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, last week I was exploring the car park at East Finchley tube station when I came across a plant that was entirely new to me – Perforate St John’s-wort. My copy of Harrap’s Wild Flowers describes it as ‘abundant, and by far the commonest St John’s-wort’. This may be so, but it’s fair to say that it’s a retiring and delicate plant, easily overshadowed by the more assertive ‘weeds’ that grow in the same habitat. It is easy to see that it’s a member of the same family as Rose of Sharon and Tutsan – it has five petals, a shaving-brush of stamen, and that butter-yellow colour that is so characteristic of the family. If you break a flower-bud, a reddish-purple liquid is produced.

But why on earth is it called ‘Perforate’? If we look closely at the leaves, we can see that they are covered in tiny translucent ‘windows’. These are resin glands, and are said to be responsible for the ‘foxy’ smell of the species, though I was not inclined to molest the small number of plants that I discovered to find out.

Although this is a new plant to me, it is a native of Europe and Asia and has a long history of interaction with humans. Richard Mabey (in Flora Britannica) describes how, since prehistoric times, this plant was burned on the Midsummer Day Fires that were set all over the country. It was believed that these fires would purify communities and crops, and Perforate St. John’s-wort was one of the ‘sun-herbs’ which were thrown into the fire, probably because its yellow colour was thought to strengthen the power of the sun, while the smoke from the fires protected the fields against more malevolent summer manifestations, such as drought and wildfires.

Another story, attributed to the peoples of both the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight is that if you accidentally stood on Perforate St-John’s-wort at night, you would promptly be carried off on a fairy horse from which you could not dismount until sunrise. By then, you could be anywhere, and would need to find your own way home. I find this such a delightful idea that I was almost tempted to creep back to the car park at dead of night with a thermos flask, some sandwiches and an Oyster card, just to see what would happen.

Later, as has so often been the case, the plant was absorbed by Christianity – the Feast of St John the Baptist is on June 24th, and so this pagan plant was renamed as a Christian one. The genus name Hypericum is supposedly derived from the Greek words Hyper (above) and eikon (holy picture), to describe the way that the plants were hung above icons on St. John’s day to protect the house against the evil eye. In a combination of the pagan and Christian uses of the plant, the flower-buds were gathered on 24th June, crushed and steeped in olive-oil, to produce a blood-red liquid that was called ‘Blood of Christ’ and was used for anointing.

The reason that most of us have heard of St John’s-wort, however, is because of its use as an anti-depressant. Reviews of the use of the plant have regularly indicated that it is more effective than a placebo for patients with major depression, as useful as standard anti-depressants in mild to moderate depression, and that it has fewer side-effects. It should be noted, however, that the studies performed in German-speaking countries (where herbal medicine is an accepted part of many treatment regimes)  returned much more positive results than those conducted in the US (where there is more reliance on synthetic medicines) (for more details see here). There is no doubt that this is a medicinally active and potent plant, and should therefore (as with all plant remedies) be treated with respect – it decreases the levels of oestrogen in the body by speeding up the rate with which the hormone is metabolised, and so may decrease the efficacy of the contraceptive pill. It may cause photosensitivity, and is also associated with aggravating psychosis and mania in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I do note, however, that all these are also potential side-effects of many standard anti-depressants. I suspect that the main danger of this plant is using it alongside conventional anti-depressant drugs, and hence doubling up the dose of psychoactive chemicals. It also interacts with many other medications, including statins and HIV treatment protocols. Even so, it is given several pages on the website of Mind, the main UK mental health charity, and many people swear that using Perforate St John’s-wort has given them relief from the symptoms of anxiety and depression. So much power in a plant discovered at the back of a car park in North London!

As with so many plants that I have discovered through The Wednesday Weed, Perforate St John’s-wort has proved to be a problem in countries to which it is not native, especially Australia and the US. It is poisonous to grazing livestock if ingested in large quantities (indeed in Russia it is known as Zveroboi, or ‘beast-killer’), and some of the side-effects suffered by humans, such as photosensitivity and mania, are exhibited in animals unfortunate enough to have dined extensively on the plant. It is said that one of the effects of the plant is to make the suffering animal run in circles, resulting in strange ‘crop-circles’. The poisoned animal may be terrified of water, or may become so obsessed with it that it drowns. Fortunately, in places in which it is native it is unusual to see Perforate St.John’s-wort growing in anything like the quantities needed to cause these effects, but see the photo below of the plant growing in Australia for an idea of how densely-packed it can become.

What a remarkable plant this is. Its chemical composition means that it can both cure and poison, relieve distress and cause suffering. Of all the plants that I’ve featured on The Wednesday Weed, it is the one that has given me the most pause for thought. Modern Western society largely despises the healing power of plants, and is disrespectful of their undoubted power to heal or harm. In many places in the world, only a manufactured drug is considered efficacious, even though it may be originally derived from plants. Thank goodness for the people all over the world who are curious and knowledgeable about their botanical heritage, and who are working to preserve this priceless information for generations to come. Now, we just need to make sure that we also preserve the plants themselves.

Photo Credits

Perforated Leaves – By Matt Flavin https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/5259021048 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Illustration of Perforate St John’s-wort – By Prof. Dr. Thomé, Otto Wilhelm (www.biolib.de) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Field of Perforate St.John’s-wort in Australia – By Peripitus (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

Resources

Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey

The Plant Lives website curated by Sue Eland

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, when I was a small girl I was prone to what were euphemistically called ‘bilious attacks’. These resulted in plenty of sleepless nights for my poor mother, and lots of changing of the bedsheets. What I remember most from these episodes is a cool hand on my forehead, and my mum singing the following song.

‘Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do.

I’m half-crazy, all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage.

I can’t afford a carriage.

But you’ll look sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle made for two’.

This always seemed to do the trick, and I wonder if my mother sung it with a certain relish because she and dad did, indeed, have a tandem bicycle when they were courting. Once when they were riding it in Stratford Broadway, it got stuck in the tramlines and both my parents fell off. Mum never forgot that Dad went to pick up the bike before he rescued her, but all must have been forgiven. After all, they were married, and I had arrived.

Is there anything more homely, more gentle and more ubiquitous than a daisy? It’s often the first flower to show its face, and the lawn in front of the flats next to the cemetery has hundreds still in full bloom in early November. It is a flower of childhood, of a more innocent time. I remember making daisy chains on hot summer days, and adding the flowers to the bunches of buttercups and grasses that my brother and I picked when went to ‘the country’ for the day (often Waltham Abbey or Buckhurst Hill).

Daisy is a corruption of the phrase ‘Day’s Eye’, as the plant closes at night and opens during the day time. Its Latin name, Bellis perennis, is said to mean ‘Pretty Everlasting’. And at a time when flower names for girls are coming back into fashion (I’ve heard quite a lot of calls for ‘Lily’ and ‘Poppy’ in my local coffee shop) surely it can’t be too long until Daisy makes a comeback. It was, after all, the name of the heroine in The Great Gatsby, and is also the name of one of my closest friends.

Daisies have also been used medicinally. Roman slaves who were accompanying surgeons into war picked sackfuls of daisies – the juice was extracted and used to soak the bandages that bound up the spear and sword wounds. One interpretation of the Latin name of the plant suggests that the Bellis does not relate to prettiness, but rather to war (as in belligerent and bellicose). It interests me that this plant, so closely associated with innocence, may have such a war-like connection.

In Austrian medicine, the plant is used as a tea for respiratory and gastrointestinal purposes. The flowers have also been used to garnish salads and desserts, though I’d advise against picking them from areas where they may have been subjected to herbicides and dog-contamination. Daisies may look pretty, but they are also tough, and grow in some of the most polluted places in our urban areas.

Although each ‘daisy’ looks like a single flower, they are in fact a collection of small, tightly packed individual flowers or florets – this arrangement is known as a capitulum. The bright yellow centre contains ‘disc-florets’, which are surrounded by elongated petal-like ‘ray florets’. If you look closely at the photo below you can see that some of the disc-florets are opening, revealing their flower-like character. Our simple daisy turns out not to be so simple after all.

Photo Credits

Daisy flower close-up at the end of the post  – “Bellis perennis white (aka)” by André Karwath aka Aka – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bellis_perennis_white_(aka).jpg#/media/File:Bellis_perennis_white_(aka).jpg

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

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, many years ago I lived in a flat which looked out onto Wanstead Flats, an area of ancient common land in east London. Cows used to graze there during the spring and summer, and they  occasionally wandered into my tiny front garden, where they ate all the daffodils and tore out the winter-flowering pansies. If I threw open my front door to remonstrate they merely raised their heads, blossoms dangling from their jaws and a look of complete indifference on their faces. Sometimes they would make their sedate way up the side of the block to the car park and back ‘garden’, which was a mass of concrete split occasionally by thistles and dandelions, and even these would be mulched down by my bovine visitors. The only plants that survived were the brambles tumbling onto my ‘patio’ from the house next door, and the great knotted thickets of Bittersweet that scrambled through it.

Bittersweet (or Woody Nightshade) can be found in most woodlands and looks like some exotic vine, with its purple and canary-yellow flowers, and translucent cerise berries. Its leaves are said to smell of burnt rubber.  It is a member of the Solanum genus, which includes tomatoes, aubergines and potatoes, but also Deadly Nightshade, for which this plant is sometimes mistaken, although the berries of Deadly Nightshade are black.

The red berries of Bittersweet look delicious, but John Robertson, the author of my go-to blog on ‘dangerous’ plants The Poison Garden, states that they have an extremely bitter taste, which does not become sweet regardless of the length of time that they are chewed. A nine year-old girl did die of what appeared to be Bittersweet poisoning in 1948, but she must have been either very hungry, or, as Robertson speculates, have had an impaired sense of taste in order to eat enough for a fatal dose. However the Modern Herbal website suggests that the name Bittersweet refers to the taste of the root and stem rather than the berries. I wonder if the berries merely look as if they should be sweet, and in fact taste disappointingly bitter? The species name ‘dulcamara’ means ‘sweet-bitter’, and maybe this is the simplest explanation.

The genus name, ‘Solanum’ is said to have derived from the Latin phrase for ‘ease’ or ‘solace’, and it has been suggested that the plants were used for their sedative properties. Another name for the plant, ‘Felonweed’, refers to its use for abscesses of the fingers or toes (known as whitlows these days, but formerly known as felons). Bittersweet has also been used for a variety of skin conditions, including eczema and scrofula.

In the UK, a garland of Bittersweet used to be hung around the necks of sheep who were suspected by their shepherds to be under the ‘evil eye’, and horses that appeared to be ‘hag-ridden’ were given a necklace of Bittersweet and Holly. In Lincolnshire it was pigs who were protected with Bittersweet. Writing about this, I find I have a lump in my throat as I think about the days when farm animals were seen as individuals, with needs and personalities, rather than as the generic production units that they have so often become today. This attention to the needs of the animals in our care, this strange tenderness, still lingers on in small farms and in wild places, but has no place in an intensive pig unit or a battery farm or a mega-dairy. So many animals pass from farm to plate not only ungarlanded, but unregarded, their short, miserable lives a testament to our ability to separate ourselves from the creatures that surround us, and to our tendency to inflict things on others just because we can.

But, as usual, I digress.

ittersweet wasn’t seen as protective only for animals. It is a native plant in the UK, but is also found in northern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. I have mentioned the Plant Lives website before, and in her entry on Bittersweet, Sue Eland mentions that the plant is found

‘on the third collarette of Tut’ankhamun’s third coffin, and shows the fruit threaded on strips of date palm’.

The collar appears to have been made up of red Bittersweet berries and blue glass beads and it seems that the Egyptians also had a tradition in which the plant was protective.

There is something about Bittersweet that makes me think that it not to be messed with. Of course, when we comment on the ‘personality’ of a plant it is more likely to be about how we see it at the time than about the plant itself, but still. The more time I spend with plants, the more I am convinced that they are not just a green back-drop to our everyday lives, but are rather more active than their sedentary nature would give us to suppose. There is much to be gained by regarding our botanical neighbours as members of our larger communities rather than as ‘things’ to be exploited or ignored. After all, without plants we would have no oxygen, no food and no atmosphere. A little respect seems a small price to pay.

Photo Credits

Deadly Nightshade berries by David Hawgood [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bittersweet illustration “Illustration Solanum dulcamara0” by Kurt Stüber – Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz1885, Gera, Germany.www.biolib.de. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Illustration_Solanum_dulcamara0.jpg#/media/File:Illustration_Solanum_dulcamara0.jpg

All other photographs copyright Vivienne Palmer

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, rarely does the common name of a plant reflect so accurately its nature as with this member of the Asteraceae or daisy family. With its copper-coloured petals and tight groupings of buds, Fox-and-cubs clearly brings to mind a vixen and her youngsters. I was pleased to find it in full bloom on the unadopted road close to my house in East Finchley, especially because, of all the ‘wild’ daisies hereabouts, it’s the only orange one, and so is relatively easy to identify.  Note also the hairy stem and the lack of leaves apart from in a rosette at the base.

Fox-and-cubs comes originally from the Carpathian mountains, and we have noticed before how often plants that are used to the harsh conditions of drought, ultra-violet light and thin soils that are encountered at altitude find themselves at home on our city wastelands. The plant was first seen in the UK in 1629, and was recorded in the wild in 1793. It is a close relative of our native Mouse-ear Hawkweed (Pilosella officinarum), and in some places forms a hybrid. In London it is usually a garden escape, although its light, fluffy seeds can transport the ‘cubs’ a long distance from their mother.

Fox-and-cubs has a variety of other vernacular names. ‘Devil’s Paintbrush’ is wonderfully descriptive. ‘Orange hawkweed’ is obvious. However,  I find myself very puzzled by one of the others: ‘Grim-the-collier’. I have read several explanations for the name, including one which says that the plant resembles a collier’s beard because of the tiny black hairs on the buds.

To add further to the confusion, a play called ‘Grim the Collier of Croydon’ was published in 1662, in which the titular Grim is a kind and simple-hearted soul who finally wins the hand of his sweetheart in marriage after the intercession of a small devil. The first question that sprang to my mind was why we would be having colliers in Croydon, but apparently it was the one of the centres of the coal trade in the seventeenth century. Of course, this brings me no closer to understanding the link between the play and the plant. Could the actor who played Grim have been a red-head, I wonder? And did the play-going public make a link that has stuck for 400 years? Well, maybe not, because there is an earlier reference in a herbal by Gerard going back to 1633 in which the plant is called ‘Grimme the Collier’, which suggests that the play was based on a story which was already extant then. Who knows? Suffice to say that this interloper was already familiar enough to have a very English name just a few years after it arrived.

As with so many of the plants that I feature, the arrival of Fox-and-cubs in other parts of the world has not been treated with unalloyed joy. It is on the noxious weeds lists of of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and parts of British Columbia. It is on the quarantine list in Australia, and is a noxious weed in Tasmania. Part of the problem is that it reproduces not only via its seeds, but also vegetatively by runners, like a strawberry. On the other hand, like so many members of the daisy family it is very attractive to pollinators. It seems to be liked very much by hoverflies, but is also visited by bees. This last is something of a puzzle, because orange and red flowers are almost invisible to these insects. However, there is evidence that Fox-and-cubs also features ultra-violet patterns which make it able to be seen. Certainly, it is a plant that is often added to green roof seed mixes, both to give a splash of russet to the colour palate and because it reproduces so readily and looks after itself so easily. I must confess that it is one of my favourite ‘weeds’, one that always cheers me up when I find it peeping out from a mass of grass, or forming part of an alpine meadow. Orange is such a rare colour in nature that we should treasure it whenever we find it.

Photo Credits

Photo of Mouse-eared Hawkweed is by Anne Burgess [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other photos are copyright Vivienne Palmer.

 

 

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 noticed that when a plant wants to be featured in the Wednesday Weed, it makes its presence felt everywhere, and so it has been with Russian Vine. I first noticed it during my stumbling walk around the fields of Milborne St Andrew a few weeks ago, where it had grown over a fence and was intent on blocking the footpath.

Then, on my journeys back and forth from Surrey (where I am currently ensconced in Sutton Holiday Inn for four nights a week), I peered blearily through the window and realised that the trackside was a tumult of white flowers, tumbling over the back-gardens of Purley and Croydon like a foam-flecked wave. And, finally, when I took a walk along the unadopted road close to my house in East Finchley today, there it was again. I relented. This is a plant that wants its story told, for sure.

What we have here is a garden plant, originally from Asia, and known by such wonderful alternative names as Bukhara Fleeceflower and Chinese Fleecevine. However, most people will be familiar with it as Mile-a-minute plant. Many a gardener has planted one, gone indoors to make a cup of tea and come back to discover that it has taken over the shed and half of the children’s trampoline next door. Its flowers are a source of nectar for pollinators, but it has also been compared to the dreaded Leylandii Cypress for its over-enthusiastic and invasive nature. However, I am reminded that a ‘weed’ is simply a plant in the ‘wrong’ place, and so, while it can be a pain in a small garden, I would rather see Russian Vine along the edge of a railway line than the mass of wire fencing and fly-tipped building materials that it is probably covering.

Russian vine was first introduced to the UK in 1894, and was first discovered ‘in the wild’ in 1936. However, it has been pointed out that the plant is rarely found far from habitation, and that many of these ‘wild’ plants might actually be rooted in gardens, albeit gardens that are ten metres away.

Some of you might be thinking that you’ve heard the genus name Fallopia before in this blog, and indeed you have. Russian Vine is a relative of Japanese Knotweed and can interbreed with it. In the latest book in the superb New Naturalist series, ‘Alien Plants’, by Clive Stace and Michael Crawley, there is a very interesting discussion about how Japanese Knotweed has spread in the UK. In theory, because only female plants are present in this country, the plant shouldn’t be able to reproduce but, of course, it does. It has been found that Japanese Knotweed can hybridise with other species of Knotweed, and also with Russian Vine. Although these latter hybrids (named Fallopia x conollyana in honour of the botanist Ann Conolly who first investigated the genetics of this group) find it difficult to establish themselves, there are now three localities in which they exist, and one was first discoved in Haringey, not far from where I live, in 1987. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey reports that the hybrid is:

..’more elegant and less aggressive than either of its parents and has leaves shapely enough to make it a serious contender as a garden scrambler or ground-cover plant in the future. In the warm summer of 1993 it was being visited by many different species of native insect’.

Let us be grateful that this new plant seems to be taking on the gentler characteristics of its parents. If it combined the climbing ability of Russian Vine with the truculence of Japanese Knotweed we might have a candidate for a star part in a remake of The Triffids.

Photo Credits

Russian Vine (final photo on blog): “Fallopia baldschuanica 20050913 640”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fallopia_baldschuanica_20050913_640.jpg#/media/File:Fallopia_baldschuanica_20050913_640.jpg

All other photographs are copyright Vivienne Palmer

 

 

Dear Readers, long before the time when Trick or Treating became such a big deal in the UK, the big autumn festival was Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November. When I was a child, you could buy tiny fireworks for a couple of pennies each. They had names like ‘Traffic Lights’ and ‘Vesuvius’ and each one would last for about thirty seconds before puttering to a smokey end Our back garden was minuscule, and so my Dad was master of ceremonies for the evening. To start with, he’d light one firework at a time, and we’d stand and watch from the kitchen window. Catherine Wheels were always exciting Dad would nail them to the post that held the washing line, and my brother and I would scream with delight if it fell off and careered across the yard, sometimes trapping Dad in our outside toilet until it stopped sparking and sputtered to a halt. The evening usually ended with Dad standing in the rain, lighting four or five fireworks at once and then ducking back into the toilet to escape the miniature inferno. I can still see him, raindrops dripping from the rim of his trilby, sometimes with a cigarette in his mouth, as he tried to get to the end of the seemingly interminable array of incendiaries we’d managed to buy with our meagre half-crown a week pocket money. That’s love for you.

For some reason, this year as I’ve watched the approach of autumn, I’ve been reminded of the fireworks of my childhood. Gradually the trees light up, one at a time. An otherwise green tree might have the smallest hint of orange one day, and yet by the end of the week it’s aglow. It starts so gently that you might almost think you were still in late August and then, suddenly, there is colour everywhere.

Different colours appear in the leaves for different reasons. As the temperatures fall and the daylight hours lessen, a tree is no longer able to collect enough sunlight for growth. Furthermore,  a tree with its leaves still attached is more likely to be pulled over by the wind, and leaves also cause water loss during a season when much of the water needed by the plant is frozen. Therefore, deciduous trees fall into dormancy during the winter. The leaves, which harvested the sunlight and turned it into food, no longer have enough hours of daylight to sustain themselves.The main chemical which helped the plant to photosynthesise, chlorophyll, is what makes the leaves look green. When this ceases to be produced, the other orange and yellow pigments, normally masked by the green colour, can be seen. These pigments are beta-carotenoids, the same chemicals that make egg yolks yellow and carrots orange, and in some plants these are the dominant pigments all year round – think of some alders and Japanese maples, for example. At the same time as the colour change occurs, a layer of corky cells grow in the stem of each leaf, which causes abscission – the process by which the leaf detaches from the tree.

Red pigments are a different story. These are not hidden by the green pigments of summer, but are produced by the tree when about half of its chlorophyll has been used up. The pigments are called anthocyanins, and they are related to the breakdown of the sugars that the plants need. We can also find these pigments in cranberries, cherries and other fruits. Bright, cold days and chilly, but not freezing nights are thought to encourage the production of these scarlet and purple pigments. In most forests only 10% of the trees contain these pigments to any extent, but in New England and in parts of Canada up to 70% of the trees are full of anthocyanins – maples, sweetgums, dogwoods and oaks are amongst the species which can put on a spectacular show. Where present, these pigments can combine with the newly exposed yellows and oranges of the beta-carotenoids to produce a show of such unworldly beauty that it feels as if you are walking through a hallucinated landscape.

And when all this is past, we are left with the dead leaves of autumn, a pleasure in themselves as we scuff and rustle through them. The brown and copper shades that are left when everything else has faded are the true colour of the cell walls once everything else has past.

And after that? On the pavements you might see the ghosts of leaves, the shadow-outline that gradually fades like the after-image of the chrysanthemum burst of a Roman Candle. Winter is nearly upon us, but the trees are not going quietly. Just like the night that my dad accidentally set fire to a whole box of fireworks, the trees are putting on an exuberant final show, an over-the-top display of colour as if to make up for the dark, cold, wet nights to come. Let’s take a deep breath of chilly late October air, and enjoy the last great tree-show of the year.

 

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 am cheating a little this week as the photos of the spear thistle that I am including come from a field close to where my parents live, in Milborne St Andrew, Dorset. But as this is a wide-spread and abundant ‘weed’, I’m sure there is some within my half-mile, I just have to find it. Plus, as I discovered it during a walk which included almost falling down a rabbit hole and having to vault a five-barred gate (not so easy when one is an unfit townie who last had to climb over a gate thirty years ago) I was determined to feature it. Never let it be said that Bugwoman doesn’t go the extra mile. Well, half-mile anyway.

And, really, who could resist this plant? Yes, it’s what my plant book calls ‘viciously spiny’. Yes, it’s another one of those ‘Injurious Weeds’ in the 1959 Weeds Act. Yes, it grows in ‘rough and grassy places’. But the flowers are so magenta that they make me squint to look at them, and it is the national flower of Scotland, to boot – it was said to be a warning to landlords and others not to meddle with the privileges of the people. This is a plant that is tough and beautiful at the same time, and is also an absolute magnet for bees and butterflies during the summer, and for finches in the winter.

Even in October, a ladybird was sitting happily on the leaves, basking in the autumn sunshine and not minding the prickles at all.

How can you tell that what you’re looking at is a Spear Thistle, rather than some other less derided plant? Well, the spines on the bracts (the thing that the flower emerges from) are easily as long and sharp as any other thistle, and, in the right light, you can tell that they are tipped with yellow (you can just about see this in the ladybird picture above). The leaves are dark green with a pale midrib (again you can see this in the picture above). Furthermore, the stem apparently has ‘discontinuous spiny wings’, rather like a kraken one imagines. You can just about make them out (I think) in the photo below.

Spear thistle seems to be particularly fond of old, over-grazed fields, probably because most large animals won’t eat it, and so it survives, in great stands, when everything else has been nibbled down to the roots. It sets seed with great vigour, which is one reason why it made it onto the Weeds Act. However, it does not spread by the roots as creeping thistle does, and is therefore easier to control if you catch it before it those great fluffy clumps of thistledown start to fly past in the breeze.

Spear thistle is a native plant, and so we have had lots of time to get to know it. It has also spread to North America and Australia where it has set up home with typical thistle zeal.  It can be eaten – the stems can be peeled and boiled, and roots of young plants can also be added to a vegetable soup or hotpot, though they are described as tasting ‘bland’. A word of warning, however: they contain a lot of inulin, the same chemical that can make the after effects of eating Jerusalem Artichokes such a noisy, pungent and uncomfortable affair.

The genus name Cirsium is derived from the either the Greek word kirsion (a kind of medicinal thistle found in Greece) or the word kirsos which means a swollen vein. It should come as no surprise therefore that spear thistle has been used to prepare an ointment for piles. It has been used for a whole range of other purposes as well, however, particularly as a decoction for joint pain.

One use that has been picked up on both sides of the Atlantic is as tinder – the fluffy thistledown is an excellent fire-starter. The Cherokee people also used the thistledown to for the flights of their blow darts.

What is amazing to me, as I continue to hunt out Wednesday Weeds, is how how varied the plants within a single family can be. For example, spear thistle is part of the Asteraceae, or daisy family. Which also includes cornflowers, knapweed, chicory, all the hawkbits and hawkweeds and dandelions and our friend from last week, Bristly Oxtongue. It includes goldenrod, the fleabanes (Mexican and Canadian amongst others), sowthistle, tansy and feverfew. It embraces yarrow and hemp agrimony, fox and cubs and pineappleweed, the mayweeds and chamomile and a whole raft of ragworts. To come to terms with the Asteraceae is a challenge in itself, without all the rest of the plant families. Although in the UK we have an impoverished flora compared to the rest of Europe (the most recent Ice Age did for many of our plant species, though we are blessed with more than our share of mosses and liverworts) there is more than enough to keep the Wednesday Weed going for a good few years. Which is a relief, as every week I find myself more and more enthused about the plant community that’s all around us. There is so much still to discover and learn! Thank you for coming along with me.

Photo credits.

Unless otherwise stated, all photos are copyright Vivienne Palmer.

The Goldfinch photo is by Andreas Trepte (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

The thistledown photo is by John Tann from Sydney, Australia (Spear thistle) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], 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, this week our subject, bristly oxtongue, is a truly ‘weedy’ weed, a plant of rough ground and disturbed soil. As its name suggests, it is a plant whose leaves are covered in swollen, blister-like spots. From each blister a little hairy hook emerges, which makes it as rough as ‘an ox’s tongue’. As I have never been licked by an ox, I cannot verify the accuracy of the plant’s name, but as that bovine  organ is used for tearing up harsh grasses, I can imagine that it would need something hook-like to give some traction. At any rate, these little blisters are indicative that, amongst all the yellow-flowered members of the daisy family, we are looking at bristly oxtongue.

Bristly oxtongue is an ‘ancient introduction’ – this means that it arrived in the UK before 1500. It has also found its way to North America, where it has quickly become a member of the Invasive Weeds lists of several states.  The plant is originally from the Mediterranean, which suggests that it could have arrived into the UK with the Romans, possible secreted away in grain stores. However, there could be another reason that this somewhat unprepossessing plant ended up here, and the clue is in its genus name, Helminthotheca. ‘Helmine’ refers to worms, and while it could be a reference to the shape of the fruit, it is more likely that bristly oxtongue was used as a treatment for intestinal worms. Whether the bristles acted as a kind of internal scouring pad, or whether there was some chemical attribute is unclear.

Bristly oxtongue is so prevalent in Buckinghamshire that it has been given the nickname ‘Milton Keynes Weed’. It is also known as ‘Langley-Beef’, a corruption of the French ‘langue du boeuf’ (oxtongue). Although the young leaves are said to be edible, they look as if they would be rather problematic, what with all those spines and blisters, and I suspect you’d be better off sticking to dandelions for your salad.

Like many plants in the daisy (Asteraceae) family, bristly oxtongue provides nectar for visiting butterflies and moths, and cover and food for many other invertebrates, such as the tiny beetle in the photograph below. This little creature was as shiny as a drop of mercury, and is, I think, some kind of flower beetle – we think of bees and butterflies when we think of pollinators, but flies and beetles also perform an important role.

Why, I wonder, does the bristly oxtongue have bristles in the first place? Most structures of this kind have developed to deter grazing animals, and I suspect that this is part of the story here too. But why is this plant so well protected, compared to all the hawkbeards and dandelions and sowthistles to which it is so closely related? The only clue that I can find is that unlike many other plants in the family, bristly oxtongue has very sparse sap. Anyone who has snapped the stem of a dandelion knows that it will quickly ooze a prolific and rather unpleasant white latex-like liquid, which is surely unpleasant to eat. Maybe the bristles have developed as a deterrent because the sap alone would not be enough. Who knows? But one thing that I do know is that, although the leaves are ugly to our eyes, the flowers, with their stamen like little calligraphy-squiggles, are a welcome food-source for passing creatures of all kinds, who notice them as even as we pass by without a second glance.

Photo Credits

Leaf hair macro photo by Derek Lilly (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode). More of his photos here (Jusben on morguefile.com)

Harford’s Sulphur Butterfly on Bristly Oxtongue by By Davefoc (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons