Dear Readers, there are many, many little willowherbs about, popping up all over the place and largely going unnoticed. Broad-leaved willowherb (Epilobium montanum) is one of the commonest, but there are half a dozen others, all going about their business without anyone to celebrate them. So here I am! In urban areas you might also see American willowherb (Epilobium ciliatum) which is usually tinged red. You can see one below for comparison.

American willowherb (Epilobium ciliatum) Photo by Jeremy Rolfe)

My broad-leaved willowherb has popped up in a neglected pot, where it has grown to about two feet tall without any attention whatsoever. As you can see from my original article (below) it is very popular with a whole range of caterpillars, and has been used as a cure for urinary problems and prostate disorders. Different small willowherbs grow everywhere, from the sides of streams to the edges of woodlands, from urban streets to rolling grasslands, and everywhere they go they flower prolifically, with their four pink petals, fires their seeds and then depart, until the next generation arrives in spring. And on this hot summer day (in London at least), let me share a poem by Edward Thomas that seems to sum up the languor of these June days.

Adlestrop
BY EDWARD THOMAS

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

And now, let’s find out what I was writing about back in 2015, when this first Wednesday Weed piece was posted.

Dear Readers, I am always surprised at what turns up along the dark, gravelly path that leads to the side entrance of my house. Yellow corydalis, greater celandine, forget-me-not, buddleia, Mexican fleabane, Canadian fleabane, sow thistle and chickweed all put in an appearance, but this is the first time that I have spotted this little beauty – Broad-leaved Willowherb (Epilobium montanum). I have a garden full of Great Willowherb, but this plant passed me by. It has a delicate, shy habit that means that it is often overlooked but once I’d noticed it, I realised that it was everywhere.

The plant has four, deeply-notched mauve-ish petals, and the stigma in the centre form a distinctive four-lobed shape. The leaves are rounded at the bottom (hence the ‘broad-leaved’), and are practically stemless.  Like most of the other willowherbs, it’s native.

Note the notched petals and the stigma, which are ways of identifying the plant (By Frank Vincentz (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Small Phoenix (Ecliptopera silaceata) (By Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark (Ecliptopera silaceata) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Striped Hawkmoth (Hyles livornica) (“Sphingidae – Hyles livornica-1” by Hectonichus – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sphingidae_-_Hyles_livornica-1.JPG#/media/File:Sphingidae_-_Hyles_livornica-1.JPG)

and, most spectacularly, the Elephant Hawkmoth and the Small Elephant Hawkmoth, shown below:

Small Elephant Hawkmoth (Deilephila porcellus) (“Deilephila porcellus-01 (xndr)”. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons )

Plants of the Epilobium genus have long been used as a treatment for prostate and urinary complaints, and indeed a company which manufactures supplements made from willowherb has taken the genus name of Epilobium  for its company name (note that this is not an endorsement).  Although the showier members of the family are the ones most often used in herbal medicine, Broad-leaved Willowherb was singled out in an Austrian study as having a stronger effect than the others. While there is a lot of interest in Chinese herbal medicine and Ayurveda, herbal medicine in the West is still seen as something of a niche area. Maybe this is because when something grows all around us, it’s difficult to make money from it.

I love Rosebay Willowherb and Great Willowherb.  I admire the way that they can take over a spot of damaged and derelict land and turn it into a sea of cerise. But this little plant lurks in the interstices of the city, at the bottom of walls, in the crevices and the dark places, cheering them up with its mauve flowers and graceful habit. And, when the time is right, it fires its fluffy seeds with just as much vigour as its bigger relatives. It might be little, but it’s a plant with ambition.

Seeds of Broad-leaved Willowherb just waiting to emerge (By Frank Vincentz (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Dalmatian Bellflower (Campanula portenschlagiana)

Dear Readers, how could I resist this splendid display of Dalmatian Bellflower, tumbling over an original Victorian tiled path? There are actually two types of Bellflower that have made themselves at home in North London and other parts: this one from the Dalmatian mountains of Croatia, and the one below, Serbian Bellflower, from the Dinaric Alps in Serbia. As you can see, both are Alpine plants, very at home in cracks and crevices, and every bit as pretty as anything you could buy in the garden centre. The Dalmatian species is less pointy, more deeply coloured and a bit more vigorous, while the Serbian plant is a delicate little star-shaped thing. I love them both, although they don’t seem to attract quite as many bees as you might expect (in spite of what I might have thought in my original piece). Still, they help to cover the most unlikely places with greenery, and that makes them welcome in my book.

Botanists know them as ‘port and posh’ after their Latin names, which is certainly less of a mouthful than their full species designation.

Here’s what I had to say in my original post, back when we were all young and enthusiastic back in 2014.

Trailing Bellflower (Campanula poscharskyana)

When I am exploring the half-mile around my house, I am regularly surprised by some new plant that I haven’t noticed before. This week, however, I found a whole new lane that I’d not stumbled across previously, leading from Baronsmere Road to Cherry Tree Wood.

The building development in East Finchley sometimes leaves interesting lanes and snickleways….

In this weedy little track, with garden sheds and walls on either side, I found this patch of Trailing Bellflower, with its lilac-blue flowers enhanced by perfect raindrops.

Trailing Bellflower comes from the Dinaric Alps – these are the parts of the Alps that were part of the former Yugoslavia, and you can sometimes see the plant referred to as Serbian Bellflower. As we’ve seen before, mountain plants, with their tolerance of poor, thin soil, often do very well in urban environments. This plant is a relatively recent introduction – it first came to the UK in 1931, and was first recorded in the wild in 1957.

Isn’t it funny how, once you’ve noticed something, you see it everywhere? On a trip to Tufnell Park, I found a patch of Trailing Bellflower peeping out from amongst the ivy.

The name ‘Bellflower’ doesn’t seem very appropriate for this plant – ‘Starflower’ seems more descriptive of those five-petalled blooms. However, in the photo below, you can see a stem with two flowers on it on the right hand side. Viewed from here, the flowers look like hats for  fairies.

There seems to be some debate as to whether Trailing Bellflower is palatable or not. On the lovely website Plants for a Future the leaves are described as ‘a little tough’, but the flowers ‘have a pleasant sweet flavour and make a decorative addition to the salad bowl‘. They would certainly look very pretty nestled amongst some winter leaves. However, as this is a popular plant with pollinators, and as it flowers later than most, I would be inclined to leave most of the flowers where they belong.

As I left the lane, I spotted another patch of Trailing Bellflower, which had made itself at home amongst the stone stairs of an impressive entrance:

As I was standing there, an elderly gentleman paused to let me take my photograph.

“Are you interested in Victorian architecture?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “but today I’m more interested in the plants”. With a burst of enthusiasm, I explained that this was Trailing Bellflower, and told him probably more than he either wanted or needed to know about the habits, history and ecology of the plant.

He shook his head, a little sadly I thought.

“I see them,” he said, “but I don’t know any of the names”.

You don’t have to know the name of something to appreciate it – in fact, sometimes the urge to identify what a plant or animal is can get in the way of really looking at what you’re seeing. But being able to put a name to a Trailing Bellflower does add a depth, a way of seeing plants both individually and as part of an ecosystem. In fact, my walks to the greengrocer are often now something of a mantra.

“Chickweed, groundsel, shepherd’s purse.

Yellow corydalis, green alkanet, dandelion.

Trailing bellflower, nettle, feverfew.

Canadian fleabane”.

Dear Readers, you might remember me mentioning that I’d found some fringe cups growing in the garden at the weekend, so I thought it might be the moment to resurrect this post, from 2015. And here is a small treat – an extract from a poem by Sandra McPherson, published in New York in 1988. I think it’s rather lovely.

Fringecups

Of a green so palely, recessively matched to the forest floor,
one asks if they will turn a color
for they could hardly fade more.
Around them, buttercups spread witheringly bright.

But there can be a deep pink sign of aging
on a cup’s curled edge.
And when its style calves and the ovary splits,
one drop of cucumber-scented water sprinkles the fingernail.

Fringecups flowers (Photo By Walter Siegmund (talk) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10698214)

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

Dear Readers, during a walk in Coldfall Wood last week, I was surprised to see a stand of Fringecups alongside the stream. They are a member of the Saxifrage family, although they look very different from the others, with their strange green-pink flowers peering like giraffes over their neighbours. They are the sole member of their genus, and as such are somewhat out on a limb: most saxifrages are five-petalled, open-flowered plants, although a few do share the long stem of the Fringecup. As the flowers grow older, they start to change from greenish-white to pink, and even to red.

Older Fringecup flowers, rapidly turning red(“Tellima grandiflora 07469”. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tellima_grandiflora_07469.JPG#/media/File:Tellima_grandiflora_07469.JPG)

This is a plant that my North American readers might recognise, as it is a native of the north-western corner of the continent, including Alaska, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Alberta and British Columbia. It is a plant of woody, shady, wet places, and in my garden at least the bees are very fond of those unassuming flowers.

Here in the wood, they have certainly made themselves at home. They mix happily with the nettles, the violets and the marsh marigolds, and keep themselves largely to themselves. It is not difficult to see how it has made the leap into ‘the wild’ – I have it in my own garden, and there are many varieties for sale. Its tolerance of shade is a great point in its favour in many people’s eyes.

Fringecups growing in my garden.

I think that this looks like a fairy-tale plant, ethereal and delicate. The flowers look as if they could be hats for pixies, and, indeed, there is a Canadian folktale that elves ate Fringecup in order to improve their night vision. The First Nation Skagit people used Fringecup to make a tea for treating many illnesses, including loss of appetite.

In many of the books that mention Fringecups, there is a reference to its fragrance. I have to admit that this was not something that I’d noticed so, in the interests of research, I went down to the garden to have a sniff. And there it is, a faint hint of sweetness, as fragile as the scent left on a  silk scarf. This is a modest plant of strange and elusive beauty, which only reveals itself if you have the time to stop and look.

Sowthistle display outside The Village Green pub in Muswell Hill

Dear Readers, I mentioned earlier this week that the sowthistle appears to have gone berserk all over North London, but even I was surprised at this impressive display in a windowbox outside the Village Green pub on Fortis Green Road in East Finchley. The pub has recently been taken over and I suspect that the owners have more things to worry about than what’s going on outside. Plus, in a way this is spectacular – I almost walked past it because it’s so abundant, so full of flowers that you could almost think it was deliberate. Anyway, if I was this particular sowthistle I think I’d be aiming to set seed as quickly as possible before anybody noticed, so that my babies could colonise every crack in the pavement between here and East Finchley.

Anyhow, here is what I wrote about prickly sowthistle back in 2017. Do scroll on down to the bottom for the most incredible poem by Sylvia Plath, one which I’d completely forgotten until I looked again at this post today. See what you think.

Prickly Sowthistle (Sonchus asper)

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.

The diagnostic basal lobe

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.

A rather sad smooth sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus)

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.

Prickly sowthistle with a few late blackfly.

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

Broad-barred white (Hecatera bicolorata)

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

Grey chi moth (Antitype chi)

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.

Shark moth (Cucillia umbratica)

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).

Sowthistle Fairy by Cicely Mary Barker

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)

The climbing hydrangea

Well Readers, after two weeks, thousands of miles, two flights, numerous subway trains and taxis and lots of walking I’m back home and I suspect that you peeps in London have had a lot of rain, as everything has gone berserk. Just look at my climbing hydrangea! It’s absolutely covered in flowers and is going to be quite something in a few days time.

Here is the garden now (with the flowering currant that I was using for my bee experiment in the foreground)

…and this is what it looked like in mid-April. What a difference a few weeks makes! It’s always like this, I go off to Canada at the end of April and come back to a jungle.

The duckweed has taken over, so I foresee some removal in the (very near) future if I can get it out without decimating the tadpoles…

But on the other hand the marsh marigold is just past its peak…

and the bog bean is in flower! I love those raggedy blooms!

Elsewhere, the balm-leaved deadnettle (Lamium orvala) is attracting the bumblebees in spite of the rain…

The white lilac is just finishing…

and I fear that the green alkanet has gotten carried away with itself again.

In the front garden, both the buddleias have literally grown about 12 inches since we left…

and everything in my experimental containers in the front garden is doing very well, especially the Bowles Mauve and the catmint, which I feared had had it after a cat spent hours sitting on it last year. Plus my alliums look to be ready to pop…

The Kilmarnock Willow looks lovely…

and the Delosperma is just about to flower again.

The cat is less than impressed with our return, as I suspect we are a little too jetlagged to give her our full attention, plus you wouldn’t believe how much laundry two human beings can generate in just 14 days. But it’s so lovely to be home, rain or not, and we tried to stay awake through the Coronation, in spite of the whole thing feeling rather like Gormenghast for much of the proceedings (and if you haven’t read Mervyn Peake’s extraordinary trilogy, and if you like fantasy, it comes highly recommended). I was puzzled by the whole anointing thing going on behind screens, and would put a tenner on Penny Mordaunt somehow being our next prime minister if the whole performance with the sword is anything to go by (at least until the next election). Anyhow, Dear Readers, I am off for a quick dinner and an early night, as no doubt I shall be awake at 3 a.m. and wondering what time it is and what continent I’m on, so see you tomorrow!

Desert Willow (Chitalpa tashkentensis)

Oops! This should, of course, have gone out on Wednesday. Apologies for the double post!

Dear Readers, yesterday I mentioned that some street trees had appeared in Church Lane, East Finchley, which had been given names. Apparently these trees (known as Desert Willows or Chitalpa tashkentsis) appeared more or less overnight, to the delight of the local residents, who then decided to name them after local people. So, we have Eve, named for Eve Bagley, whose family have lived in Church Lane for 90 years…

‘Angela’ for one of the original residents of Cricket Row on Church Lane…

‘Ted’ for Eve’s late husband, who was a veteran sailor on the Arctic convoys to Russia during World War II…

‘Pauline’ for the mother of Lisa, one of the residents of Church Lane…

and Dominic for the son of Church Lane residents Gail and Barry.

What a lovely idea this is! I’m sure that these will be the best nurtured, most loved trees in East Finchley. We humans do love to connect, and if we manage to do that by seeing plants or animals as individuals (which of course they are), all the better.

What on earth is a desert willow though? Well, the Chitalpas are hybrids between two closely related plants – the original desert willow (Chilopsis linearis) and the northern catalpa (Catalpa speciosa).

The ‘original’ desert willow isn’t a willow at all (though the leaves look rather similar), but one look at the flowers would tell you that this is a much more exotic plant – it comes originally from Mexico and the southern parts of the USA. The flowers are pollinated by large bees such as bumblebees.

Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearia) Photo By Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=174367

The other half of the partnership is the northern catalpa, which lives in a very small area of the midwestern United States.

Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) Photo By Famartin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33470836

These two trees were hybridised by a botanist called A.Rusanov in the Botanic Gardens of Uzbekistan back in 1964. Although it looks very exotic, it’s not a bad choice as a street tree – it’s very drought-resistant and fast growing. I can’t wait for the flowers to appear. Let’s hope that they appeal to bumblebees in the same way that the parent plants do.

There are two forms of the plant – ‘Pink Dawn’ and ‘Morning Cloud’. It will be interesting to see which variety the Church Lane trees are.

Variety ‘Pink Dawn’ Photo By Frau Siebenschläfer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15726811

Variety ‘Morning Cloud’ By Benny White – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6977091

In his book ‘London’s Street Trees’, Paul Wood calls Chitalpa ‘a street tree of the future’, so it’s interesting to see that it’s already turning up in East Finchley (and in some numbers too!). It’s always worth paying attention to the trees on our streets, they are often such an eclectic mix. To add a note of caution though, the International Dendrology Society suggests that Chitalpa is likely to be at the edge of its range in the UK, and that, without the long hot summers that its parent plants are used to, Chitalpa is always likely to be slightly unhappy. We shall have to see what happens, but fingers crossed! Although the one in the photo below is leaning out into the sunshine (as street trees so often have to to get enough light), it also looks very lush and green. The ones in Church Lane will not be overshadowed, so I have every hope that they will do better.

Photo by Owen Johnson of a leaning Chitalpa in London in August 2018 (see link above)

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)

Dear Readers, this week is our Away Day week at work, something that I approach with some trepidation, being allergic to ‘compulsory fun’ (though it has to be said that there are some interesting things going on too, so I shall try to rein in my inner curmudgeon). This means taht I will be pretty much full-time, and will not have my usual chance to cogitate over the blog, so some posts might be rather sketchier than usual. However, I was walking around the County Roads earlier this week, I noticed that the rosemary was in flower, even though the temperatures were only just above freezing. This might be a Mediterranean plant, but it seems to be very hardy. Plus, those little blue flowers are very attractive to bees, and are very pretty to boot. So it seemed like a good moment to revisit my 2018 post. Also, I can never see Rosemary without thinking of my beloved aunt Rosemary who passed away last year, and that’s just as it should be, because that’s one way that the people that we love live on. 

Dear Readers, here in East Finchley Rosemary is an extremely popular choice for the front garden. It is deliciously pungent if brushed against, and the tiny, complex flowers delight the bees. On a warm summer day the scent of the Mediterranean wafts up in a fragrant cloud. But on a cold December morning, it reminds me that the name ‘Rosemary’ comes from the Greek words for ‘dew of the sea’. It is also associated with Christianity: there is a legend that when the Virgin Mary threw her cloak over a white-flowered rosemary bush to dry, the flowers took on the blue colour from her garment. It was henceforth known as ‘the rose of Mary’.

In the Middle Ages it was said that a thriving bush of rosemary outside the front door indicated that the woman of the house wore the trousers, to which I reply ‘and your problem is?’. However, many men with such a botanical indication of their status right outside their living room window would sneak out at dead of night and cut the roots of the plant. A comb made from rosemary, however, was said to cure baldness, so maybe it was sometimes allowed to stay.

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) had this to say about the plant:

“As for rosemary, I let it run all over my garden walls, not only because my bees love it but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance and to friendship, whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language.”

Rosemary is a member of the Lamiaceae or mint family, and numbers basil, sage, oregano and mint among its siblings. They all  share the intensely aromatic oils that are such a boon in cookery, and which were probably developed to deter pesky insects – rosemary has been used as a way to protect clothes against moths, and was one of the ingredients of ‘four thieves vinegar’  which was said to prevent a person from catching the plague. As the plague was spread by fleas, there might have been a germ of truth in the idea, as with many folk remedies.

Rosemary is well adapted for a hot climate, with its needle-like, waxy leaves, which protect against water loss. It is known for its tendency to bloom out of season, and one of the bushes that I spotted last week was bursting with flowers.

Any Shakespeare readers will recall that Ophelia strews rosemary ‘for remembrance’ shortly before her watery demise. There is a long history of associating rosemary not only with remembrance, but also with memory: rosemary oil is said to be good for those struggling to memorise facts and figures, or whose memory is failing. The Guardian reported that sales of rosemary oil were rocketing amongst revising students. A packet of Maryland Cookies used to do the trick for me along with vats of black coffee, but hey.

Ophelia and Laertes by William Gorman (circa 1880). Note the sprig of Rosemary drooping from Ophelia’s hand (Public Domain)

Rosemary was also much associated with marriage during the Middle Ages, and both bride and bridegroom would have worn it on their wedding day. The bride would carry a sprig of rosemary from a bush grown in her parents’ garden, to remind her of the love and protection that had been afforded her there. A bridesmaid would plant a sprig of the same bush in the bride’s garden as a symbol of protection and in due course, a sprig from this would be passed on to the bride’s daughters. I love the idea of handing plants down from one generation to another. I have a sudden  vision of a garden filled with plants given to me by my friends and family, and the possibility of passing the plants on in my turn. That would be a real garden of remembrance every time I stepped out into it.

Rosemary is a most popular culinary herb, especially with roast meat, but it has also been cropping up in desserts recently. If you scroll down through this article, you’ll find apple cake with rosemary crumble, for example, which sounds extremely acceptable, especially as I haven’t had my lunch yet. There is also a rosemary and chocolate brownie and, hallelujah, a cocktail made from lemonade, bourbon and rosemary. Just as well that there’s so much of it here in East Finchley.

Rosemary and Chocolate Brownie (Photo One)

If you still have any rosemary left after all that cooking, you might consider knocking up some Hungary Water, which was a mixture of fresh rosemary tops and wine, and was used by Queen Elizabeth of Poland (1305-1380) to restore her youth and vitality when she was in her seventies (a ripe old age in those days). It is also said to cure gout and ‘paralysis of the limbs’. It had a brief spell of popularity as a perfume too, and no doubt all those courtly ladies (and possibly gentlemen) had great fun dousing themselves in the stuff.

Queen Elizabeth of Poland and her sons (1380). She looks very sprightly, I must say. (Public Domain)

And to finish, a poem. Elaine Feinstein (born 1930) is one of our greatest living Jewish poets, and this particular poem resonates deeply. It reminds me of the increasing frailty of my Dad, who was such a strong, vigorous man in his heyday. He still has his moments now, so it doesn’t do to underestimate him, but there is a poignant sadness in this work that moves me. I am breaking my usual habit of not pasting the poem because I want you to see it, but you can buy more of Feinstein’s work here.

Rosemary in Provence

We stopped the Citroen at the turn of the lane,

because you wanted a sprig of blue rosemary

to take home, and your coat opened awkwardly

as you bent over. Any stranger would have seen

your frail shoulders, the illness

in your skin – our holiday on the Luberon

ending with salmonella –

but what hurt me, as you chose slowly,

was the delicacy of your gesture:

the curious child, loving blossom

and mosses, still eager

in your disguise as an old man.

Elaine Feinstein

Photo Credits

Photo One (Brownie) by Yuki Sugiura for the Guardian 

Camellia japonica

Dear Readers, my camellia has just one flower on it so far (though there are a few hopeful buds), but it’s poignant because it was bought for me by my Dad, who never actually got back to London to see it. Such beautiful flowers, though….and here’s what I said back in 2018.

Dear Readers, it might seem strange to be in love with a plant, but I am enraptured with the white camellia that lives in a pot right outside my back door. I have tried to create a shade garden in the dreary north-facing side return there, and Dad gifted me with this plant several years ago. I know that it isn’t good for pollinators (my usual reason for planting something).  I know that in a bad year, the blossoms go brown almost before they’ve opened because of cold weather or rain. But still, I find it exquisitely beautiful, with its shiny green leaves and sunburst of yellow stamens in the centre of all that ivory-white.

Every time I see it, it reminds me of Dad. I think of how he taught me to transplant seedlings, picking them up with his big brown hands and handling them with such tender care. It makes me sad to think that, because of the neuropathy in his hands, he can now barely handle a knife and fork, though he would be the last one to dwell on such things. He deals with things by getting on with it does my Dad, and he doesn’t seem to think about what he used to be able to do. Everyone copes with things differently, but this is his way, and it seems to work for him. My parents come from a class and a generation when it wasn’t done to analyse things too much, because what was the point?  No one outside your immediate family and community was going to help.

The camellia is also known as the Rose of Winter, and in the mountainous areas of its native China, South Korea and Japan it blooms between January and March. In my back garden, its buds open from mid March onwards, although the snow that we’ve had this week will be slowing it up a bit.

In Japan, the flower is pollinated by the Japanese white-eye, a small bird.

Japanese white-eyes courting (Zosterops japonicus) (Photo One)

Most camellia species need acidic soil, hence the fact that my plant is growing in a pot – the clay in my garden would certainly not be to the plant’s taste. There are, however, a few Vietnamese camellias that live in the limestone karst area of the country, and which are more amenable to alkaline soils.

Vietnam is also home to the endangered yellow camellia, Camellia chrysantha. Apparently breeders have been trying for years to get a yellow camellia which also flowers abundantly, and even in China and Japan they have largely failed – the yellow species tend to have small, downward-facing flowers, and to be extremely picky about where they grow.

Camellia chrysantha, the yellow camellia (Photo Two)

As you will know, the garden camellia is closely related to Camellia sinensis, the tea plant, and tea can be made with the leaves of Camellia japonica. For the full details of how to do it, have a look at the Taurus Rising blog here. However, as a synopsis, you need to pick the youngest three leaves at the top of a stem, rub the leaves between your hands to crumble them, and then sort out the stems from the leaves. The crumbled leaves are left for a couple of days and are moved around periodically to aerate them before they are dried in a low oven. The conclusion was that the resulting brew was pretty high in caffeine, and ‘delicate’ in flavour – the authors thought that the leaves could have been left for a few more days to mature and deepen the taste.

Personally, I still want my camellia to grow, so will wait a bit longer before I start nipping off the stem tips. Camellias grow fast (up to 30 cm a year) and can live a long time (there are camellias in Portugal that are thought to be 460 years old). In time, they can turn into a magnificent tree – there are a couple in a front garden in Tufnell Park that are absolutely gob-smacking, as tall as the second storey window and covered in red and pink blooms every spring. I don’t have a photo of those trees, but the one below, from Hyde Hall in Essex, gives you an idea.

Camellia tree at RHS Hyde Hall (Photo Three)

Japanese camellia as a bonsai (Photo Four)

In Japan, the Emperor carried a staff made from camellia wood to fend off the evil eye, and flowers are said to represent business success, virtue, happiness, fidelity, luxury, tastefulness, & a life concluding in the ease of retirement. In China, the flower is said to represent the union of male and female, with the petals representing the female principle, and the green calyx representing the male. Typically, when a flower falls the calyx remains on the stem, but in camellias both fall away together. It is said that both male and female attributes are needed for wholeness (as in yin and yang) and I’m not going to argue with that.

The flowers of the camellia have always been seen as expensive, rare, and slightly decadent. Probably the most famous literary representation of the plant is La Dame aux Camelias, by Alexandre Dumas. It tells the story of a young man in love with a courtesan, Marguerite Gautier, who is dying of consumption. In real life, the courtesan was Marie Duplessis, Duma’s lover. In the novel, Marguerite gets her epithet ‘the lady of the camellias’ because she wears a red camellia when she is menstruating (and hence unavailable) and a white one the rest of the time. The book rapidly became a play, and then the opera La Traviata. In the cinema, the role of Marguerite has been played by actresses as varied as Greta Garbo, Theda Bara (the original ‘Vamp’) and Isabelle Adjani.

Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor in the 1936 film ‘Camille’ (Photo Five)

Pheasant and Camellia shrub by Lu Ji (Public Domain)

Finally, for our burst of poetry this week, I’d like to present two poems. The first, by American poet Carol Snow, is short and simple, at least at first glance.

Near a shrine in Japan he'd swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.

Or — we had no way of knowing — he'd swept the path
between fallen camellias.