Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, if there is one lesson in life that I should have learned by now, it’s ‘don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today’. When I was in Milborne St Andrew in Dorset last week, I spotted this delightful patch of scarlet pimpernel, every flower open in the sunshine. But, alas, I had milk and rich tea biscuits to buy, and a copy of Woman’s Weekly to pick up, so I hurried past instead of stopping to take a photograph.

For the next three days,  the flowers were closed up tight, what with the fog, and the cold, and the afternoon shadows. And so I’m afraid my photos show them in their ‘coy mode’. However, here is what they look like when they’re in full sun. The plant has alternative names like ‘poor man’s weather glass’ and ‘shepherd’s clock’; the flowers are said to open at 8 a.m. and close at about 2 p.m. unless there’s cloudy or damp weather, in which case they may not bother to put in an appearance at all. I don’t blame them. Now that the clocks have gone back and it’s dark before 5 I often feel like huddling under the duvet with a hot chocolate and a good book.

This plant is a member of the primrose family (Primulaceae) but as far as I know it’s the only  red species. Scarlet seems to be pushing it a bit though – it’s more of an orangey-red. But I am very fond of it – it’s small and unobtrusive, but repays close attention. It’s a plant of arable farmland and seaside environments, such as dunes and cliffs. It is native to the UK and to the whole of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, but has ended up being transported to almost everywhere else in the world, probably with grain crops.

In the Mediterranean area (and, I’ve learned, in some parts of the UK)  there is a rather lovely blue form, which gives rise to yet another alternative name, ‘blue-scarlet pimpernel’.

Despite its demure appearance, however, scarlet pimpernel has a fearsome reputation. It is said that it causes gastroenteritis in dogs and horses, rabbits and poultry, and the seed is said to be poisonous to birds. Fortunately, it also apparently has a very acrid and unpleasant taste, and so most animals avoid it. The plant can also be used as an insecticide (which is probably why it developed the toxins in the first place). However, scarlet pimpernel has also been used medicinally, and in Germany it’s known as Gauchheil (‘Fool heal’) and used to be made into a treatment for those who were melancholy or otherwise mentally indisposed.The  genus name, Anagallis, comes from the Greek ‘to laugh’, and was said to indicate the mood of someone when their depression was lifted.

Of course, many people unfamiliar with this small red flower will be well aware of the novels of Baroness Orczy, who wrote the first of many books featuring The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905. The Scarlet Pimpernel was a chivalrous gentleman who, with his band of loyal followers (‘ one to command and nineteen to obey’) worked to rescue French aristocrats who were destined for the guillotine. As you might expect from the name, the Scarlet Pimpernel left a flower at the scene of his rescues, and also used the symbol in his correspondence. Even if you are unfamiliar with the Pimpernel himself, you might be familiar with some of the parodies that his derring-do inspired, such as the Bugs Bunny episode featuring The Scarlet Pumpernickel, or the programme ‘Nob and Nobility’ in the third series of Blackadder that featured the eponymous hero’s disgust with the adulation accorded to the ‘bloody Pimpernel’.

This action-packed series of novels was the inspiration for many films and television series and radio plays, with probably the most famous cinematic version being the 1934 film starring Leslie Howard and and Merle Oberon.

A poem from the novel has passed surreptitiously into common usage:

‘We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel.’

You might recognise the first line from The Kinks 1966 song ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’.

Anyhow, enough excitement! Let’s get back to the plant.

It was believed that holding scarlet pimpernel in the hand would confer the gift of second sight, and also that the plant could give protection from enchantment and spells. I imagine that much of what we now see as mental illness might have been seen as the effect of witchcraft or demonic possession in earlier times, and so the plant’s use has remained consistent – if you are not ‘in your right mind’ for whatever reason, scarlet pimpernel seems to have been the go-to remedy.

It was used to make ‘pimpernel water’, which was considered to be a remedy for freckles (though as they are rather delightful I hardly think they need a ‘remedy’), and also for rough and discoloured skin.

In spite of their allegedly acrid flavour and rich collection of toxins, the leaves have been used in salads, especially in Germany and France. They certainly look very toothsome, but I would be a bit careful if I was you.

This blog often leads me to some very interesting places. In the search for art associated with The Scarlet Pimpernel, I discovered the wonderful illustrator Luisa Rivera, who is originally from Chile but is now based in London. She has recently illustrated a Spanish language edition of the novel by Baroness Orczy, and the cover illustration is below. For more of her dreamy, folkloric illustrations, have a look here. I particularly like the lady with the owl, but they are all haunting and original.

And finally, as you might expect, my search for a scarlet pimpernel poem has been somewhat hindered by about five hundred separate references to ‘They seek him here, they seek him there’ etc etc etc ad nauseum. But then, peeping through the rough grassland of the Google ads comes this tiny gem, by the Irish poet Paula Meehan. It’s called ‘Death of a Field’ and I think it’s both deeply poignant and beautifully observed. We need more homes, but let’s not forget what’s lost. To read it, click here. I will be looking out for Paula Meehan in future.

Photo Credits

Photo One (Scarlet Pimpernel flowers) by Pauline Eccles [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two (blue scarlet pimpernel ) by  Zachi Evenor, cropped by User:MathKnight – File:Anagallis-arvensis-Horashim2014-Zachi-Evenor.jpg, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39109428

Photo Three (Nob and Nobility) by By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28399167

Photo Four (Film 1934) by https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9780067

Photo Five (Cover illustration from The Scarlet Pimpernel) from http://www.luisarivera.cl/la-pimpinela-escarlata/ 

 

 

 

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, during a long-overdue walk through St Pancras and Islington Cemetery last week, I spotted some mare’s tail (Equisetum arvensis) growing on a single grave. I wonder what the conditions were to produce such a crop, but only on this one site? Truly, the ways of the plant kingdom are a mystery, although I note that mare’s tail was once said to be an indicator of underground water. The cemetery is studded with such streams, so perhaps this is an explanation

At first glance mare’s tail resembles grass or a rush, but closer inspection shows that it is actually a living fossil that has been in existence for over 100 million years. Its structure is unique to this family of plants, with a whirl of spikey ‘leaves’ around each stem. Back in the good old days of the Carboniferous period, mare’s tail could grow into a magnificent tree 30 metres tall, and the fossils from these plants can sometimes be found in coal deposits, for Equisetum species formed a large part of this fossil fuel. These days Equisetum plants are of more modest stature, but are still worth a close look, because nothing else like them still exists. The giant dragonflies that I mentioned in my post last week would have been very familiar with these plants.

In German, mare’s tail is known as Zinkraut or tin-herb, because the stems contain silicate, absorbed from the soil in a way that is very unusual in plants. Mare’s tail is useful as an abrasive and cleaning-agent for metal, especially tin, and another English name is scouring-rush. A member of the Equisetum family is used in Japan in the last stage of woodworking, producing a finer finish than any sandpaper.

This is one of those plants that looks very different as the seasons pass, and this is because it produces two different kinds of growth. In spring, the fertile shoots look more like fungi than plants: in fact although I’m familiar with the summer foliage of mare’s tail, I was completely flummoxed by the buds when I visited Canada last year. These are what enable the plant to reproduce, but don’t photosynthesise.

As the year goes on, the plant develops photosynthetic foliage, both to survive and to create the conditions for reproduction during the following spring. Both kinds of shoot come from a complicated network of rhizomes under the soil.

But by autumn, all that’s left are a few of the main whorls of stems.

The plant proved to be an inspiration to the father of logarithms, John Napier. I remember using my logarithmic tables for O level Maths way back in 1976, but these days I imagine it’s all done with computers, and logarithms have gone the way of the slide rule. As you will probably remember, a logarithmic scale is a nonlinear way of describing something which has a very wide range of values. For example, the Richter Scale for measuring earthquakes is a logarithmic scale: an earthquake with a value on the Richter Scale of 6 is ten times stronger than one with a value of 5.

Napier noticed the way that the nodes on the mare’s tail got closer together as they approached the tip of the plant. That’s difficult to see on the older plants in my photos, but have a look at these fresh young greater horsetails, and you’ll see what caught his eye. I love the way that patterns in nature influence both scientists and artists.

Incidentally, Richard Mabey (in Flora Britannica) reports that in some places, mare’s tail is known as ‘Lego Plant’ because it comes apart at the nodes, and can be put back together again. It can also be used as a fungicide – mare’s tail boiled in water has been used with some success against rose mildew.

In herbal medicine only the photosynthetic summer parts of the plant are used, usually as an astringent or for the treatment of nosebleed.

I would be remiss if I didn’t note that mare’s tail is sometimes considered to be a most pernicious weed. The RHS describe it as a plant that is ‘ is an invasive, deep-rooted perennial weed that will spread quickly to form a dense carpet of foliage, crowding out less vigorous plants in beds and borders’. Those rhizomes have got a lot to answer for! The RHS notes that simply pulling the plant up will just make things worse, as the plant can regenerate from the tiniest bits of root, (although if you are going to attempt this, the best time is when the fertile shoots appear in April) and suggests a range of chemical options. It also suggests battering the plant with a rake before applying the weedkiller, which could be therapeutic if nothing else. I have rather a ‘live and let live’ attitude to perennial weeds in my garden, which involves pulling them up or cutting them back if they get too enthusiastic, but tolerating them in small numbers. Life is too short for all-out war, surely.

I have been unable to find any works by the Old Masters (or indeed Old Mistresses) of mare’s tail, but here is an illustration of the Cretaceous period, featuring a most splendid equisetum on the right hand side, plus various assorted reptiles sunning themselves on the bank. I note some Gingko trees as well, which could well be another Wednesday ‘weed’ at some point in the future. You’ll note that my definition of ‘weed’ is becoming more and more expansive as I tick off the actual ‘weeds’ in my half-mile territory. Well, after almost four years I have already featured nearly 200 of the little darlings.

And for the poem? I have a humdinger this week by Anne Stevenson, who traces the path from mare’s tail through coal to the mining communities that extracted it and are now gone. As you know, I don’t cut and paste poems from living writers, because this is how they earn their crust. But please do click through here to read the poem, which is full of wonders. You won’t be disappointed, I promise.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Alex Lomas – Equisetum arvense, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44451880

Photo Two by By Namazu-tron – Self shot by mobile phone, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2935195

Photo Three by By F. Lamiot (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Four by By MPF (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Five by By Rror (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, I wanted to find a ‘proper’ weed for you this week, and here it is. Way back when I started this blog, one of the very first plants I wrote about was Smooth Sowthistle and I have been looking out since then for the prickly variety. I shouldn’t have needed to look very hard because goodness knows it’s everywhere in the UK except for in the very far north of Scotland, but it has proved elusive until today. How delighted I was to find it lurking in a little alleyway close to Fortismere School here in East Finchley, and how surprised all the passersby were to see me taking its portrait.

First things first. Both sowthistles are members of the Asteraceae (Daisy) family. Both have yellow flowers, though those of the prickly species are said to be darker in colour.  Both bleed white sap, but that of the prickly sowthistle quickly turns a dirty orange colour, while that of the smooth sowthistle takes longer. However, the leaves of the prickly sowthistle are decidedly more thistle-like, and where the leaves emerge from the stem there is a kind of rounded prickly spiral called a basal lobe (see above). The leaves are also shinier and darker green. I would hazard an opinion that the prickly sowthistle is a slightly more handsome plant than it’s smooth relative, but not by much.

Both sowthistles are native,and both are annuals. They are extraordinarily tough plants and require next to no soil to produce an extraordinary quantity of biomass, and a fine crop of seeds. There is one in the tree pit just up the road from my house that must be nearly a metre tall. How I admire these city-dwellers for their resilience in tough times! No amount of drought, dog urine, litter or polluted rain puts them off their stride. They remind me of Dickensian urchins, cheeky and adaptable. The only thing that slows them up is a biannual dousing with weed-killer, administered by a man from Barnet Council with a backpack full of biocide and a hose. He wears ear-buds so that he can listen to music while he sprays, but no face mask to protect his lungs, and no gloves to protect his skin. I fear that the chemicals are more prone to damage him than the plants for, although the weeds wither and die, they or their offspring are generally back within the month.

Of the two species the prickly sowthistle is, surprisingly, the one that is preferred for eating – luminaries such as Rose Gray of the River Cafe are said to have gathered the fresh young leaves in March and April for salads. According to Pliny, Theseus was treated to a dish of sow-thistles before he headed off to fight the Bull of Marathon. The plant was also fed to lactating sows (hence the name) to encourage their milk production – the white sap was thought to be indicative that this was the best use for the plant. In fact, many grazing animals love sowthistle, although farmers generally view it as a pernicious weed. In Germany, it is believed that a fleeing  hare can hide safely under the leaves of sowthistle as the plant will protect the animal (hence another alternative name for the plant, ‘hare-lettuce’).

The older leaves of sowthistle are often decorated with the white tracery of leaf-miners – usually these are the tiny caterpillars of micromoths that live between the two layers of the leaf and spend their lives munching little tunnels. I often wonder what leads to the shapes of the patterns – did the caterpillar meet another caterpillar coming in the opposite direction and have to back up? The filigree is rather attractive, I think, if not particularly advantageous to the plant. Other moth species eat the leaves and the buds, and the plant invariably attracts lots of aphids, which make it useful for attracting predatory insects such as ladybirds and lacewings.

Amongst the moths that feed on prickly sowthistle are the Broad-barred white (Hecatera bicolorata), whose caterpillars feed on the buds and flowers:

the grey chi (Antitype chi) whose caterpillar feeds on the leaves:

and the rather elegant shark moth (Cucullia umbratica). Although most UK moths are not as brightly coloured as their tropical counterparts, they have a subtle and delicate beauty that repays close attention.

Prickly sowthistle has a wide native range, encompassing Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, and has been imported into North America, probably with grains used for food. Across its native range it has been used medicinally as a poultice for wounds and skin complaints, though many herbals consider smooth sowthistle to be slightly more efficacious.

As I feared, the common-or-garden nature of the poor old prickly sowthistle has meant that it has not featured widely in art. Even the Sowthistle Fairy of our old friend, Cicely Mary Barker, is standing on a smooth sowthistle, not a prickly one (have a look at those basal lobes, friends).

Nor is there a superabundance of sowthistle poetry. However, I hope you’ll forgive the tenuous link to this extraordinary poem by Sylvia Plath. After all, sowthistle was fed to lactating pigs, as we know. Maybe it was also used to fatten them up.

Sow

God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid

In the same way
He kept the sow–impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.

But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door

To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot

For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling

In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,

Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise–
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies

Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk

Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must

Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!–our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,

Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat
By a grisly-bristled
Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow’s heat.

But our farmer whistled,
Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled

Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape

A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent

Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent.

Sylvia Plath

Photo Credits

Photo One (Broad-barred white moth) by By User:Fvlamoen – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2340791

Photo Two (Grey chi moth) by By André Karwath aka Aka – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7661593

Photo Three (Shark moth) by By ©entomart, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1250728

Photo Four (Flower Fairy) from Jan Willemsen (https://www.flickr.com/photos/8725928@N02/8503425551)

 

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, I hope that you will indulge my choice of ‘weed’ this week, for the Common Fig is no more a ‘weed’ than I am a nuclear scientist. Nonetheless, I pass this particular tree every week as I head into Muswell Hill for my breakfast, and I wanted to give it its moment in the sun. For one thing, I noticed that it actually has figs this year. For another, the leaves always remind me of classical statues that have been ‘censored’ to suit Victorian values. For yet another, I love ripe figs, although once you know how they’re pollinated you might want to avoid them if you’re averse to animal protein. So, welcome to the Wonderful World of Figs (and if that’s not a name for a plant-related theme-park I don’t know what is).

First things first. The fig is actually a member of the mulberry family, and is native to the Middle East and western Asia. It is a plant whose history is deeply interwoven with that of human beings: in the Christian tradition, Adam and Eve covered their genitalia with fig leaves after eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. The Buddha became enlightened while sitting under the Bodhi Tree, which is a kind of fig. The fig is mentioned in the Quran, and the phrase from the Bible ‘each man under his own vine and fig tree’ was used to describe both the Jewish homeland and the land awaiting the American settlers. In short, the idea of figs as a symbol of plenty and of safety seems to be universal across the plant’s range.

The fig tree is normally a plant of dry, hot climates and rocky areas, but has a deep, penetrating root system, and in the wild is often found beside streams and oases. The tree can grow to a huge size and its leaves form dense, delicious shade. A fig tree can live for 150 – 200 years, but there are some stories of trees living for over a thousand years. One rather fetching tree lives in the grounds of Clerkenwell Primary School on Amwell Street in Islington – it is at least 200 years old, and these days is propped up with great green metal supports.

Although the Muswell Hill fig is producing fruit, the chance of them ripening in the UK is practically zero (at least until climate change bakes us all a little harder). I do love a ripe, juicy fig. However, the fruit of each species of fig is pollinated by a tiny fig wasp (Blastophaga psenes in many cases). The coevolution of fig and wasp is one of those examples of symbiosis that boggles the mind. First, a pregnant female wasp enters through a tiny hole at the base of the fruit. She pollinates some of the flowers that are inside the fruit, lays her eggs, and dies. Then the male wasps emerge first and leave their semen so that this inseminates the females who then emerge into the body of the fruit, but can get no further. Finally, the male wasps return and gnaw holes in the outside of the fruit so that the females can escape. In short, that tasty fig is both a love nest for lustful insects and a grave for the original female.

There are no fig wasps in the UK, because it’s too cold. On the other hand, the fruit doesn’t ripen. Life can be problematic sometimes.

Figs are also eaten by a very wide range of birds, mammals and insects throughout their range – in a New Scientist article it was estimated that over 1270 species will eat the fruit, which makes it important for biodiversity. Experiments with planting it in degraded forest areas in Thailand have shown that the animals that it attracts will also help with habitat restoration – birds and bats in particular will be ‘carrying’ other seeds that they will ‘plant’ in their droppings.

However, it’s the leaves of the fig tree that are so emblematic. They seem tailor-made to cover any ‘naughty’ areas, and I suspect that very attractive green underwear could be knocked together by anyone with a fig tree, a needle and cotton and a few hours to spare. I note that there is even an underwear company called ‘Figleaves‘, although they have a strange reluctance to feature plant-based undergarments. However, what delights me is the way that figleaves appear and disappear through history. The Italian painter Masaccio painted a fresco of Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden during the 15th Century. Adam covers his face, while Eve covers her privates with a hand (thus showing who is led by which body part). In 1680, some vandal  painted on some ‘fig leaves’ (which are not even botanically accurate, I’d like to pedantically point out). However, when the work was restored in 1980 the fig leaves were removed.

Here is a rather splendid depiction of Adam and Eve looking shifty in the Escorial Palace, Madrid. The fig leaves look a little as if they’ve been cut out of crepe paper, and their thighs indicate a little too much time riding uphill on a bicycle, but still.

In the sculpture of the  classical world, male genitalia were exposed for all the world to see (though women were generally more coy, with much drapery and the occasional pot plant). However, once Christianity arrived statues were often made more modest, especially during the reign of the ‘chaste’ popes – these fig leaves were added later, and were often made so that they could be removed.

By Medieval times, only the damned were shown nude. However, things reached a pretty pass during the Victorian era, when male nudity in particular was frowned upon, and Queen Victoria herself was said to have found the sight of a man with no clothes on distressing. What to do, then, with the blooming great plaster cast of Michaelangelo’s David that was in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London? The curators came up with the idea of a plaster fig leaf which could be hung from the cast on a very unanatomical pair of hooks, in the event of the monarch or some other female dignatory popping by for a dose of classical culture. In the event, it was never used, but you can still see it at the back of a case in the Cast Gallery should you ever visit.

I cannot leave the subject of fig leaves without mentioning the first ‘muscleman’, Eugen Sandow, (1865-1925). He was not very ‘muscley’ by today’s standards (and all the better for it in my opinion) and he was also very influenced by the classical statues that he saw as a boy – he recorded their proportions and worked hard to copy their musculature.  Some of his displays were based on the poses of these works of art, and I fear that, gorgeous as he was, it is difficult for a modern person to look at ‘The Dying Gaul’ without a) thinking that it looks most uncomfortable b) noticing the carefully positioned leaf and wondering if it was attached with Bluetack and c) (pedant alert) becoming indignant that this is not, in fact, a fig leaf but some kind of inferior foliage.

Now, when it comes to fig poems, there are several to choose from. There is ‘First Fig’ from Edna St Vincent Millay. I knew the poem, but didn’t know the title, and I am still a little thoughtful. All explanations and theories are welcome, as always.

My candle burns at both ends; 
It will not last the night; 
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends– 
It gives a lovely light!

And then there is D.H.Lawrence, havering on about what women should be like as usual. I loved Lawrence when I was a teenager, but have rather outgrown him, I fear. For anyone who wants to have a look, his poem Figs is here. I love the descriptions of the fruit, but the rest of it seems to me to be the maunderings of a deeply unhappy man.

As an antidote, here is a poem about the fig wasp, and about much else besides, by MTC Cronin, an Australian poet that I didn’t know, but will seek out in future. I like this one a lot. What do you think?

And finally, I really like this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, child of an American mother and a Palestinian father. It seems fitting to end with a work that talks about what a tree can mean to someone far from home, and also with a hopeful poem. Maybe we will all find home in the end.

Photo Credits

Photo One (The Amwell Fig) – From http://www.treetree.co.uk/fig.html

Photo Two (fig tart) by By Rod Waddington from Kergunyah, Australia – Black Genoa Fig Tart, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29767335

Photo Three (Hornbill) By Lip kee (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lipkee/5110158240/) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Four (Barbet) by By J.M.Garg (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Five (chimps) by By Alain Houle (Harvard University) [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Six (Eugen Sandow) by By G.dallorto – File:Falk, Benjamin J. (1853-1925) – Eugen Sandow (1867-1925)- 1894 .jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23255977

 

 

 

 

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, I have been rather dependent on ‘domesticated’ plants for the past few weeks, so this time I was determined to hunt out something that was truly ‘wild’. One of my favourite hunting grounds is a tiny bed on the corner of Park Hall Road in East Finchley, which always seems to throw up some delights, be it lucerne or cleavers or today’s delight, hedge bedstraw (Galium album). Hedge bedstraw is closely related to cleavers, but the stems are smooth and, if you look closely at the leaves, you will see that they have a tiny point on the tip. Plus, the four-petalled snowy-white flowers pop out like fireworks from the long stems. This is not an uncommon plant, but it is the first time that I have noticed it growing in an urban environment.

Hedge bedstraw is native to the UK, and to great swathes of Europe and North Africa. It is naturalised in Scandinavia (it’s treated as an invasive weed in Finland), in southern Australia, in Ireland and in Greenland, of all places. Like many bedstraws, it is a plant of meadows, and was probably imported with animal feed. You would think that its delicate habit make it an unlikely thug, but it hybridises easily with local bedstraws, making it something of a problem where the local plant is already scarce.

Incidentally, in North America (where the plant has also been introduced), hedge bedstraw is Galium mollugo. Galium album is called white bedstraw. Confusion reigns, especially as the two plants are practically identical.

All of the bedstraw family got their name from their use as a stuffing for mattresses – they have little odour when fresh, but are said to smell like new-mown hay when dried. Woodruff (Galium odoratum) and lady’s bedstraw (Galium vernum) were the plants of choice, but I imagine that all the bedstraws were used in this way if they were found. The word was first found in written English in Chaucer’s ‘The Merchant’s Tale’, a rollicking tale of bad behaviour. I actually wrote ‘bed behaviour’ first, which goes to show how my mind works. I always loved Chaucer, and if you want to see some more of the words that he wrote down first, there’s an extensive list here.

I hadn’t thought that there was much hope of hedge bedstraw being useful as a culinary ingredient, but over at my favourite foraging site, ‘Eat The Weeds’, there’s a recipe for Cream of Hedge Bedstraw Soup.

Incidentally, the roots of bedstraws are said to produce some very interesting dyes, as in this post by Jenny Dean.

A few moths feed exclusively on bedstraws: these include the Common Carpet (Epirrhoe alternata)

and the rather elegant Barred Straw (Eulithis pyraliata)

And so, we come to the poem. I have been thinking a lot in these past days of what we owe to those who went before us, the nameless great-great-grandmothers who have faded like the photographs that we never had. I love this work, by Ruth Stone, who died in 2011 aged 96. I hope you enjoy it too. It speaks to me of wisdom hard won, and easily lost.

Names, by Ruth Stone.

My grandmother’s name was Nora Swan.
Old Aden Swan was her father. But who was her mother?
I don’t know my great-grandmother’s name.
I don’t know how many children she bore.
Like rings of a tree the years of woman’s fertility.
Who were my great-aunt Swans?
For every year a child; diphtheria, dropsy, typhoid.
Who can bother naming all those women churning butter,
leaning on scrub boards, holding to iron bedposts,
sweating in labor?
My grandmother knew the names of all the plants on the mountain.
Those were the names she spoke of to me. Sorrel, lamb’s ear,
spleenwort, heal-all;never go hungry, she said, when you can
gather a pot of greens.
She had a finely drawn head under a smooth cap of hair
pulled back to a bun. Her deep-set eyes were quick to notice
in love and anger.
Who are the women who nurtured her for me?
Who handed her in swaddling flannel to my great-grandmother’s
breast?
Who are the women who brought my great-grandmother tea
and straightened her bed? As anemone in midsummer, the air
cannot find them and grandmother’s been at rest for forty years.
In me are all the names I can remember-pennyroyal, boneset,
bedstraw, toadflax-from whom I did descend in perpetuity.

Photo Credits

Photo One (Common Carpet) by CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=284893

Photo Two (Barred Straw) by By IKAl – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10844141

Dear Readers, this week I had a phone call from mum. I knew from her voice that there was something wrong.

‘I’ve got some really sad news’, she said.

I steeled myself.

‘What?’ I asked, ‘Tell me’.

‘Mary* killed herself on Monday night’, she said.

When Mum first moved to Dorset ten years ago she had a reflexology practice, and Mary was one of her first patients . Despite the age gap between them Mary and Mum became friends but life intervened, as it often does, and they’d  drifted out of touch. Mum really wanted to invite Mary to the party, so I managed to track her down. I was so happy when she and her husband were eager to come, and even more delighted to meet them.

After the party, Mary wrote to say that she’d enjoyed the party, and was very glad to see mum and dad looking so well.

And then this.

Some things really do surpass our understanding. My first feeling was complete disbelief. How could this shy, gentle woman have been alive on Thursday, in her best party dress, and gone today?

Mum had had a little more time to think about it.

‘You know, she was depressed for a long time. She was fighting it the best she could when I knew her. Who knows what she’d been going through, and for how long?’

We were quiet together for a few moments.

‘At least, she’s at peace now’, said Mum.

What to say, or do, that isn’t trite when you hear news like this? Maybe the old forms are there for a reason – they hold us when everything wants to break down into chaos.

I wrote to Mary’s husband.

‘I am so sorry for your loss’ I said.

And he also told me that Mary was finally at peace after a long time in the darkness, and that he was being supported by family and friends. It was clear that he was devastated.

I could rail about our underfunded mental health services, but I know nothing about Mary’s circumstances, what she’d tried and hadn’t tried, what her life had been like. I sense that she had been loved, and that people had tried to help, and yet all this couldn’t make her stay.

How much I wanted her to stay.

Oh we are losing too many to this disease, our brightest, our kindest, our most sensitive, and for every person gone there is a great hole in the web, a severing of ties, a chorus of friends and family asking why and forever wondering.

I have suffered from depression, and know how this disease draws us away from everything and everyone that would help and support us, puts us into a windowless cell and closes the door. I know how it turns our food to ashes and bleaches every colour to grey. I know how it can take hours to summon the energy, the courage, to put a foot to the floor and to start another day.

I step outside, take a breath.

Along the bottom of the wall at the top of the road is a tiny garden of weeds, smooth sowthistle and the starry faces of chickweed and the pale pink buds of broad-leaved willowherb, forcing their way out of the damp pockets of soil.

The seedheads of the shepherd’s purse are perfect hearts, and the plant is covered in blackfly  that will feed ladybirds and lacewings.

On the sunnier side of the street, there is sun spurge. It doesn’t grow where it doesn’t get full sun.

In the cracks in the old walls, bellflower.

and yellow corydalis, always.

The tree pits are full of bird-sewn berries and new grass.

Between the paving slabs, moss, and the smallest plants, plantain and bittercress

In the midst of life we are in death, but the opposite is also true. We are absolutely woven into nature’s cloth. Yet we so often feel isolated, both from one another and from the plants and animals that are, truly, everywhere, a feeling exacerbated a hundredfold by depression.  And yet, just opening a window and hearing the birdsong can make a difference, if not today then the next day, or the day after. We are not alone, it is impossible – nothing in nature can exist without the great chorus of other living things around it. I offer this in all humbleness, knowing that what helped me might not touch somebody else, but in the hope that it may resonate, that it might feel like a hand stretched out, which is what it is.

Above all else, please stay.

The Samaritans are available always if you need to talk, or if you are worried about someone that you love – just click here.

*Mary is not her real name

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, I must confess that I have a deep distrust of busy Lizzies. Whenever I have tried to grow them, they have succumbed to disease – they are either covered in mould, or develop some kind of unpleasant rot, their stems turning to mush between my fingers. However, there are two main kinds of busy lizzie available to the UK gardener – the New Guinea variety (Impatiens hawkerii), which I found in a tree pit on the County Roads today, and the more familiar African variety, Impatiens walleriana. The New Guinea species is much more disease-resistant, and has largely replaced I.walleriana following an outbreak of downy mildew that forced garden centres to stop stocking the species a few years ago.

I associate the busy lizzie with the formal bedding schemes employed by town councils from one end of the country to the other. They seem to be largely useless for pollinators, in the UK at least, and I always resented that they take up space where more useful plants could thrive. However, they were cheap, and easy to propagate, and brightly coloured. Every war memorial and park bed seemed to be full of them when I was growing up, and the red ones coupled nicely with blue lobelia and white alyssum to make a Union Jack display. Plus, the white ones glow prettily in a dark corner. Like any plant, they have (or had, following the downy mildew outbreak) their place. It was just their ubiquitousness that I disliked.

If the genus name Impatiens sounds familiar, that’s because the humble busy lizzie is a relative of the rather more daunting Himalayan Balsam. Like its relative, busy lizzie fires its seeds into the stratosphere if the seedhead is touched. Impatiens are closely related to some insectivorous plant families, such as the pitcher plants, and strangely-shaped glands in the sepals (the reproductive parts in the centre of the flower) produce a sticky mucous: these structures may be the precursors of the insect-dissolving parts of their predatory relatives. You can see how this might have developed if you look at some other species of Impatiens, such as Impatiens munronii, shown below – although this is not an insectivorous plant, it is starting to show that pitcher plant shape.

Incidentally, I have been backwards and forwards changing the name of this week’s Wednesday Weed from bizzie lizzie to busy lizzie about half a dozen times so far, and have settled on the spelling of that august organisation, the Royal Horticultural Society, who go with ‘busy lizzie’. I haven’t managed to find out why this plant got the name in the first place, though in good conditions it is a prolific bloomer. I’m guessing that the North American name ‘patient lucy’ is a transliteration of ‘impatiens’. Common names for plants and animals cause the most almighty kerfuffle, for sure, which is why I always include the Latin name somewhere, so we can all agree on what exactly we’re talking about.

Impatiens walleriana comes originally from East Africa, and is named for the Reverend Horace Waller (1833 – 1896), a vigorous abolitionist and anti-slavery campaigner. In 1863, a group of liberated slaves came to the Mission that he was working at in Malawi. The Mission decided to accept the men and boys and reject the women and girls, a decision that appalled the Reverend Horace so much that he resigned and travelled with the women to South Africa because he was afraid that they would be enslaved again if they were not protected. Later, he returned to England and spent the rest of his life campaigning to end slavery.

Incidentally, Impatiens walleriana was previously called Impatiens sultanii, after the Sultan of Zanzibar, so I do wonder about the changing politics that determined the name change. And, in her wonderful book ‘100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names‘, Diana Wells reports that:

‘The Impatiens family is vast and botanically almost incomprehensible. Joseph Hooker, the famous botanist and director of Kew, was trying to sort it out when he died. He called it ‘deceitful above all plants’ and ‘worse than orchids’.

Here in the UK, busy lizzie is largely grown for its prolific flowers, but the root of the plant has several uses in its native East Africa – it is used to strengthen the hair, and is also a favourite food of pigs. It grows along rain-forest gullies, which produce its favourite conditions of shade and moist soil. I can imagine that it would be something of a surprise to see this most suburban of plants flourishing amidst the vines and the butterflies.

I have looked in vain for someone producing busy lizzie jam or beer or (even better) busy lizzie gin. All I have found is a somewhat half-hearted comment that the flowers can be thrown into a salad, or floated on a drink. However, one advantage of busy lizzies is that rabbits are not fond of them, and they are towards the top of the list of rabbit-resistant plants produced by the aforementioned RHS. The plants are also said to be refused by slugs and snails, although in my damp garden I suspect that the slugs and snails would not refuse anything softer than a cactus. Still, let me know your experiences. I have a great fondness for molluscs, but the ones in my garden are pushing me to the brink.

On the other hand, the flowers are said to be popular with parrots, so it seems that at least someone enjoys them as a tasty snack.

In the search for something edifying to conclude today’s piece, I have been somewhat stymied. ‘Busy’ and ‘Lizzie’ are popular rhymes for poets, as in this piece by none other than P.G.Wodehouse in his poem ‘I’m So Busy’. This rather begs to be put to music, and so it was by Jerome Kern for his musical ‘Have a Heart’ in 1917.

I always said
That the man I would wed
Must be one who would work all the time.
One with ambition,
Who’d make it his mission
To win a position sublime.
One whose chief pleasure would be
Making a fortune for me;
One who would toil all the day
Down in the market and say:

Lizzie, Lizzie,
I’m so busy,
Don’t know what to do.
Goodbye dear, I’m off to the street.
Can’t stop now,
I’m cornering wheat.
I shall keep on till I’m dizzy,
Till the deal goes through.
Lizzie, I’m so busy,
I’m making a pile for you.
– – – – – – – – – – – – —
Don’t be deceived,
If you’ve ever believed
That my taste for hard labor is small.
Stifle the lurking
Idea that I’m shirking,
I never stop working at all.
I may have loafed in the past,
But I am busy at last,
I’ve found employment and I’m
Working away all the time.

Lizzie, Lizzie,
I’m so busy,
Busy loving you.
That’s the job that suits me the best,
Though I never get any rest.
I shall keep on till I’m dizzy
But I shan’t get through.
Lizzie, I’m so busy,
So won’t you get busy too?
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Mm…

And here’s the story of ‘Busy Lizzie’, a boring machine used to construct the Lee Valley Sewage Tunnel, and named by ten-year-old Ryan Waters in a competition.

But instead, in spite of this Not Being a Cat Blog, I couldn’t resist including a picture of the Friendliest Cat in the World, who burst out of a hedge on the corner of Huntingdon Road for the sole purpose of saying hello. He went missing for a few days last year, and the County Roads were in uproar until he strolled back, wondering what all the fuss was about. He is an ambassador for the community of East Finchley, a place where people grow busy lizzies in the tree pits, and worry about cats. No wonder I love it here.

Photo Credits

Photo One (Traditional busy lizzie) CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1027675

Photo Two (Impatiens munronii) by By Davidvraju – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52023362

 

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, I have always been fascinated by the flowers of the fuchsia. They remind me of dancing ladies with twirly skirts. There are the hardier, shrubbier ones like the ‘Hawkshead’ variety in the picture above. Then there are the more delicate ones, some with enormous flowers. There are several fine fuchsia hedges in the County Roads in East Finchley, all in full flower at this time of year.

Yet, these plants are a very long way from home. Most fuchsias come from Central and South America, with a small contingent in New Zealand, Hispaniola and Tahiti. In their native countries the flowers are mostly bird-pollinated, which explains why they are usually red – birds are attracted by the colour, bees not so much.However, some of our native birds, particularly starlings and sparrows, have learned to take advantage of the nectar, and so have bumblebees, those Einsteins of the insect world.

The fuchsias from Oceania are extremely exotic-looking plants, not the kind of things that you would see in your average hanging basket. Here, for example, is the New Zealand fuchsia, Fuchsia procumbens, a creeping plant rather than the more familiar bushy one.

And here is another New Zealand fuchsia, Fuchsia excortica, or the fuchsia tree. It grows up to 50 feet tall and is the largest of all the fuchsia species. I am particularly taken with the blue pollen.

The Pacific fuchsias are said to have diverged from the rest of the family over 30 million years ago.

However, the plants that we grow in our gardens are largely from the South/Central American side of the family. There are an extraordinary number of varieties, as you will find at any garden centre (or in the photo below from the 2011 BBC Gardeners’ World Show). Most of these pretty plants will not survive the winter, but they do grow very well from cuttings.

Fuchsias are named after the eminent German physician and botanist Leonhart Fuchs (1501 -1566). We should probably therefore be pronouncing the flower as ‘fooks-ya’ rather than ‘fyusha’, although I can see that misunderstandings might arise from the first way of saying the name. Furthermore, the Latin pronounciation would be ‘fook-see-a’ which might be even more problematic. Better to stick with ‘fyusha’, on balance, incorrect or not.

You might think that such a tender plant would not naturalise easily in the UK. However, Fuchsia magellanica, or the hardy fuchsia, is very at home in places such as the west of Ireland with its damp, mild climate, and can be seen making a psychedelic display alongside the naturalised montbretia, 

Or, you might see the plant happily engulfing an abandoned tractor.

Whenever I see a fuchsia bush, I always have a good look to see if I can see any of these extraordinary creatures.

This is an elephant hawk moth caterpillar (Deilephila elpenor). Although its native food source is willowherb and bedstraw, it seems to have taken a liking to fuchsia. If you have some of the plant in the garden, it’s always worth checking out, though don’t be surprised if the three-inch long caterpillar rears up and takes on the appearance of a four-eyed snake. I should think that this would be enough to scare any inquisitive bird out of its wits.

The adult moth is an extraordinary  candy-coloured creature.

You might think that the flowers of the fuchsia would be a pretty addition to a cake or a summer drink, and you’d be right – unless they’ve been sprayed with something, the flowers of all fuchsia species are edible. What I didn’t realise was that the berries are consumed wherever the plant grows wild, from Costa Rica to Hispaniola. The taste varies from deliciously sweet to ‘meh’. For some fuchsia berry jam recipes, and an interesting guide to edible fuchsias, have a look at the ‘Fuchsias in the City’ blog here.

The berries were also used by the Maori in an aromatic post-childbirth bath, and the flowers can be used to produce a red dye.

You might expect such a handsome and exotic plant to feature in a few still-lives, and here it is, indeed.

But here it is attracting the attention of Egon Schiele, better known for his self-portraits and his explicitly sexual nudes ( one of the more ‘Safe For Work’ examples is shown below). Schiele painted very few still lives, and i wonder if the exotic form of the flowers was what fascinated him, as it does me. There was something of a hothouse atmosphere in Vienna when he was painting there, for sure.

Incidentally, for anyone wanting to see an exhibition of the drawings of Schiele and his contemporary, Klimt, there is a link to the Royal Academy’s 2018 show here.

Finally, I cannot here the word ‘fuchsia’ without thinking of Lady Fuchsia Groan from Mervyn Peake’s extraordinary Gormenghast trilogy. Lovely readers, you can keep your Lord of the Rings, just leave me in a quiet corner with Gormenghast and I’ll be happy for at least a week. If you love all things gothic and slightly twisted, if you enjoy a building that’s as much a character as the humans, you’re in for a treat. Ignore the TV series of a few years back -nothing can encapsulate this strange, rich world.

Fuchsia is the sister of our hero, Titus Groan. She is 15 when he is born, and, being a girl, she cannot inherit and is furious with her little brother for existing at all. She expresses great glee when he is dropped on his head during the naming ceremony, which involves him being wrapped in the pages of the book containing all the law of Gormenghast. Peake introduces her to us thus:

‘As his lord stared at the door another figure appeared, a girl of about fifteen with long, rather wild black hair. She was gauche in movement and in a sense, ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have become beautiful. Her sullen mouth was full and rich – her eyes smouldered.

A yellow scarf hung loosely around her neck. Her shapeless dress was a flaming red.

For all the straightness of her back she walked with a slouch. ‘Come here’, said Lord Groan as she was about to pass him and the doctor.

‘Yes father’, she said huskily.

‘Where have you been for the last fortnight, Fuchsia?’

‘Oh, here and there, father’ she said, staring at her shoes. She tossed her long hair and it flapped down her back like a pirate’s flag. She stood in about as awkward a manner as could be conceived. Utterly un-feminine – no man couldd have invented it.

“Here and there?” echoed her father in a weary voice. “What does ‘here and there’ mean? You’ve been hiding. Where, girl?”
“‘N the libr’y and ‘n the armoury, ‘n walking about a lot”, said Lady Fuchsia, and her sullen eyes narrowed. “I just heard silly rumours about mother. They said I’ve got a brother — idiots! idiots! I hate them. I havn’t, have I? Have I?”
“A little brother”, broke in Doctor Prunesquallor. “Yes, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, a minute, infinitesimal, microscopic addition to the famous line is now behind this bedroom door. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, he, he, he, he! Oh yes! Ha ha! Oh yes indeed! Very much so.”

“No!” said Fuchsia so loudly that the doctor coughed crisply and his lordship took a step forward with his eyes drawn together and a sad curl at the corner of his mouth.

“It’s not true!” shouted Fuchsia, turning from them and twirling a great lock of black hair round and round her wrist. “I don’t believe it! Let me go! Let me go!”

As no one was touching her, her cry was unnecessary and she turned and ran with strange bounds along the corridor that led from the landing. Before she was lost to view, Steerpike could hear her voice shouting from the distance, “Oh how I hate people!”.’

And how this exchange conjures up all the overheated arguments of the teenage years. Gormenghast is wild fantasy, but Peake’s characters are never less than human.

Credits

For more on the Gormenghast Trilogy and Mervyn Peake, have a look at the Gormenghast website here.

Photo One (New Zealand Fuchsia) by By Dominicus Johannes Bergsma – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44396021

Photo Two (Fuchsia Tree) by By I, Tony Wills, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3016263

Photo Three (cultivated fuchsias) by By Andy Mabbett – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15531853

Photo Four (tractor and fuchsia) by Sharon Loxton [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Five (Elephant Hawk Moth Caterpillar) by By Richerman (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Six (Elephant Hawk Moth) by By jean pierre Hamon (14) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2845396

 

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, I found a tree pit full of nasturtiums in Muswell Hill today, and it occurred to me that I know next to nothing about this popular plant, except that it is often used as a peppery addition to salads, and that it is a favourite food of greenfly. As usual, the common name causes some confusion: Nasturtium is actually the generic name for watercress, and I assume that ‘our’ nasturtium got the name because of those tasty leaves. The actual genus name for this plant, Tropaeolum, was given because it reminded Linnaeus of an ancient Roman custom, where the armour and weapons of defeated enemies would hung from a pole called a tropaeum. The leaves reminded Linnaeus of shields, and the flowers of bloody helmets.

‘Our’ nasturtium is actually a hybrid of three wild species, all of which come from South America. It grows here as an annual, and seems to prefer full sun and poor soil – in rich soil, it produces lots of leaves but few flowers. It is much more of a scrambler than a vine, though it can overwhelm smaller, more delicate plants. I rather like the tumble of leaves above, and the variety of colours.

As mentioned above, the leaves of nasturtium can be eaten raw, but the flowers are also edible, and often show up in the dishes of high-end restaurants. In fact, there is a whole section of delicious recipes on the BBC Good Food website here, including one for caramel sticky toffee cake. It seems to me that the nasturtium flowers are not integral to the bake, but then anything with the words ‘caramel’ and ‘toffee’ in the title must be worth a look, regardless.

I have mentioned that nasturtiums attract a lot of aphids, and one reason for planting this exotic-looking interloper is as a companion plant,  as the aphids attract ladybirds, lacewings and other predatory insects. Some gardeners also plant them as a ‘trap crop’ , in the belief that  cabbage white butterfly caterpillars prefer nasturtiums to the broccoli and cavolo nero that has been planted for human consumption. I would love to hear what experience you intrepid vegetable gardeners have had.

Medicinally, nasturtium has been used to make cough medicine, and it is also said to have some antibiotic properties. In Germany there is a herbal antibiotic made solely from nasturtium leaves and horseradish root, for use in sinusitis, bronchitis and urinary tract infections. In a study it was comparable with ‘normal’ antibiotics, but had fewer side-effects. We will certainly need new antibiotics as bacteria continue to increase in resistance to our existing drugs, so this sounds most promising. On the other hand, as the article has been translated from the German, I do wonder if the ‘nasturtium’ is actually watercress. Such are the confusions of common names.

Nasturtiums were also caught up in a scientific debate over a mystery that became known ‘Elizabeth Linnaus phenomenon’ in the eighteenth century. Elizabeth was the daughter of the famed taxonomist Linnaeus. One evening in the family garden in Uppsala, Sweden, she noticed that, at dusk, the flowers of yellow and orange nasturtium appeared to ‘flash’. Although she was only 19 and had no formal education,  she wrote a scientific paper about this strange sight, published in 1762. It was long believed that the ‘flashes’ were a result of some kind of electrical activity in the plant itself – it was a time when everyone was getting very excited about electricity, and were inclined to credit it for causing more or less everything.  The idea influenced the poetry of Wordsworth, among others: think of his famous poem ‘Daffodils’:

‘They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.’

Do daffodils ‘flash’? I’m not sure, and never have been, but the idea of flowers putting out little sparks of electricity was certainly on Wordsworth’s mind. And here is a quote from Coleridge’s poem ‘Lines Written at Shurton Bars’:

′Flashes the golden-coloured flower

 A fair electric flame′

However, in 1914 the idea was finally debunked by Professor F.A.W Thomas of Germany, who revealed that the effect was an optical illusion, caused by the eye’s reaction to the contrast of the orange/yellow flowers and the green leaves at dusk. What a shame. I rather like the idea of flowers producing their own lightning.

I am frequently surprised by the places that this blog takes me, and so it is again today. I found this picture of nasturtiums by the Romanian painter Octav Bancila, and immediately assumed that he was a painter of still-lives.

Bancila was, in fact, mostly a painter of people: the poor, the dispossessed, peasants and the Roma people, who were much despised (and still are today, and not just in Romania). Following the Romanian Peasants’ Revolt of 1907 he painted a series of pictures showing the conflict, including his most famous painting ‘1907’ showing a peasant running into gunfire.