petunia are often scattered far and wide, and the seedlings can sometimes be seen popping up in the cracks in the pavement during the following spring. The paving stones by the side of pubs are a particularly good spot – some pubs pride themselves on their floral displays, and there are several in London that really exceed expectations. Perhaps the finest is the Churchill Arms in Kensington, which spends £25,000 a year on its floral display, and very fine it is too.

Allegedly, petunia flowers are edible, though no one seems to get very excited about them. I was a little disappointed to see that the ‘Petunia Bowl’ salad that I found online was an homage to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (in which two thermonuclear missiles turn into a whale and a bowl of petunias) and actually contains no petunias, though as there is some thought that the petals might be poisonous it’s probably just as well.

Now, here’s a fascinating thing. A couple of caterpillar larvae do eat the flowers of petunias, and both are serious pests of agricultural crops. One, the corn earworm (Helicoverpa zea) is the second most serious insect pest in the USA, munching its way through corn, tomatoes, cotton and a dozen other plants. Not only does it decimate plants but, most unusually for a moth, the caterpillar will also eat other insects.

The  other species that feeds on petunia is the cabbage looper caterpillar (Trichoplusia ni) which, as its name suggests, normally prefers brassicas, red cabbage in particular. As this is a vegetable that I find it hard to get excited about, I am prepared to give this little chap rather more garden-room. Plus, it does that ‘inch worm’ walk that I found so appealing when I was a child.

Now, in a study by the scientists at United States Department of Agriculture in Peoria, Illinois, it has been found  that when the caterpillars of both species were fed on bi-coloured petunias like the one below, they much preferred the white sections to the coloured ones. When given no choice but to eat the blue bits, they put on much less weight, and a much higher proportion of the larvae died. The hypothesis is that this is due to the natural anthocyanins in the blue petals, which act as a natural insecticide. Such pigments are energetically expensive for a plant to produce, but of course these plants have been bred rather than emerged through natural selection. The question is whether these pigments could have a wider application, and how much effect they would have if they could be bred into food crops. Fascinatiing stuff.

And here’s a poem. I’ve had to read it once or twice to get under its skin, but it’s worth it. I regret that I hadn’t come across Bob Hicok before – he was born in 1960 in Michigan, and had worked for years in the automotive industry before he discovered his gift for poetry. He is most famous in the US for his poem series about the shootings at Virginia Tech. Someone commented that “Hicok’s meditations… do not allow us to turn away from the act of violence, neither from the person who committed the act, nor from the ironies of survival.” See what you think.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By ElenaSchifirnet – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15124646

Photo Two by By Magnus Manske – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7398799

Photo Three by By EliasTheHorse – I took it on a flower’s shop., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74372553

Photo Four by David Short from Windsor, UK [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

Photo Five from https://secretldn.com/churchill-arms-flower-pub/

Photo Six by By cyanocorax – https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyanocorax/2901626664/in/set-72157607594253502/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7096670

Photo Seven by By Alton N. Sparks, Jr., University of Georgia, United States – This image is Image Number 1327034 at Forestry Images, a source for forest health, natural resources and silviculture images operated by The Bugwood Network at the University of Georgia and the USDA Forest Service., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7038081

Dear Readers, I am always delighted when I find a ‘real’ weed that I haven’t written about before, and here is a doozy – Caper Spurge (Euphorbia Lathyrus) is a statuesque spurge, with leaves that start off long and narrow with a prominent white mid-rib, and end up more oval as they get near to the flower. It is the seed capsules that give the plant its name, however: they look deliciously toothsome, but sadly, like all parts of the plant, they are poisonous, oozing a blueish, latex-like sap if damaged.

Caper spurge is inherently a plant of the southern Mediterranean, Northern Africa and southwards right through to China, but it is thought to be an ancient introduction to the UK, and is often grown in gardens. Why, I wonder, was it introduced? Medicinally it has often been used as a purgative, but more intriguingly, it was also thought to deter moles. Vickery’s Folk Flora points out that this belief has given the plant the alternative names of mole-plant and in German it is known as maulwurfvertreiker or ‘mole deterrent’. However, the plant grows best in sandy soil where worms are scarce. As moles are fond of dining on earthworms it may be this, rather than the caper spurge, that explains the lack of ‘the little gentleman in black velvet’.

There is also a belief in Germany that the plant ‘keeps little mice away’.

In Somerset, the plant is said to be a deterrent to badgers because they dislike the sap – again, in Vickery’s Folk Flora, someone explains that you ‘have to keep breaking the stems’ to get the sap to flow.

Another explanation for the name ‘mole-plant’ is that the caustic sap might have been used to burn away ‘moles’ or beauty spots from the faces of those who considered them an impediment. Many euphorbias were used to treat warts in this way, so it doesn’t seem entirely unlikely.

And while we’re on the subject, here is a photo of a mole, probably the commonest British mammal that no one has ever seen (though we’ve all seen the results of their labours). Incidentally, other ways to keep moles out of the garden include ‘never speaking of them’ (much as you are not meant to mention ‘the Scottish Play’ to an actor), putting sardines in their runs (which would keep me out of the garden as well, though probably not the foxes and cats) and leaving hessian bags of human hair around the garden. Personally, I think I’d rather have the moles.

To return to the theme of caper spurge’s medicinal uses, Richard Mabey explains how the plant is found on the now uninhabited island of Steepholm in the Bristol Channel, along with the only colony of wild paeony (Paeonia mascula) in the UK and many other medicinal herbs such as henbane, coriander, wild leek, greater celandine and alexanders, all Mediterranean plants. Between 1166 and 1260 a community of Augustinian monks lived on the island, and it is likely that they planted a ‘physick garden’ in the equable oceanic climate. Certainly, Chaucer knew of caper spurge as ‘katapuce’ (mentioned in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale), and of its laxative properties, and Charlemagne insisted that it be grown in all herbal gardens in case anyone was ever in need of a good purge (the name ‘spurge’ comes from the Latin ‘expurgare’ which should give us a clue).

The sap was also used by beggars in medieval times who were in need of some additional sympathy – applied to the skin, it can cause extremely impressive blisters. One can only wonder at the depths of deprivation that made people to resort to such things. You most certainly do not want to get the sap in your eye, or onto any other ‘delicate parts’ – there are a lot of stories about chaps doing the weeding without gloves and then going to the toilet, followed by a rushed trip to Accident and Emergency when the effects of the sap became apparent.

Although caper spurge is toxic, goats will eat it, and the toxin can then be passed on via their milk. However the sap from caper spurge is also being considered as a possible biofuel, as it is extremely rich in hydrocarbons, and the plant will grow in relatively salty soils which are inhospitable to other plants so there would be little competition with food crops. The Nobel Prize winning scientist Melvin Calvin (1911-1997) (who discovered the Calvin Cycle of photosynthesis) estimated that cultivated caper spurge could produce 10-50 barrels of oil per acre per year, but whether there would be damage to the delicate coastal ecosystems involved remains to be seen.

Those fat little seed capsules, while not to be mistaken for capers, are entertaining in their own right: when ripe, they explode, catapulting the seeds for several metres. The seeds also float, and can be transported downriver if they happen to land in a suitable stream. Fortunately they are not particularly competitive, and are usually overwhelmed by more vigorous plants unless they happen to land in the perfect spot. They are now naturalised in many parts of the world, but do not appear to have become too overwhelming. In North America the plant is sometimes known as ‘gopher spurge’, so I wonder if this comes from a belief that, in addition to moles, mice and badgers, the plant discourages other mammals. And here is a photo of a gopher, just because I have never seen one. Those are extremely impressive incisors, I must say.

And finally, here is a titbit that I found while looking around for a poem on caper spurge. The artist John Northcote Nash (1893 -1977), was the younger brother of the WWI artist Paul Nash, but his creative endeavours took him in the direction of botanical woodcuts. In his wonderful book ‘Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees‘, the late Roger Deakin (gone much, much too soon), wrote about Nash’s masterpiece, ‘Poisonous Plants: Deadly, Dangerous and Suspect‘ (1922)

“In a review of an edition of Nash woodcuts published in Hortus in 1988, Ronald Blythe writes:

‘His garden was always plentifully supplied with henbane, hemlock, monk’s hood, foxglove, meadow saffron, spurge laurel, datura, caper spurge, herb Paris, Helleborus foetidus and other such species which he had often been found staring at, much as one might at a murderer. He was proud, not only of their robust growth, but of their capabilities, and I have often watched him cast a wary eye over the gaunt reaches of the henbane. Gardens were not entirely benign places to him: they contained their darker moments‘ .”

I think that any garden, closely observed, is awash with birth, life, death and decay, and that is, of course, exactly how it has to be. So many gardeners (myself included) have spells of railing against the unfairness of it all, when a heron eats a frog or a much-loved plant succumbs, or the slugs seem overwhelming. The foxglove feeds the bumblebee, and the caper spurge sits there innocently until you break a stem and rub your eye. Nature is not hell, but nor is it Disneyland.

Photo Credits

Photo One from https://www.wythamwoods.ox.ac.uk/article/mole-talpa-europaea

Photo Two by By LeonardoWeiss – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12937639