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…..

Broad-leaved Dock (Rumex obtusifolius)

Dear Readers, on Sunday I made a brief foray into Coldfall Wood to see how autumn was shaping up – after being away in Canada for a fortnight, and then working away from home for a week, I was eager to fit in a quick visit. The area around the winter pond was full of bulrushes and Michaelmas daisies, but the dominant plant was this one, broad-leaved dock.

I know nothing about docks of any kind, except that they are a) the cure for stinging nettle hives if the leaves are rubbed onto the affected area (my dad assures me that dock always grows close to nettles for just this purpose), and b) that they are long-rooted and hence a nightmare to dig out once they become established. My research for this piece has revealed that the taproot can be up to five feet long, which makes me wish that I’d thought about tackling the dock next to my rowan tree a bit earlier. Like, several years ago.  But here in Coldfall Wood, in the damp claggy soil of the pond, the broad-leaved docks seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. Their rusty-red seedheads have a kind of ramshackle beauty about them.

One way to tell broad-leaved dock from the other members of the family is to have a look at the leaves. At the base, they are distinctly heart-shaped – the leaves of most other docks are strap-like. The fresh young leaves can be eaten like spinach, although grazing animals will avoid them, and the taste is said to be unpleasant. Furthermore, the plant is high in oxalic acid, so eating it should be avoided by those prone to kidney stones or joint problems. The leaves have been used to wrap cheese and butter (it is believed that this will keep the food fresher for longer), and adding a few dock leaves to a pot of water is said to make it come to the boil more quickly. This last belief is rather intriguing: when I have more time, maybe I’ll try a scientific experiment in the kitchen to see if there is something about dock that lowers the boiling point of water, or whether throwing anything into a pot of water would work as well – I’ve certainly seen water suddenly boil over when I’ve added salt or oil. The world is full of mysteries, to be sure.

This is a native plant in the UK, but like so many others it can now be found in North America too. Even in the UK it is designated as an ‘injurious weed’ in the 1959 Weeds Act (who knew there was such a thing?), and it is one of five weeds (the others are Curly Dock, Common Ragwort, Spear Thistle and Creeping Thistle) that the Secretary of State can insist are controlled even on private land. We have already mentioned the plants’ deep tap-root, but as it can produce 60,000 seeds wind-dispersed seeds per year, and as these seeds can survive for up to 50 years (due to a chemical that prevents microbial breakdown), I can see how it could be a problem on cultivated land. However, in my experience this is a plant that pops up in damp, claggy, over-grazed fields, where the competing plants have already given up the ghost. The plant is a symptom, rather than a cause.

In spite of it being part of this ‘hall of fame’ however, broad-leaved dock has a variety of medicinal uses, in addition to its efficacy with nettle stings (to which I can personally attest). A tea made from dock root was said to cure boils, and the leaves have been used to soothe burns and abrasions. The Iroquois Indians used a tea made from the plant as a contraceptive (though how successful this was is not known). The seeds have been used as a cure for tuberculosis and stomach infections, and also as a spice, although the recipes that I’ve seen are for curled dock (Rumex crispus) rather than for broad-leaved dock.

Broad-leaved dock is a member of the Polygonaceae family, which includes two other plants that have already been featured on the blog:  Redshank, and Japanese Knotweed. As you can see, it is a family of plants that can be problematic from a human point of view. I prefer to think of them as a family of survivors and opportunists, who will flourish when most other plants would fail. When I look at a stand of broad-leaved dock, I wonder if I am looking at a potential post-apocalyptic plant, one that will be here long after we are all gone. For some reason, I find its resilience strangely reassuring.

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…..

Common Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris)

Dear Readers, this week I have decided to celebrate a ‘weed’ that I have seen a hundred yards from my house in East Finchley, and also in the ravines in Central Toronto – Common toadflax. What a world traveller this plant is. In Canada, it is also known as Butter and Eggs, possibly a reflection on the delicious but dairy-heavy breakfasts that are available everywhere in that noble country. When I was a small child, my brother and I  would pluck the flowers from Snapdragons in my grandmother’s garden and chase one another around whilst pretending to ‘bite’ with the blooms. It comes as no surprise that Common toadflax is also used around the world for the same kinds of capers, and that many of its other names refer to its shape – Calve’s Nose, Puppy Dog’s Mouths, and my favourite, Squeezejaws.

Common toadflax is native to Europe and most of Eurasia, but was introduced to North America about 300 years ago, and is listed in as a noxious weed in several provinces and states. It is certainly a tough, perennial plant, which can even survive hard-pruning, but it is useful for pollinators. Its flowers need a heavy insect to open them, and so, like our domesticated antirrhinums (which are part of the same family) it is a great favourite with bumblebees.

Common toadflax has been used to produce a yellow dye for cloth in Germany, and was boiled in milk as a flykiller in Sweden. It has been used medicinally for liver problems, maybe because its yellow colour indicated that it might be useful against jaundice. Its flowers were also used to make an eye ointment. Although the plant is not native to North America, it has been used by the Iroqouis as an ingredient in a potion against enchantment, and by the Chippewa people to counteract congestive diseases. There is something about its elegant shape and delicate colours that makes it look as if it would be health-giving, to my eye at least.

One of the most delightful alternative names for Common toadflax is ‘Imprudent Lawyer’ (sometimes written as ‘Impudent Lawyer’). How on earth this innocent flower came to be associated with the legal profession is anybody’s guess, but I fear that the plant has been given this name because of the size of its ‘mouth’. And while we are on the subject of names, ‘Brideweed’ and ‘Bridewort’ are yet more ways to refer to Linaria vulgaris. Is this because the freshness of the flowers made it perfect for a bride’s bouquet or is it, as described in Andy’s Northern Ontario Wildflowers because the plant was used as a cure for a pig disease called ‘Bride?’ The explanation, as with so many of these things, is lost in history, but how I love that one ‘weed’ can have so many different local titles. It seems to me that we name the things that we love and notice, and on that basis, Common toadflax is a very well loved plant indeed.

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…..

Hoary Mustard (Hirschfeldia incana)

Dear Readers, the brassica or cruciform family of plants is a tricky one for the novice botanist. All those different rockets and cresses and mustards always make me scratch my head and run for help. So, when I found this week’s plant growing on a patch of disturbed ground by the edge of Coldfall Wood, I wondered about getting the identity correct. Fortunately our weed this week, Hoary Mustard, can be distinguished from its many relatives by having seed pods which some people compare to clothes pegs in shape, but which remind me of old-fashioned fountain pens. This has given the plant one of its alternative common names, Short-pod Mustard.

Hoary Mustard seedpods (By Harry Rose from South West Rocks, Australia (Hirschfeldia incana fruit3) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Like all of the cabbage family, the leaves are edible, and taste a little like rocket. They can also be used as a spinach substitute. It’s also one of the many plants that are used in Greek to make Horta, a cooked vegetable dish familiar to anyone who’s spent too much time sitting outside a taverna with a glass of ouzo.

Hoary Mustard was first recorded in the wild in 1837 (it comes originally from the Mediterranean) but in recent years it has been spreading from its heartland in London, and can now be found around the Severn Estuary, in East Anglia and in north west of England. It’s currently absent from Scotland and most of Ireland.

The word ‘Hoary’ probably refers to the grey-green colour of the foliage – this property is also picked up in the species name, ‘incana’, which is the Latin word for ‘grey’. In Australia, where it’s considered to be a noxious weed, the plant is known as Buchan Weed, probably because it grows in abundance along the banks of the Buchan river in Victoria.

The plant is also occasionally the larval foodplant of the Orange-tip Butterfly, who generally prefers to lay her eggs upon Garlic Mustard, but will manage with other plants if her favourite is not about.

Orange-tip butterfly on another brassica, Oil-seed rape© Copyright Steve Daniels and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

So, here we have Hoary Mustard, another one of those leggy yellow-flowered plants that pop up as soon as the ground is dug up, and which go about their business largely unremarked. And yet, these plants are the closely relatives of so many of our foodplants – broccoli and cabbage, rocket and turnip, radish and even that superfood of the moment, kale. For the  foods with a devilish hint of sulphur, or a tang of pepperiness, I give thanks to the wild brassicas, the plants that started it all.

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…..

Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum)

Dear Readers, I wonder if there was ever a plant quite as ramshackle-looking as Hemp Agrimony when it’s past its prime. The flower heads looks as if they are in need of a good comb, and when the seeds come the overall effect is of a gigantic thistle with bedhead. But if we look at the photograph above, we can see a hoverfly who is in no way put off by the general air of untidiness. For, of all the flowers that has self-seeded around my pond, Hemp Agrimony is among the most popular.

Like many plants whose blossom is made up of numerous small flowers, Hemp Agrimony’s nectar can be easily accessed by the more non-specialised pollinators, such as flies and hoverflies. And the multiplicity of blooms means that there is a lot of food in one place. Honeybees also have a great fondness for the plant, and when it’s sunny the bees drift drowsily over the dirty-pink flowers, which Richard Mabey  compared to ‘whipped strawberry mousse’ in his book Flora Britannica.

Hemp Agrimony is a member of the Asteraceae, or Daisy family. You might expect that it has some psychotropic properties, what with it having the species name cannabinum, but this simply refers to the shape of the leaves. This doesn’t stop the occasional perfectly innocent Hemp Agrimony seedling being impounded of course, because botanical knowledge is not necessarily the first thing that they teach at Police Academy. Richard Mabey  mentions that young Horse Chestnut trees have been taken into custody because their leaves also have a strange resemblance to the true Cannabis plant, at least if you’ve never seen one of the latter.

Hemp Agrimony is a native plant in the UK, and like so many plants that have been here for a while, it has some interesting folklore. One alternative name for the plant is ‘Holy Rope’ – the leaves of Hemp, which this plant resembles, were used to make rope, and it was believed that such a rope was used to bind Christ before his crucifixion. A more day-to-day belief was that if bread was placed on a bed of Hemp Agrimony leaves, it wouldn’t go mouldy. The plant has also been used medicinally, especially in the Netherlands where it was for jaundice, as a blood-purifier and as a cure for scurvy. It is said to be toxic, however, and it has been noticed that the iron-stomached goat is the only creature that will eat it.

Hemp Agrimony likes damp, shady places, and so is very at home beside the pond in my north-facing garden. It’s a perennial too, so all it needs is some cutting back to stop it becoming too much of an eyesore. I put the hollow stems beside the shed, where they will hopefully be used by hibernating insects. And next year, without any bother at all, it will be back as a late summer feast for pollinators. I am very happy to live with its wayward habit and general shagginess when the reward is such an abundance of insects and other invertebrates.

Resources this week include: Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey

The Plant Lives website

The A Modern Herbal website

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…..

Large-flowered Evening Primrose (Oenothera glazioviana)

Dear Readers, during the day Evening Primrose can appear to be a rather shambolic plant. Its flowers, which emerge gradually and advance up the stem, can seem limp and unkempt, and the effect is of a plant which is lank and ‘weedy’.

Large-flowered Evening Primrose outside my Aunt Hilary’s house in Somerset

And yet, as darkness falls, the plant undergoes a transformation. The flowers raise their heads and open their petals, so that they can be pollinated by the moths that are attracted to their faint perfume. I was fascinated by the difference between the day-time flower and its night-time exuberance, and I’m not the only one – for a photo sequence showing how the blooms go from closed to fully open in ten minutes, have a look at Rob’s Flowers.

Because it attracts nocturnal insects, Evening Primrose is also a great plant if you would like to be visited by bats, something I would certainly recommend. Nothing beats sipping a glass of something cold on a summer evening while the flittery shapes of pipistrelles swoop past.

A quick look at the design of the plant gives us a clue to its family: Large-flowered Evening Primrose is not a primrose, but yet another member of the Willowherb family.The stigma of Evening Primrose flowers is an ‘X’ shape, as you can see in the photo above. This particular species of Evening Primrose also has red sepals (the part of the flower that protects the bud), as you can see in the photo below.

The Evening Primrose family probably originated in Central America and Mexico, but it is a plant that hybridises extremely easily, and produces many variations. This species was introduced to the UK as a garden plant in the seventeenth century, but was seen ‘in the wild’ very shortly after this. It is a primary coloniser of disturbed land, and indeed one popped up beside my pond last year following my attempts at renovation. It is a biennial plant – in the first year, there will just be a rosette of leaves, followed by the flowers in year two. However, it doesn’t seem to be persistent – it is quickly out-competed by other plants. Its delicate appearance is matched by its ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ habit, so, like so many things, we need to appreciate it while it’s here.

The genus name of the Evening Primroses, Oenothera, may come from the Greek for ‘Donkey Catcher’, which is a little puzzling as the plants are native to the New World, which had no wild horses prior to the Spaniards. The family name for all the Willowherbs, Onagraceae, also has an equine connection: it means ‘food of the Onager’, an onager being a handsome and athletic species of Asiatic wild ass, which in the wild can run at up to 64 mph. As it has been hunted nearly to extinction, I suspect that these days it has very little chance to graze on willowherbs of any kind.

A captive onager, with no Willowherbs in sight…(“Rostov-on-Don Zoo Persian onager IMG 5268 1725” by Alexxx1979 – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rostov-on-Don_Zoo_Persian_onager_IMG_5268_1725.jpg#/media/File:Rostov–Don_Zoo_Persian_onager_IMG_5268_1725.jpg)

The reason that most of us have heard of Evening Primrose, of course, is because it is a source of Gamma-linoleic acid, or GLA. Evening Primrose oil was originally used by Native Americans to treat ‘swelling of the body’, and became a popular folk-remedy in Europe, known as ‘the King’s Cure-all’ However, it has been a controversial plant, having been taken off the list of recommended drugs for dermatitis back in 2002, and rejected by the American Cancer Society as a treatment for cancer or, indeed, anything else. However, I remember taking Evening Primrose capsules for PMT when I was younger, and thinking that it helped, though whether this was Primrose or Placebo is open to discussion. There are also studies showing that GLA may help with neuropathic pain. It does act as a blood-thinner, however, so anyone who is already taking such medication should proceed with particular care.

The roots of Evening Primrose can be boiled and eaten, and the buds are also said to be edible. If you would like some recipes for Evening Primrose Fritters, and for Roasted Winter Vegetables including Evening Primrose root, have a look at the wonderful Sacred Earth website here, and do let me know how you get on! However, Evening Primrose is not a common plant in my half-mile territory, and so I will be leaving it for the moths, and the bats that feed on them.

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…..

Spear-leaved Orache (Atriplex prostrata)

Dear Readers, today I took a walk to Muswell Hill Playing Fields, which are on the edge of Coldfall Wood. Earlier this year, there were several areas which turned into quagmire, the claggy mud coming up to the top of the dog-walkers’ wellington boots. As a result, the council sent in some heavy machinery to dig out the worst areas and replace the soil. Well, I have no idea exactly what they replaced it with, but both areas are now three feet deep in a very impressive selection of ‘weeds’. At the head of the rush are great stands of Annual Mercury and Redshank and some Pale Persicaria, plus some Scented Mayweed , but there are also some very fine Spear-leaved Orache (Atriplex prostrata).

This is an annual, native plant, a member of the Amaranthaceae family which includes Goosefoots, Oraches and many seaside plants. Spear-leaved Oraches are often found on the strand-line on beaches and on seawalls – like many other members of their family,  they have a very high tolerance for salt. But they are also found on disturbed soil, and you don’t get much more disturbed than completely replaced.

To distinguish Spear-leaved Orache from the many other members of the family (which includes the edible plants Good King Henry and Fat Hen), have a look at the leaves in the photo above. If the ‘spear’ shape is has a completely flat bottom edge, so that it looks rather like a triangle, you are most likely looking at a Spear-leaved Orache. Apparently the whole plant can turn red in autumn, so I will make sure to check.

The meaning of the word ‘Orache’ comes from the same root as the plant’s Latin family name, Atriplex, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary the meaning of both words is unknown. However, in A Modern Herbal, the word is said to be a corruption of Aurum, which means gold, and in this context referred to the use of the seeds, boiled with wine, to cure yellow jaundice. The plant is also said to be a cure for gout.

Let’s return to this question of salt for a moment. Whilst some members of the Orache/Goosefoot family are merely salt-tolerant, others are halophyles, which means that they positively enjoy salty environments. Amongst them are the Glassworts, better known to us as Samphires.

European Samphire (Salicornia europaea) (“Salicornia europaea MS 0802” by Marco Schmidt [1] – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salicornia_europaea_MS_0802.JPG#/media/File:Salicornia_europaea_MS_0802.JPG)

What is interesting to me is that even Spear-leaved Orache, which is not as well-adapted to coastal conditions as other members of the family, will change its habit if it finds itself beside the seaside. Here in North London, it grows erect, but on the seashore it will collapse and grow outwards instead of up, a much better adaptation to windy places. Plus, its leaves can become much fleshier, to help it to retain water. It is astonishing to me how variable some plants can be, and how over a few generations they can change themselves to be successful, taking advantage of whatever is happening. Anyone who doubts the reality of evolution should probably experiment by harvesting some Spear-leaved Orache seeds from a single plant, and planting some in their garden and some at the seaside, It would be interesting to see how long it would take them to start to differentiate.

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…..

Goat’s Rue (Galega officinalis)

Dear Readers, while I was walking in the Playing Fields at the edge of Coldfall Wood a few weeks ago, I saw a plant that I didn’t recognise. This in itself is not so strange – of the plants that surround me, I know only a tiny fraction, though my knowledge is improving all the time. But this plant looked like a member of the pea family, but grew like a bush. It was all on its own, and had delicate mauve flowers. How had I missed it before?

I hurried home to my plant books, and discovered that I was looking at Goat’s Rue. It is a member of the pea family, and is a naturalised species – it was first introduced from the Middle East by 1568 and was found in the wild by 1640. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey describes how it is extremely common around Sheffield, and how it might have spread:

‘A Sheffield miner told me that he remembered his father recounting how in the early part of this century horticultural traders used to work the poorer parts of the city suburbs selling garden plants which only just merited that description. They were aggressive species like tansy, Michaelmas daisy, feverfew and goat’s rue, all of which have naturalised widely in the city. He recalled his father purchasing Japanese knotweed and how friends were invited round to marvel at the spotted stem and attactive foliage and how the plant was later divided up for exchange’.

However, as I have started to delve into the history of Goat’s Rue, I have come to realise that this is no ‘ordinary’ weed. In fact, I’m starting to think that there is no such thing as an ‘ordinary’ weed, but this one is extraordinary. It’s Latin name, Galega, means ‘to bring on milk’, and it was used to increase milk supply in a variety of domestic animals, hence its common name. Nursing human mothers have also used the herb for this purpose, and a quick look on the internet shows that supplements containing this plant are available, along with recommendations for dosage using the whole plant. Personally, I would be extremely careful about using any plant that is known to have toxic effects (see below).

What fascinates me most, however, is Goat’s-Rue’s long association with the treatment of diabetes. One of the chemicals in the plant was long known to reduce blood-sugar, but the compounds themselves were toxic – they are said to cause ‘tracheal frothing, pulmonary oedema, hydrothorax, hypotension, paralysis and death‘. However a chemist, George Tanret, identified a slightly less toxic compound from the plant called galegine, and this was used as the basis for treatments during the 1920’s and 1930’s. The drug that is currently used to treat Type 2 diabetes, Metformin, is a synthesised form of the chemical that was discovered in Goat’s Rue, with the toxicity taken out. With two parents and a brother who all have diabetes, it makes me humble to look at this plant and realise that without it, they might not have had access to the drug that helped, initially at least, to keep their conditions under control. In a short paper in ‘Practical Diabetes International’ by C.J. Bailey and C Day, the authors have this to say:

‘Postscript of ironies

There are several ironies about metformin. In our high-tech era of drug discovery and development this first-line treatment for type 2 diabetes is little removed from a herbal remedy of the middle ages. Despite its chemical simplicity and detailed investigation, metformin continues to evade a complete exposé of its cellularactivity. While endless pharmacovigilance has monitored the safety profile of metformin, its natural ancestor,G. officinalis (known as Professor Weed in the USA) is a Class A Federal Noxious Weed in 35 states of America, and appears on the database of poisonous plants.’

This is not the only way that Goat’s Rue has been used. It has been used as a worm treatment for domestic animals, and also to treat plague victims. In the first case, I can imagine that its toxicity was a way of killing the parasites, providing the dosage was managed properly and didn’t kill the animal as well. As to the poor plague victim, I suppose that death by poisoning was the least of their worries.

The name ‘Goat’s Rue’ has been explained as either the result of its use to encourage milk production, or because of the unpleasant smell of its bruised leaves. I don’t find either of these ideas particularly conducive – I’d have thought that  a goat would be happy to be producing more milk for its kids (though admittedly not if it was stolen to feed humans), and the leaves don’t smell particularly goaty to me. But there we go. The reasons are lost in the proverbial mists of time. The North American nickname for the plant, Professor Weed, is said to be because it was originally introduced as a forage weed by the professorial body at the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station. Not only was it found to be less toothsome to the grazing animals than alfalfa, but it also ‘went native’ with a vengeance, hopping over the fence and spreading all over those wide open spaces. When a report that it had killed some sheep in Europe came in, an eradication programme which removed over 90% of the plant took place. Since then, it has bounced back, and the battle goes on.

Goat’s Rue has also been used as a replacement for rennet during cheese-making (and in fact yet another alternative name for the plant in the north of England is ‘Cheese-Rennet’). It is said to be useful if you are bitten by a snake. And, in experiments that no doubt resulted in the deaths of hundreds of mice, it has been shown to reduce obesity. Was there ever a poisonous plant with so many uses? And, furthermore, so many names?

In German folklore, Goat’s Rue is known as one of the Holy Hay plants, along with Sanfoin and Alfalfa. This is because it was said to be one of the plants laid in the manger in Bethlehem. When Jesus was laid down amongst the hay, it is said to have spontaneously burst into flower. And, whatever your religion, what a lovely image this is to end with.

Photo taken in 1948 by David Sweetland’s father

Dear Readers, my call for any information about Rosebay Willowherb during the Second World War has produced this wonderful  photo, taken in 1948, from my friend and fellow blogger David Sweetland. Here’s what he says about it:

‘Attached is a photo my father took in 1948 to the north east of St. Paul’s looking across the area that is now the Barbican. A good view of Rosebay Willowherb in the foreground. Did not know the name of the plant until I read your post today.

I remember him telling me that this (along with many other plants) very quickly spread over all the bombed land across the City. The bombed and burnt buildings were quickly cleared leaving large areas with low walls and open cellars and the plants quickly colonised these.’

David’s blog A London Inheritance is both a celebration of the London captured in his father’s photographs, and a fascinating exploration of how it is today. I heartily recommend it.