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 we have something of a mystery on our hands. Growing at the edge of Coldfall Wood is what appears to be a Firethorn (Pyracantha) bush. This native plant of southern Europe through to south-east Asia is a common garden plant, but the clue to its normal form is in the name. Firethorn normally has the most impressive array of thorns of any common shrub, but this  individual appears to be thornless. What is going on?

I used to live in Chadwell Heath, which is in the hinterland between Essex and Greater London. I had two Pyracantha bushes, one with yellow berries, and one with orange ones, much like the one in the picture below.

As you might expect, my garden was wild and overgrown by suburban standards, but it was a home to sparrows and bumblebees, toads and foxes. The sparrows in particular would chirp from the depths of the Firethorn, safe from predators, for none would dare the Firethorn’s spiky tracery. When I sold the house, there was a mix up with the moving vans, and we were marooned after the transaction was completed. The new owners took possession, but we had nowhere to go while we waited for transport to move all our stuff. We had to watch as the new owners of the house started to hack the garden about. For reasons which puzzle me even now, the new man of the house took his shirt off before he started in on my beloved Firethorn. As anyone who has ever encountered one knows, pyracantha fights back with a vengeance. Within half an hour, the plant was half its previous size, but its attacker had so many cuts on his torso that he looked as if he’d been whipped. The Firethorn might have been going down, but it left its opponent bloodied and resentful.

Pyracantha has many advantages as a wildlife garden plant, and has been cultivated in the UK since the Fifteenth century. We have already mentioned its thorns, so useful as a deterrent to would-be burglars. Its flowers attract bees, and its berries attract birds. In fact, the fruits can be such a draw that the municipal planting of Pyracantha and its close relative, Cotoneaster in supermarket car parks sometimes summons that most colourful and iconic of winter birds, the Waxwing.

Of course, none of this explains exactly why this thornless, berryless, flowerless specimen has popped up in the wood.

We have seen numerous examples of plants who have escaped from gardens and established themselves (no doubt with great glee) in the ‘wild’. And as Coldfall Wood backs onto many gardens, it would be a simple thing for a passing blackbird to gobble down a berry, perch in a hornbeam tree and deposit the seed amongst the fallen leaves. But living in the deep shade of the uncoppiced part of the wood is not ideal for a plant that needs at least some direct sunlight. I have a hypothesis that, because thorns are expensive for a plant to produce, maybe this individual is putting all its energy into producing leaves at the moment. Maybe it is too young and innocent to have thorns. Or maybe, in my infinite wisdom, I have misidentified it and it is, in fact, some errant Cotoneaster (though my botanist friends agree that it is a Pyracantha).

Not everybody is fond of Pyracantha.  Like Hawthorn, its flowers are said to smell a little like sex, and so it has come to have something of a wicked reputation. Indeed, it is said that some churches will not have Firethorn berries included as part of the Harvest Festival flower arrangements because it is associated with the Devil. Terrible woman that I am, this makes me admire it even more. Who could not love this fierce, beautiful, generous plant? It is as much a force of nature as a tiger or a kestrel. And in the uncertain, tumultuous days ahead, maybe this is exactly what our struggling pollinators and birds will need.

Sources this week include the Plantlore website, the Plant Lives website and Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica.

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…..

What a diffident plant Annual Mercury is, growing away on disturbed land without any flamboyant flowers or bright foliage to catch the eye. And yet, in the south of England at least, it pops up everywhere. It is a member of the spurge family  (and so related to Sun Spurge), and has a similar milky-white sap if the stems are broken. I found this patch growing just opposite the tube station, and it seems to be doing very well. The plant is dioecious, which means that it has male and female flowers on different plants. Most of the ones on my patch were male, with the flowers held within tall spikes.

And here are the female flowers, along with the burr-like fruits.

I remember first meeting this plant when I was about nine years old. We had recently acquired an allotment in Manor Park, East London, with a great view of the Victorian gas holders at the nearby gas works. When we first got our plot, it was waist-deep in brambles and stinging nettles, and it was a good while before it was cleared and we could get down to planting. Annual Mercury was such a doddle to keep under control compared with some of the other weeds – it pulled up easily, and didn’t draw blood, or raise blisters. But it was a stealthy little devil, popping up as soon as we turned our backs. What I didn’t realise is that the seeds are often carried away by ants as a food store for when times get hard. Some of the seeds will then germinate in the ants’ nest, in perfect conditions. No wonder it can become so prolific.

Annual Mercury has been used as an emollient ointment, and historically has been used as a purgative, diuretic and anti-syphilitic. There is some debate about how it got its name – for Pliny, it was because the plant was discovered by Mercury, the messenger of the gods. On the Poison Garden website, the author suggests that

“Perhaps, as an attractive, athletic man travelling widely to deliver the gods’ messages, Mercury had need of its properties.”

The plant is also eaten, boiled, in Germany – it is said to taste a little like spinach, but as it is poisonous (though not as poisonous as its lookalike, Dog’s Mercury (Mercurialis perennis)), I would be inclined to give it a miss. I would hate to think of my readers dropping like flies. Also, in France the plant is known as Mercuriale ou la Foirolle, with la Foire meaning diarrhoea. You have been warned.

In spite of its toxicity, the plant has been fed to pigs in France (though maybe it’s cooked first), and the seeds are eaten by Bullfinches. I would be very happy to have a garden full of Annual Mercury if I was visited by Bullfinches.

Annual Mercury is also known as ‘Girl’s Mercury’ and ‘Boy’s Mercury’, which intrigues me. According to Pliny, the plant could be used by a pregnant mother to select the sex of her child. The author of the Poison Garden website wonders if Pliny is referring to the two different species of Mercury (Annual and Dog’s), and I wonder if there was an understanding that Annual Mercury could be either male or female, and if the mother-to-be would choose her ‘poison’ accordingly. At any rate, this undemonstrative ‘weed’ has a long history of interactions with us, and with the animals in its habitat. I will never look at it in the same way again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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, the challenge of identifying plants which are not in flower continues this week with this wonderful plant. I found it growing on a long-neglected grave in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, and with the help of the good people at the British Wildflowers Facebook group, I discovered that it is Germander Speedwell, not Ground Ivy or any of a number of other possibilities. How do I know? Well, the stems of plants in the Speedwell family are round, unlike the square stems of the Deadnettle family, and also, a close look at the stem of the plant shows that there are two rows of long white hairs on either side of the stem. Of course, if it had been in flower there would have been no problem.

There is so much to love about this little plant. I love the deeply-veined, softly-triangular leaves. I love the intense blue of the flowers, with their two stamen that look for all the world like the antennae of bees ( all speedwells have only two stamen). Perhaps most of all, I love that because the flowers wilt very quickly after picking, it is named ‘Men’s Faithfulness’ in German. The flowers also drop from the stems very easy, giving the plant the alternative names of ‘Farewell’ and ‘Goodbye’.  I imagine the robust heroines of Wagnerian opera looking at a drooping, flowerless posy of speedwell in much the same way as I do when presented with a bunch of yellowing chrysanthemums from the garage on Valentine’s Day. This is one plant that is definitely best appreciated where it is found.

Normally, the Germander Speedwell is fertilized by flies, but the flowers will close during the rain, which means that the pollinators can’t get in. If the downpour lasts for long enough, the plant will self-pollinate, which is a handy tactic when times are hard, though not good for the species long-term. Still, the weather in every summer is something of a lottery, and it’s always good to have something to fall back on when times are hard.

Germander Speedwell is also known as Cats-eye, or Birds-eye, probably as a result of its white centre spot. But the name Speedwell relates to the belief that it was a blessing for those about to go on a journey, and in Ireland they were sometimes sewn onto the jackets of travellers for good luck. They also have a reputation as a gout cure, and as a vulnerary ( a healer of wounds). There is certainly something very uplifting about those pure blue flowers, but even without them I found it a most endearing plant. Although the person whose grave it covers has long since been forgotten, it felt as if the Speedwell was wishing them good luck on their journey, wherever the destination might be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 in Coldfall Wood last week I found this plant lurking by the Everglades, a winter pond where the water level is now nearly up to the boardwalk.

I must admit I was stumped. There is something a bit privet-like about it, but I had a feeling I’d seen the plant somewhere before.

And then I remembered. I’d seen it in supermarket car parks! A little research was in order and, with the aid of my botanist friends, I discovered that it was Box-Leaved Honeysuckle. It is being used in a lot of municipal planting to replace Box (Buxus sempervirens), as there is a lot of Box Blight about, a fungal disease which turns the leaves brown and leaves big bare patches. Members of the honeysuckle family are immune to Box Blight, and so have become very popular.

Of course, this doesn’t explain what my plant is doing, bang-smack in the middle of a wood.

We normally associate Honeysuckle with the golden-flowered climbing plant, spilling its scent into the warm summer air. But there are 180 species, of which over a hundred, including my plant, originated in China. Box-leaved Honeysuckle was brought to England in about 1900, and has been recorded ‘in the wild’ since about 1950. So this is a neophyte, a newbie, a brand new addition to our semi-wild flora.

‘If I were you, I’d dig it up’ said one of my botanical correspondents.

But here I have a problem. This is an urban wood, surrounded by gardens, allotments and a cemetery. If I start digging up all the plants that aren’t native, I will need a veritable army of minions with spades to help me. There’s the cherry laurel, the horse chestnuts (well, they’re Roman), the sycamores, the stray pyracantha and even, hidden away, a teeny-tiny monkey puzzle tree. Plus, it would be a battle against overwhelming odds, as new plants are ‘jumping over the fence’ all the time. Finally, with climate change, everything is up for grabs. Plants that used to thrive are likely to start having problems. Plants that used to struggle may seize their moment. Each will bring opportunities and challenges for the creatures that rely on them.

Box-leaved Honeysuckle has several things in its favour. It provides cover for a variety of birds and small mammals, and is planted as such for game birds in some parts of the country. No less than 347 species of butterflies and moths worldwide feed on the leaves of the different Honeysuckle species, and the berries are popular with all kinds of thrushes (which probably explains how my plant got to this spot in the wood). Am I going to reject this largesse on the grounds that the plant is in the wrong place?

It would be different, I think, if Coldfall Wood was that rarest of things, a pristine environment, or if Box-leaved Honeysuckle really presented some kind of threat to the ecology of the wood. But my guess is that it will enhance, rather than detract from, the biodiversity of the area. I look forward to seeing if it will flower, in spite of the deep shade, and if it will produce berries. It seems something of a free spirit, relaxing under a hornbeam tree instead of being blasted with diesel fumes in a supermarket car park. I find myself wishing it luck.

 

 

 

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 the search for a Wednesday Weed sent me in a completely different direction from my usual route. On a rainy, blustery day, I headed off towards our local primary school, to see if the playing fields there had anything growing that I had not already covered. In vain I peered through the fence at the turf, until my eyes refocused and I realised that I’d been looking at my subject all along. For what is more surprising on a January day than a plant that is already in full flower, ready to reproduce when everything else is still in bed?

The male Hazel catkin has the delightful colour of a sherbet-lemon. With every damp gust, invisible clouds of pollen are released. With any luck, they will be captured on by the red female flowers  who wait with open arms, a little like sea anemones.

It is these female flowers that will eventually turn into hazelnuts. They will promptly be nibbled off by squirrels or, if we are extremely lucky, by dormice. Kentish Cobnuts, with their creamy white interiors and little hats of pale green, are a domesticated variety of the hazelnut, but the wild variety is perfectly good to eat, and was, indeed, one of the staple foods of prehistoric peoples. Hazel has grown in the UK for at least the last 6000 years, and only birch was quicker to colonise the country after the last Ice Age. The spread of the plant throughout Europe has been attributed to its being carried from place to place by humans. After all, nuts are a concentrated, portable form of protein and carbohydrate. What better food if you’re embarking on a (very) long walk?

The Hazel growing beside the school playing fields has turned itself into a small tree, but historically it is much coppiced, the stems being used for a wide variety of purposes. They are extremely flexible, and can be turned back upon themselves or knotted. They were woven together to form both hurdles and fences, and were also used as the framework for wattle and daub walls. They are still used in thatching, to hold the thatch down, because the hazel stems can be bent through 180 degrees. A more modern use is in the creation of sound screens alongside motorways.

A plant which has lived alongside us in these islands since the very beginning, Hazel has many associations with Druid and Celtic beliefs. Its stems have been used for water divination, and for the making of shepherds’ crooks and pilgrims’ staffs. A Hazel tree was believed to be the home of Bile Ratha, the poetic fairy of Irish folklore, and it was believed that eating hazelnuts would bestow wisdom. On Dartmoor, Hazel was said to be the cure for snake and dog bites. And, to prevent toothache, you simply have to carry a double-hazelnut in your pocket at all times.

The catkins are shivering in the wintry blast, and so am I. Parents are tearing past me in their cars, hurrying to pick their children up from the school gate and giving me a decidedly funny look as I stand in the rain, peering through the fence with my camera.  I wonder if any of the children will get the chance to admire the catkins, the first sign that the long dark is finally loosening its grip. I hope that someone will take the time to show the little ones the ‘lambs tails’, and explain to them about this plant. After all, we have been living together, side by side, for six thousand years.

Happy New Year to all my readers – may 2015 bring you peace, health and inspiration, and may you encounter remarkable plants and animals to intrigue, delight and fascinate you.

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…..

I have always felt a little melancholy at New Year. Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert, and I no longer drink alcohol, both of which make me uneasy in situations of forced jollity and large crowds. Or maybe it’s because January feels more like a time for staying in bed, preferably with an excellent novel and a bowl of syrup pudding and custard, than a time for taking up jogging and eating kale. I feel a little out of step with the current need to be happy and shiny and full of vim on all occasions, and it’s difficult to escape a sneaking suspicion that I am some kind of alien as I watch the end-of-year shenanigans unfold.

So to give myself some perspective I went to see the oldest living thing in London with my long-suffering husband, John. This magnificent Yew tree lives in St Andrew’s churchyard in Totteridge, a twenty-minute bus ride from East Finchley. It has seen at least two thousand New Year’s days come and go, and is still full of fresh growth and vigor. To ensure its health, a team from Kew Gardens visited some thirty years ago and did a little judicious pruning and shoring up of the centre of the plant, which invariably becomes hollow as the plant ages.  The trunk is over twenty-six feet in circumference, and the wood is remarkable. In some places, it looks almost as if it is encrusted with sea creatures.

In others, there are little interstices which form homes for spiders and other invertebrates.

Yew is often found in churchyards. In some cases, it was deliberately planted to provide wood for longbows, but in this and many other cases, the tree long predates the church (there has been some kind of ecclesiastical building here since about 1250). It is very likely that the church was built on a site that was already sacred to the people of the area, and that the tree, then a stripling of just over a thousand years old, would have been locally important as a site for ritual and for meetings. Later, it was a site for the gathering of the Hundred, the medieval equivalent of the Magistrate’s court. In 1722, a baby was found under the tree, and was named ‘Henry Totteridge’ and made a ward of the parish.

Part of the reason for the longevity of Yew is that it is very slow-growing, and some scientists believe that the trees could reach ages of four to five thousand years. The Totteridge Yew is one of ten trees in the UK that date back to before the tenth century. Yew is very resistant to the fungal diseases which can cause the death of other trees by infecting the spot where a branch has dropped off. The tree can also regenerate from cut surfaces and from the base of the trunk even when it is of advanced years.

Yew has a long association with pagan rites and beliefs, perhaps because, like Holly, it is evergreen, long-lived and bears berries. The oldest wooden artifact ever found in Europe, a 450,000 year-old spearhead found in Clacton-on-Sea, is made of Yew.   All parts of the Yew are poisonous, except for the red flesh on the berry. A chief of the ancient Celtic tribe the Eburones (the ancient word for Yew was Eburos) killed himself by ingesting a toxin from the Yew tree rather than submitting to the Romans. It is known to be poisonous to horses, and the foliage, in hot weather, can produce a gas which is said to cause hallucinations. This same chemical, however, can be used to produce a drug for use in breast cancer, and for a while pharmaceutical companies were traveling the world, looking for substantial Yew forests to buy and destroy. What is new to science is often long-known by local peoples, however, and Yew has long been used by Himalayan people as a treatment for breast and ovarian cancer.

 

This is not the first time that Yew has been subject to a threat of over-harvesting. Its wood is perfect for the making of longbows, and in the fifteenth century compulsory longbow practice for all adult males was introduced. This depleted the supplies of these slow-growing trees so profoundly that Richard III introduced a ‘tax’, insisting that every ship bringing goods to England had to include ten bowstaves for every tun of goods. During the sixteenth century the supply of Yew dwindled to such an extent that there was none to be had in Bavaria or Austria. The habit of planting Yew trees in churchyards to ensure future demand may have begun during this time.

Yew trees have a dark, sombre aspect to them and yet, as one of our few native conifers, they provide some greenery when the other leaves have fallen. Their red berries provide a useful source of food for the birds, and I have often watched Goldcrests working their way through the needles with their needle-sharp bills, searching for any hibernating insects or badly-hidden cocoons. I shall be keeping my eyes and ears open in future for the high-pitched piping calls of these birds. Goldcrests are the smallest birds in the UK, with each one weighing less than a two-pence piece.

There is something about spending time outdoors that soothes the soul, and this is particularly true, I find, when I am in the company of a tree of such remarkable character as the Totteridge Yew. It has experienced so much in its long life that my mind is fairly boggled when I think about it. It was already a thousand years old when the Normans came with their stone masonry and castle-building and taste for wine. How many babies have been borne past it in their mother’s arms for Christening, how many young couples have passed under its branches on their wedding day, how many sombre coffins have been carried under the lych-gate to the freshly-dug graves that surround it? Once, people came up to the church on foot or in horse-drawn carts, where now they swoosh past in cars. If only it could tell me what it has seen. As I go, I rest my hand for a moment on that smooth, rose-pink bark, as I suspect so many have done before me. I feel a sense of calm descend, as if I have been holding my breath for a week, and have finally let it out.

Dear Readers, I am occasionally castigated by your good selves for designating a particular plant as a ‘weed’. People have been roused to fury by my inclusion of Feverfew and Yarrow, Holly and Ivy as ‘weeds’, and I understand how for many people (including me) these plants are helpmates and sources of wonder rather than problematic. You can imagine, then, how nervous I am about including that most venerable of plants, the Yew tree, as a ‘Wednesday Weed’, let alone the oldest Yew in London. However, my point is this: no plant is quintessentially a ‘weed’ – this is a purely human label. There is not a single plant that I have included in this series, from the fecund  Duckweed to this week’s remarkable conifer, that doesn’t have much to fascinate and amaze the keen observer. Our urge to classify the natural world into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘useful’ and ‘useless’ is what got us into the mess that we’re currently in in the first place. We need to understand the connections between things, even the most commonplace of ‘weeds’, in order to make sensible decisions about everything from the plants in our gardens to the future of the planet. Every week, I learn more about my local environment, but I have also glimpsed the limitless depths that I have yet to understand.  This blog has made me humble, which I have grown to think is the only sensible reaction to the complexity and beauty of the natural world.

Happy Christmas/Winter Solstice/Hanukkah/Holidays to all my readers. Thank you for your comments, support and kindness this year. I look forward to finding many more ‘weeds’ and natural wonders for us to share in the year to come…..

‘Of all the trees that are in the wood, the Holly bears the crown’. Could there be a better plant than the noble Holly with which to celebrate Winter Solstice and Christmas? The Holly King is said to rule from Midwinter to Midsummer, carrying life through the winter in his leaves, until the Oak King takes over for the rest of the year. Right into the twentieth century, people would use small Holly trees as Christmas trees, rather than the fir trees that we use today, and most of us will still have some Holly in the house at this time of year, even if it’s only in the form of a plastic sprig on top of the Christmas pudding. In England, there is a tradition of growing it close to the house to protect those inside from evil spirits, whilst in Ireland it is grown away from the house so as not to disturb the fairies that live in it. It is also said to deter lightning, and so alcohol vendors would set up their stalls under Holly at markets, hence the large number of pub names that include a reference to Holly.

Holly is one of the few plants that survives deep in the uncoppiced parts of Coldfall Wood, where it is too dark for other vegetation to thrive. For thousands of years, many different species of Holly grew in a habitat known as the Laurel Forest, which was wet and dark, and which covered most of Europe. However, as the climate dried out only Ilex Aquifolium, the plant that we know as Holly, survived and prospered in the new Oak and Beech forests. Most of the Laurel Forests had died out by the end of the Pleistocene, ten thousand years ago.

The plant above was the first one that I’ve ever seen in flower, and led me to think about Holly reproduction. Although the plant is often associated in folklore with the male principle (as opposed to Ivy, which represents the female principle), the flowers can be either male or female. A female plant will need pollen from a male plant in order to produce the berries. What puzzles me a little is that the flowers are meant to be produced in May, when there are pollinators about, but my photograph was taken on the sixteenth of December. I suspect this is yet another sign of the confusion that climate change is creating in the natural world, much like the snowdrops that I saw in full bloom a few weeks ago, or the crocuses already flowering in a neighbour’s garden. Without bees to carry the pollen, these flowers are doomed to blush and fade, unconsummated. There is an old tradition of putting a sprig of Holly berries onto a beehive on Christmas Day to wish the bees ‘Merry Christmas’. Who would have dreamed that it would be equally possible to adorn it with a sprig of Holly flowers?

The berries contain three to four seeds, each of which takes two to three years to germinate. Holly is a plant which grows slowly – it doesn’t start to flower until it’s over four years old (sometimes as old as twelve), and an individual shrub can live to be five hundred years old. A mature Holly can be ten metres tall, but most are much smaller than this.

What a boon to wildlife Holly is! My parents have a mature Holly tree which is about six metres tall, and at the slightest sign of trouble all the local sparrows fly into it, turning it into a mass of chirping. The spines on the leaves require quite a lot of energy for the plant to produce, so, as it grows above the level of grazing creatures the leaves become smoother. Ironically, Holly was cultivated as fodder for cows and sheep until the eighteenth century, and the smoother leaves at the top of the tree were obviously preferred, so it seems as if there was no escape from being gobbled up.

There is an old tradition that if Holly foliage is brought into the house, both the ‘He-Holly’ (the prickly leaves) and the ‘She-Holly’ (the smooth leaves) must arrive at the same time, otherwise the partner whose leaves are brought in first will dominate for the rest of the year. There is also a tradition that bad luck will come down the chimney on Christmas Eve if the Holly is hung up before the Mistletoe (who presumably takes offence). I have a big box of Holly and Mistletoe in the shed, awaiting the arrival of my mother so that we can decorate together. Who knew that it was going to be such a complicated business? At least all the leaves and the two species will arrive together, so hopefully we’ll avoid upsetting anyone.

The ‘berries’ of the Holly (technically Drupes for my botanist friends) are very tough and bitter early on in the year. However, they are softened by the frosts, and become more palatable to the many birds and rodents that eat them, and by doing so help to spread the seeds through the forest. I put some Holly berries on the bird table, and they were gone by the following morning, so this might be a good use of any Holly decoration that is still in good condition by Twelfth Night.

Holly is one of the ‘original’ plants of the British Isles, with a history longer than that of human habitation here. It is no wonder that such a wealth of folklore and traditions have grown up around it. Its shiny, evergreen leaves and blood-red berries do seem to be holding the secret of life during these short, dark days, and it stands as protector and food-source to so many small birds and shy rodents. In winter-time, the Holly really is a kind of king.

For this post, I am grateful to the wonderful Poison Garden website, and to Plant Lives, another source of endless fascination. And I am eternally grateful to Richard Mabey for Flora Britannica, surely the most informative text on the folklore and traditions of British plants ever compiled.

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…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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