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.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Dear Readers, I had a lovely walk in Darlands Nature Reserve in Totteridge on Tuesday. The Pendulous Sedge is probably one of the commonest plants, as it’s very at home along the streams and lake edge in the reserve. It has a certain elegance that I rather like, it provides lots of cover for froglets and over-wintering insects, and it’s an ancient woodland indicator, so it has a lot going for it. I thought it had disappeared from my garden, but this year it’s popped back up, and I’m not unhappy about it. It’s the foodplant of the caterpillar of the Twin-barred Dwarf Moth (Elachista gleichenella), a very attractive little striped moth.

The RHS website has softened its approach to this plant – it was previously designated as a ‘thug’, but there is now a greater recognition of how useful it can be, and how it can be controlled if it does start to self-seed in places where it isn’t wanted. Personally, I think it’s invaluable for anyone with heavy clay soil and a pond, and it’s certainly nicer to see something thriving in a habitat that suits it, rather than watching a plant suffer and die because it isn’t happy.

So, let’s see what I discovered on my previous outings with Pendulous Sedge, including a rather eerie poem…..

Dear Readers, Pendulous Sedge is one of those plants, rather like Teasel, that will stay with you forever whether you like it or not. As you will see from my original Wednesday Weed below, I have rather decided that I like it – it seems so at home beside the pond, and when its many, many children pop up in other places it only takes a moment to pull them up (though as you can still buy them in garden centres I think I should probably be potting them up and selling them on). It’s also worth remembering that this is a native plant that thrives in the very particular claggy clay soils of London (amongst other places) – I regularly see it popping up in Coldfall Wood, for example. If you look closely at the photo below, from 2015, you’ll see how at home it is amongst the marsh marigolds and valerian.

What I didn’t know when I wrote my original post is that Pendulous Sedge has been used in a variety of ways – its seeds are edible, and, stripped of their husks, can be used in bread or salads, or even ground  into flour. Robin Harford, of Eat The Weeds, uses the seed to make a kind of gomasio, where the seeds are popped and then ground with rock salt to make a Japanese-style seasoning.  However, as Harford points out, Pendulous Sedge can also be used for phytoremediation – this is where plants are used to suck up the heavy metals from soil/water, so it’s probably wise to make sure this isn’t the case before you go gathering the seeds.

On the Plant Lore website, someone describes how his grandfather used to make ‘horrible biscuits’ with Pendulous Sedge seeds – he describes how country people understood how nutritious the seeds were, even if they weren’t the tastiest.

The plant has also been used for rope-making  – those stems and leaves look as if they could make something  very robust.

Here’s a photo of the male and female ‘flowers’ that I describe in the piece below :  the shaggy ‘flower’ on the far left is the male flower, which produces pollen, while the other four ‘flowers’ are the female parts, which produce seed.

And look, here’s a sedge poem! My mother used to recite this by heart when we were little children sick in bed. I think she was getting her revenge for being kept up so late, because reading it now it’s a very eerie poem, not at all suitable for infants. Then, she used to sing ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ as well. I think my mother was a Goth at heart.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
John Keats

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful – a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said –
‘I love thee true’.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed – Ah! woe betide! –
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried – ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

And now, let’s see what I had to say when I first wrote about Pendulous Sedge back in (gulp) 2014…

Dear Reader, I must confess that when a plant makes an appearance in my garden, I am inclined to leave it alone until I find out what on earth it is. Sometimes, this is a grave error (the incident of the Ground Elder springs to mind). On other occasions, though, I discover that exactly the right plant has appeared for the spot that it has chosen, and then I am delighted. The plant above is called Pendulous Sedge, and it has erupted like a green fountain in a particularly shady spot next to my pond, where everything else I’ve tried to grow has failed.

The name ‘Sedge’ is said to come from the same root as the Latin verb ‘secare’, meaning to cut, and the sedge family has been used for everything from papyrus to basket-making to boat-building. However, what I like about Pendulous Sedge is its grace and vigour. Four or five catkins dangle gracefully from each stem, like so many lambs tails – there are usually one or two male catkins at the top, with the female ones underneath. Pendulous Sedge likes cold, claggy clay soil, and so it has succeeded where so many of my fancier plants have folded up and died.

I note that opinions on the plant are divided. On the RHS website, it lists no fewer than 132 suppliers who will sell you a Carex pendula should you not have one simply turn up. On checking one nursery, I discover that three plants will cost you 9.99 GBP plus postage. I feel a momentary warm glow of satisfaction.

However, further on on the same website I notice that it is described as a ‘thug plant’ – one that can quickly get out of hand and run rampant all over the garden.

Harrumph. I suppose the question is this: do we want a garden in which the plants that grow thrive, or do we want to be forever coaxing, forcing and persuading plants to do well when they’d much rather be elsewhere?

Pendulous Sedge is a plant not only of watersides, but of ancient woodlands. The photo below is from my visit to Cherry Tree Wood last week, where I saw the plant growing happily in a damp hollow.

Not so long ago, the land where my house now stands was part of Finchley Common, an area of scrub and moorland that was notorious for Highwaymen right up to the Eighteenth Century. A gibbet used to stand at the end of what is now the road next to mine. I have no doubt that every gully and pond would have had stands of Pendulous Sedge, and when it pops up in my garden now, it reminds me that human settlement is a very recent thing here, and that the plants and animals still reflect the way the land was then. So, thug or not, it is welcome in my garden, for the frogs to sit under, for the dragonflies to rest on, and for all manner of creeping things to nestle into.

 

 

 

Dear Readers, the plant in the photo above is probably not what you visualise when someone mentions ‘Buddleia’, but here we are – Buddleja globosa has actually been a UK plant since 1774, whereas the commoner Buddleia davidii didn’t arrive until the 1880s. The genus contains over 140 species, and there are now literally thousands of cultivars.

Is it Buddleia or Buddleja though? My latest copy of the RHS magazine suggests that Buddleja was chosen by no less a figure than Linnaeus. The name was given to posthumously honour the Reverend Adam Buddle (1662-1775), who was an English botanist and pastor who created an English Flora that was never published. His herbarium and a copy of his book are now held at the Natural History Museum. However, Buddle never actually saw a Buddleja – his name was suggested by fellow botanist William Houston, who brought back the first members of the Buddleja family  from the Caribbean 15 years after Buddle died.

The RHS take a rather ambivalent attitude to Buddleja, in my opinion – having designated it as a ‘thug’, they are now praising its pollinator-friendly qualities. It’s true that there are lots more varieties now, and many of them are much better behaved than the two huge Buddleja that are going well in my front garden, ten years after my original post (below). In my magazine, the RHS praise Buddleja davidii for its attraction to butterflies and moths, and Buddleja x weyeriana for its popularity with bumblebees – this plant is actually a cross between the common butterfly bush and Buddleja globosa.

Another species of Buddleja that seems to be gaining in popularity is Buddleja alternifolia, the Fountain Butterfly Bush – it looks like quite a substantial plant, so I would be interested to know if anyone has grown it. Again, it seems to be popular with the pollinators.

And here is a poem, by Roy McFarlane, born in Birmingham of Jamaican heritage. As we’ve seen, some of the earliest Buddleja plants were transported to England from the Caribbean, and they bear the name of a man who never even saw them. McFarlane was Canal Laureate in 2022, and this is one of the poems that he wrote during this time. See what you think! I think that it would be wonderful to hear McFarlane read this work – its rhythms would surely come alive.

Come Walk This Way

by Roy McFarlane

Dear Readers, when two wild Buddleia plants started to grow in my front garden, I had no idea that they would be quite so enthusiastic. The one next to the front gate wallops everyone who tries to get to the front door with a whippy bloom-covered stem, which is particular fun when it’s been raining. The one by the wheelie bins is at least ten feet tall.

But now that the lavender has finished flowering, it is the number one favourite of the pollinators around here. Have a look at this lot. The plant is also called Butterfly Bush, as I’m sure you know, and although I haven’t caught any photos of visiting Lepidoptera, it’s loved by every species from Cabbage White to Red Admiral.

Once the flowers have gone over, I will give both plants a healthy prune, and we’ll be able to access our house without having to go through a mini Tough Mudder assault course to get there.

Buddleia (Buddleia davidii) is originally from the mountainous areas of Hubei and Sichuan provinces in China, and was introduced to the UK when it was planted in Kew Gardens in 1896. It is named for the Basque missionary and explorer Father Armand David, who was the first European to see the Giant Panda, and who, in addition to his church duties, found time to identify no less than 63 species of mammal, 65 species of birds and and hundreds of species of plant which were previously unknown to Western science. In honour of his work, several species were named after him, including a very rare Chinese deer, which is known as Pere David’s Deer in the west. Several of the deer, which  were extinct in the wild,and survived only in the Emperor’s garden, were smuggled into Europe, including one animal which was ‘rescued’ by the good Father himself. As it turned out, it’s just as well that he did, because during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 all the animals remaining in China were slaughtered and eaten. The European animals were brought together at Woburn Abbey, and bred so successfully that eventually some animals were able to be reintroduced back into China, a rare conservation success story.

But, back to Buddleia. It’s a member of the Figwort family (Scrophulariaceae), a diverse group which includes such plants as Mullein and that little white-flowered plant you often see in garden centres, Bacopa. The grey-green leaves can look a little tatty late on in the season, but the glory of the plant are its flowers, long inflorescences of purple, lilac or white flowers which smell intensely of honey. I remember passing a boarded-up lot in Whitechapel, and being stopped mid-step by the sound of bees and the extraordinary perfume coming from behind the hoardings. When I peered through a gap, I could see a veritable Buddleia forest, the plants about twelve feet high, the blossoms bowed down under the weight of bees. No doubt this site is a block of luxury flats now, but then it was the equivalent of an East End watering hole for pollinators, and no doubt a refuge for other creatures too.

Each individual flower is ‘perfect’ – this means that it contains both male and female parts. The tiny seeds are very undemanding, requiring only the smallest patch of soil to germinate, and, like Oxford Ragwort Buddleia is likely to have spread along railway lines, its seeds caught up in the slipstream of trains. When I used to commute into Liverpool Street Station in London, the grim trackside was lit up with bush after bush of Buddleia, and as we pulled into the station, past the blackened Victorian walls which lined the route, an occasional shrub could be seen growing from a tiny crack in the brick work. I am sure that the poor soil and exposed location is similar to the scree slopes for which the plant was originally adapted. In its native environment, it has been christened ‘the Harbourage of Tigers’, but in my locality it is more likely to be cover for a neighbour’s cat.

Despite looking in all my usual books and perusing the internet, I could find no references to medicinal or culinary uses for Buddleia, and yet I have a feeling that in its native habitat those enormous sweet-smelling flowers must have been used for something – maybe to sweeten wine, or to make jam, or to adorn houses to keep evil spirits away. At the very least they are surely the favourite flower of some benevolent bee goddess, who will have her work cut out looking after her subjects at the moment, what with the sneaky reintroduction of neonicotinoids to the UK and the general decline in pollinator habitat. I imagine that she is polishing up her sting at this very moment.

I have several varieties of Buddleia in my garden – I am trying a few dwarf Buddleia in my containers, and also have a yellow-flowered variety where the blooms are spherical. But nothing attracts the interest of insects like these wild ones. They fill a gap at the end of the early summer-flowering plants, and before the late summer Sedum and Michaelmas Daisies really get going. I was interested to read that Butterfly Conservation recommends the planting of Buddleia in gardens as a nectar source, even though the plant has no value as a food plant for caterpillars, such is its value to adult insects. However, I would question the need to plant it, as if you live in an area where Buddleia grows wild, some will almost certainly turn up and save you the expense. If you are worried about your single plant turning into a Buddleia forest, note that the seed only ripens in the spring, so dead-heading and autumn pruning should keep it under some kind of control. If not, the seedlings are very easy to pull up. When I am Queen, I shall provide everyone with a Buddleia seedling to pop into their garden or grow in a pot, so that the bees and butterflies, for a few weeks at least, will have a honey-scented corridor of flowers to make their lives a little easier. In the meantime, if you don’t have one already, maybe you could consider finding one yourself? I guarantee you will have some very grateful six-legged visitors.

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, in this sultry weather it seems only appropriate that there is crape myrtle in flower in East Finchley. But there are no cicadas, which, as I mention in the piece below, are the sound of the southern states in the US. When cicadas hatch, all the nymphs from a particular year and species tend to do so at the same time (a brood), leading to a crescendo of sound that reminds me of the sea on a pebble beach.

https://earth.fm/recordings/brood-x-periodical-cicadas/

We do (or did) have one cicada species in the UK – the New Forest Cicada (Cicadetta montana). As with all cicadas, only the males sing, but their call is said to be too high-pitched for most adult human hearing, though children can often hear them. Adding to the problem is the fact that, when adult, they climb to the top of tall trees in order to sing, Furthermore, they need still conditions and temperatures above 20 degrees celsius to perform. Sadly, no New Forest Cicada has been seen since the 1990s, but as we discovered with the stalked jellyfish recently, this doesn’t mean that they’ve gone, merely that we aren’t paying attention. Buglife, in collaboration with Southampton University, the Forestry Commission and the New Forest National Park, have developed an app which, like a bat detector, will pick up the sound of the cicada. Fingers crossed! They may not be the most attractive of insects to our eyes, but then they probably aren’t impressed with us either.

So, read on for a bit more about Crape Myrtle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Readers, I’m off on a bit of an adventure this week (of which more soon), but I still had time to admire the hibiscus plants around East Finchley. There is a hibiscus tree just up the road from me, and I honestly thought that it was a goner last year, but this year it seems to be doing quite nicely, thank you.

And one of my neighbours also has a very nice shrub in their front garden. But the most impressive is this one at the Sunshine Garden Centre. Who knew that the flowers could be quite so enormous?

Hibiscus have suddenly become popular as street trees – Paul Wood (author of London’s Street Trees) mentions that Garden Walk in Shoreditch is a great place to see them, so any of you East Londoners might want to take a little toddle down there, I suspect that it should be glorious at the moment. The hibiscus is a small tree, but having the flowers close to eye level adds to their appeal.

There’s another poem in my original piece below, but here’s a haiku by Basho. I fear for many of us, the haiku form was spoiled by having to create them in poetry lessons and coming up with something less than impressive, but I have grown to like them with my advancing years, the way they sometimes burst into flower at the end. See what you think.

in the twilight rain

these brilliant-hued hibiscus

a lovely sunset

Matsuo Basho

Dear Readers, is it just my imagination or has there been a sudden burst of enthusiasm for hibiscus as a garden plant? Once upon a time I had to travel to the Mediterranean to see these exotic beauties in full flower, but on a wet Sunday afternoon I found no less than three different plants in the environs of the County Roads in East Finchley, and very splendid they were too. I suspect that the climate change induced warmer temperatures are suiting them very well, for this plant comes originally from southern Asia, with its long warm summers. Hibiscus arrived in the UK in the 16th century, and was at first thought to be unable to survive frost. Later, it was realised that although individual buds might be affected by sub-zero temperatures, the shrub itself was frost-hardy.

Hibiscus syriacum is part of a genus of several hundred species belonging to the mallow family, or Malvaceae.  In the UK the plant is also known as the Tree Hollyhock, but in the US it is also known as Rose of Sharon, a name that in the UK refers to a bright yellow member of the St John’s wort family. Yet again, we find ourselves divided by a common language, and I give huge thanks to Linnaeus for his system of nomenclature that enables us all to understand what we’re talking about.

I love the way that hibiscus flowers open, the petals swirling around as they open like a ballerina pirouetting.

Many hibiscus species (mainly the red ones) are pollinated by hummingbirds or sunbirds, but our plant, originating in China, is not. It is both self-fertile (i.e. each flower contains both male and female parts) and capable of being pollinated by insects, chiefly bees, who are attracted more for the plentiful pollen than for the nectar. Each flower only opens for a day, but in a good year the shrub will be covered in blooms for weeks, providing plenty of opportunity for pollen-hungry invertebrates.

Hibiscus syriacus is the national flower of South Korea, where it is known as mugunghwa, from the word ‘mugung‘ meaning ‘eternity’ or ‘inexhaustible abundance’. In the South Korean national anthem, reference is made to ‘Three thousand ri (about 1,200 km, the length of the Korean peninsula) of splendid rivers and mountains covered with mugunghwa blossoms’. It is not surprising that Hibiscus syriacus became the national flower after Korea gained its independence from Japan in 1945.

The leaves of Hibiscus syriacus are said to be a good substitute for lettuce, though a little mucilaginous. The buds are said to resemble okra (not necessarily a good thing in my opinion, but each to their own).  The flowers are edible, although it’s the dark red flowers of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis that are more usually used to make hibiscus tea. I must admit to getting a bit irritated with the way that so many herbal fruit teas use hibiscus as their first ingredient in order to bulk it out – I find the rather astringent flavour overwhelms everything else. You can also get hibiscus syrup, again, normally made from Hibiscus rosa-sinensis.  The ingredient is having something of a ‘moment’ in trendy restaurants at the moment, and to be honest I will be delighted when the moment has passed, and we can get back to normal food, like charcoal bread or aubergine icecream.

As you might expect, such a structurally-interesting flower has attracted many artists. I rather like this still-life by Dutch artist Nicolaes van Veerendael, painted some time between 1660 and 1691, and proving that a Hibiscus syriacus just like the one around the corner from me was flowering quite happily in the Netherlands over 300 years ago. Incidentally, the picture sold at Christies for £92,500 in 2014.

And for our poem, I rather liked this, by American poet Jim Ballowe who is, quite rightly, Artist of the Month for August 2018 at the Center for Humans and Nature website. Do have a look at his other work, too.

Remember that in North America Hibiscus syriacus is known as ‘Rose of Sharon’ and is thought to be the plant referred to in the Song of Solomon.

Lessons from the Garden

                         for Ruth 

                        1

The garden doesn’t give a fig for Solomon 

any more than we know what he meant when he said

that kisses are sweeter than wine. The white fly

sucking at the belly of sweet potato leaves

pauses to ponder neither sex nor text.

Remember that piece of fluff, that ancient ephemera

circling the Rose of Sharon, settling awkwardly

at last in the sun-warmed bird bath, 

how determined it was to continue on the wing again 

after we plucked it from its futile folly?

Think how the Rose of Sharon greets spring as a dead stick,

then revels through summer days in a pink pregnancy,  

each night dropping its spent blooms  

nestled like newborns curled in silk blankets.

 

                        2

In a month of spiders, butterflies, and hummingbirds,

in days of asters, mums, and Autumn clematis,

in sun-harsh hours cascading into velvet nights,

in lapsed minutes the sumac takes to redden,

the unexpected forever happens, and we,

thrilled to see the intricate web, the floating color,

the darting shadow, the many-petaled flower,

the diminishing light, are reassured by nature’s tricks,

the existent summer’s ephemeral exit,

fall’s hovering presence awaiting embrace,

geometrical designs in crisp skies,

the unmasking of trees, the sense of humor behind it all,

a stage whisper, the thought that we too

share this scene, waiting to go on.

Jim Ballowe

Photo Credits

Photo One by By JeedaGhazal – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64783810

Photo Two from http://www.mois.go.kr/eng/sub/a03/nationalSymbol_3/screen.do

Photo Three from City Foodsters [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons