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…..

Just lately, I have been noticing a rather handsome evergreen shrub in the midst of the oaks and hornbeams of Coldfall Wood, and also in the cemetary next door. A quick look through my plant guides tells me that this is Cherry Laurel, described by Oliver Rackham as one of the seven ‘villains’ – alien plants that appear in woodland. For those of you interested in who the other six might be, the list includes Rhododendron, Sycamore, Ground-elder, Himalayan Balsam, Giant Hogweed and Japanese Knotweed. However, Rackham considers that only Rhododendron is a real ‘villain’ – all the rest become part of the forest flora rather than overwhelming it. This is a relief, as Cherry Laurel provides a welcome burst of fresh green when most other plants are leafless.

The leaves of Cherry Laurel are gently serrated, and the veins are very well-defined, making it easy to identify. When crushed, the leaves smell of almonds, because they contain prussic acid (cyanide). They were once used in insect-killing bottles to dispatch invertebrates that were destined for a collector’s display case. However, the smell led to it being used as a substitute for almond essence during the eighteenth century with mixed results, as reported on the wonderful Poison Garden website. Most people are unaware that this plant can be poisonous.

Cherry Laurel is a popular garden plant and spreads by suckering, so it is no surprise that, tired of the confines of a suburban plot, it advances into the wild. However, it can also be spread by birds, who love the berries, and I suspect that this is how my woodland specimens have arrived.

In spring, the upright flower spikes attract a lot of pollinators, and have a sweet, heady scent that some people love, and others can’t abide.

Cherry Laurel came originally from the area around the Black Sea, probably arriving in the UK in the 16th century. It has also been part of the flora of North America for hundreds of years, and in the US this plant is known as the English Laurel. This is ironic as the plant is not only not English, but it also isn’t a laurel at all, but a member of the rose family. However, its leaves are increasingly being used for funeral wreathes instead of the more traditional leaves of the bay tree (Laurus nobilis), so maybe if you call a plant something long enough, it will take on the roles associated with its name. The wreath that honours the bust of Sir Henry Wood during the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall is made from the leaves of the Cherry Laurel.

In spite of its toxicity, several types of caterpillar are said to feed on the leaves, including the Poplar Hawkmoth, and all the specimens that I’ve seen show signs of insect depredation. So, through its plentiful nectar and pollen, berries and foliage, Cherry Laurel provides a feast for the creatures of the woodlands that it colonises. This plant may be alien and invasive but, in East Finchley at least, it gives back as much as it takes.

 

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 spotted this shrub in several places in East Finchley – in Cherry Tree Wood, in the cemetery and here, in a lane that I discovered a few months ago.  At this time of year, its berries glow with such an intense white that they almost seem to be phosphorescent.

This North American shrub was introduced into the UK in 1817, and it has an interesting history. It was often planted on grand estates to provide cover and food for grouse, pheasant and partridge and is described by Oliver Rackham as a ‘gamekeeper’s plant’. Other birds, such as blackbirds, will eat the berries if nothing else is available. In its native North America, however, the fruit is eaten by bears, bighorn sheep and white-tailed deer, and pocket gophers dig their burrows underneath it.

Snowberries are toxic, but their extreme whiteness (which has led to the alternative name ‘corpseberry’) seems to put people off from tasting them. Indeed, in some Native American traditions, the berries are the preferred food of the dead. However, it has also been widely used by many peoples of North America, as a medicine for humans and horses. The wood of the Snowberry was believed by the Nez Perce tribe to protect infants from ghosts if woven into their cradles. Thompson Indian babies were washed with a soap made from Snowberry, and people of the Makah tribe believed that it would deflect witchcraft if the leaves were chewed and swallowed. There is a rich folklore attached to this plant in its native land, demonstrating yet again that even plants which we disdain as poisonous may be used if (and only if) the people working with them have a deep understanding of their chemical properties.

The plant reproduces via its berries (the seeds being spread by birds and other animals), and also via suckering, so it spreads easily, and I’m sure that the plant in these photos had crept under the fence from the neighbouring gardens.

The berries have a very hard coating, which means they can lay dormant for up to ten years, just waiting for the time to be right to germinate. Apparently, they make a satisfyingly loud crack when stamped upon, and the seeds inside look like snow. I might experiment with this if I can find a quiet corner and an unloved single snowberry to test.

In Shropshire,  the plant is known by the delightful name ‘Lardy Balls’. Lard was sold in the market incased in pigs bladders, which looked like big white balls. This is rather less romantic than ‘ghostberry’ or ‘waxberry’, which are other alternative names for the plant.

In spring, the bush has attractive but unobtrusive pink flowers, which are popular with bees – this plant is, after all, a member of that pollinator-magnet, the honeysuckle family.

Snowberry is unique in the UK in having waxy-white berries – the only plant that I can think of that even comes close is the Mistletoe. It has an eerie quality, especially when seen as the sun  is going down on a winter’s evening. I am trying to pay a little more attention to how plants make me feel when I spend time with them, and with Snowberry I sense a kind of quiet patience, as if the plant is just waiting to be recognised for its sterling qualities. Or maybe that’s something that we all secretly long for. Whichever it is, I have grown very fond of this North American immigrant, thriving so far from home.

 

 

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…..

Just when everything else is looking a little exhausted, White Dead-nettle is coming into flower. Was there ever a ‘weed’ with such pure white blossoms, or such tender green foliage? I am not surprised that all manner of Dead-nettles are being bred as garden flowers – here, for example, is Lamium maculatum ‘Roseum’…

Here is Lamium maculatum ‘Beacon Silver’….

and, finally, here is a white variant.

One reason for the growing popularity of Dead-nettle variants is that they are excellent ground cover in shady areas – few plants can survive in dry shade, but this is one family that will often thrive in these conditions. I do wonder, though, if the showier varieties have the delicate elegance of the wild plant. Sometimes, the result of breeding for appearance is the loss of value to wildlife – complicated flowers can make the nectar and pollen less accessible to pollinating insects, and sometimes the amount and quality of the food itself is reduced. However, my good friend Jo who has a pink Lamium variety in her garden tells me that it is very popular with bees, so this is not always the case.

White Dead-nettle is so attractive to bees that an alternative name is ‘Bee Nettle’. As it blooms right into the heart of the winter, it is invaluable for those mild days when hibernating queen bees pop out to top up their nectar stores. Only a heavy bee is able to open the flower in order to get to the food, so this seems to be a case of convergent evolution, where the shape of the plant has evolved to fit one particular group of pollinators.

Bees are not the only creatures who appreciate White Dead-nettle – it has been used by humans too, both as food (the young leaves can form part of a salad), and has been used for the treatment of catarrh and dropsy.

The name ‘Dead-nettle’ refers to the fact that this plant, although its leaves superficially resemble those of the Stinging Nettle, does not sting. However, as it often grows amongst Stinging Nettles, White Dead-nettle may benefit from the wide berth that its more assertive relative is given by some grazing animals and insect pests.

An alternative name for White Dead-nettle is ‘Archangel’. This is said to be because it was said to first come into flower on 8th May, St Michael’s day. However, I can’t help but think that it is because of the glowing white of its flowers, and their ethereal shape. Of all the ‘weeds’ that I’ve reported on so far, this one feels to me like the most angelic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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…..

It is always a pleasure to welcome a representative of  a new plant family to The Wednesday Weed. This week’s star is Cleavers, also known to me as Goosegrass and, when I lived in Dundee, as Sticky Willie. I found it growing in a neglected but fruitful flower bed at the top of Park Hall Road, and was delighted to find that it was in flower in the middle of November.

Cleavers is a member of the Bedstraw family, which includes a host of small-flowered scrambling plants. The name comes from the medieval use of the plants as bedding material, and Cleavers was used as part of the mixture because the tiny hooks that cover the plant held the contents together, ensuring that the ‘mattress’ thus created didn’t become too lumpy and bumpy.

As a child, I remember that I delighted in attaching this plant to my long-suffering brother when he wasn’t looking. The sticking-power of this plant is very satisfying, especially if the victim is wearing a woolly jumper or a duffle coat. Indeed, I would sometimes manage to cover my sibling in so much Cleavers that from the back it looked as if Birnam Wood was once again on its way to Dunsinane. Forty-five years later, I am still waiting for the retribution that will surely come my way for such silliness.

Cleavers is a plant of many, many uses.  When I was in Scotland, we would gather armfuls of Goosegrass to feed to the ducks, geese and chicken that we raised on a city farm. And in Plants Britannica, Richard Mabey describes how a combination of nettles and Herriff (yet another name for Cleavers) was used to make a beverage that resembled ginger beer.

Mabey also relates how the fruits of Cleavers were used by the lacemakers of Bedfordshire to cover the pinheads on their lacemaking cushions.

In spite of its hairiness, Cleavers is said to be edible if cooked before the flowers appear. But even more astonishing is the fact that Cleavers is in the same family (Rubiaceae) as the coffee plant, and the fruits can be used as a coffee substitute, though I suspect that one would need an awful lot to knock up an espresso.

Cleavers has been used for a host of medicinal uses: it has been a lymphatic tonic, a poultice for leg ulcers and a mild sedative. Its hairy stems have been used as a sieve for milk into recent times in Sweden. And its roots can be used to produce a red dye – according to the Plant Lives website, when birds eat the root of Cleavers, their bones are turned red.

I have been amazed by the sheer variety of ways that this modest little ‘weed’ has been used. Today, I wonder if city children even know that they can use it to torment their brothers and sisters. We are becoming more and more detached from the world around us, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The plants are still here, just waiting to be noticed.

 

 

 

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…..

When I first decided to write the Wednesday Weed, I must confess that I had not given much thought to what would happen in winter, when very few plants are flowering, and many have disappeared altogether. Today, I walked around Coldfall Wood with a heavy heart, looking at the Brambles  and the Ivy   that I have already written about, and wondering what I would find that would be interesting. In some desperation, I slipped along the muddy path into the Cemetery  and realised that there was enough inspiration here for the whole of the winter and beyond.

Tumbling over one of the gravestones was a shrub of Sweetbriar (Rosa rubiginosa). It had no flowers, and barely any foliage, and yet the hips were characteristic – they have very long sepals (the dangly bits at the bottom of the fruit), and when viewed from below, the hips look a little like a cone-headed alien parachuting to the ground.

According to Harrap’s Wild Flowers, there are glands on the stems and leaves which give off a ‘delicious apple-and-cinnamon scent’. How I wished I’d thought to test this out! I will make a return visit soon to see if the plant retains its perfume this late in the year.

Sweetbriar flowers in June and July, and its blossoms are much pinker than those of the commoner Dog Rose.

Sweetbriar is the Eglantine of Shakespeare and other early poets, who often contrasted its sweetness with the sharpness of its thorns, as in this poem by Richard Herrick (1591 – 1674).

The Bleeding Hand

From this bleeding hand of mine,
Take this sprig of Eglantine:
Which, though sweet unto your smell,
Yet the fretful briar will tell,
He who plucks the sweets, shall prove
Many thorns to be in love.

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, however,  the plant is all drowsy seductiveness:

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

When I was growing up, rose hips, such as those from the Sweetbriar, were a valuable source of vitamin C, and I remember looking forward to my daily spoonful of Delrosa Rose Hip Syrup. Since the 1930’s it had been known that a cup of Rose Hip pulp had more vitamin C than 40 oranges, and during the Second World War, when citrus fruits were difficult to come by, the Ministry of Health instigated a scheme for voluntary collection of the hips. These were turned into syrup, and distributed to small children. Collection continued until the 1950’s, and the syrup was considered a valuable dietary supplement for many years. Plus, unlike many such products, it was delicious. If you would like to learn more (including how to make your own Rose Hip Syrup), I can recommend the Wartime Recipes website – a real delight. Who could resist Patriotic Pudding (key ingredients potato, fat and carrot?)

The one thing that slightly concerns me about finding Sweetbriar in the cemetery is that it shouldn’t really be here. It tends to be a plant of chalky soils, and is not common anywhere. So, could it be that it was planted by a mourner, wanting to honour a loved one by surrounding them with its scent and its pretty flowers? Whatever the reason, its bright hips have brought back a lot of memories for me this morning, and have reminded me that although there is not the abundance of plant activity in autumn and winter that there is in the warmer seasons, there is still lots to observe, if I take the time to notice.

 

When I was a little girl, we used to go to visit my Auntie Mary, who lived in a Home in Chingford. Auntie Mary had a learning disability, which my great-grandmother always swore was the result of Mary hitting her head on a kerbstone when she was a child, but by the time that I knew her, she was in her seventies.  The Home was a grand house in its own grounds, but the huge, high-ceilinged rooms always had a faint whiff of boiled cabbage and urine about them. Auntie Mary was a cheerful soul, who loved nothing better than playing ‘Banker’, a card game which involved cutting the pack into piles, and betting on which one would  reveal the highest card when turned over. It could go on for hours.  We would play for pennies, and she almost always won, because in spite of her challenges, Auntie Mary always knew exactly how many coins she had, and had an unerring instinct for which was the winning pile. When she was a young girl and was sent out to do the errands, she always knew when people were trying to cheat her, even though she was able to do little about it.

My younger brother and I loved Auntie Mary, with her institutional hair cut and toothless grin, but the place itself scared us. We didn’t understand why someone was always screaming, or why there was an old lady sitting in an armchair, a white strand of spittle dangling from the corner of her mouth. And when things got too much, Dad would take us outside. In the grounds was the most magnificent Horse Chestnut tree. In the winter, there would be conkers. In the summer, the tree would be full of blossom, looking like a Christmas tree covered in candles.

Poor Auntie Mary, who never asked for a single thing out of life except for the occasional card game and a hug from my father (who she doted on), died unexpectedly following complications from a cataract operation. I never see a Horse Chestnut tree without thinking of her, and so I have been horrified at the state of many of the Horse Chestnut trees that I’ve observed over the past few years. Here, for example, is one that grows just inside Coldfall Wood in East Finchley.

The leaves of the tree have not just turned brown, they have turned to a crisp. Furthermore, although we are now in November, this has been happening for months. Let’s have a closer look at the leaves of another Horse Chestnut that I found further into the wood:

Horse Chestnut trees are under siege from several directions. The first is via a fungus called Guignardia aesculi, which was first reported in 1935. It first appears in June, and causes blotches which are often outlined in yellow, as in the leaves above. However, the trees have largely learned to live with this fungus. The real problem is a more recent invader.

Horse Chestnut Leaf-miner, Cameraria ohridella, first arrived in the UK in 2002. It is a micro-moth, and its caterpillars burrow between the layers of the leaf, usually between the veins – in the photo above, you can see that the leaves have become transparent, with a little black blob indicating a pupa. The new moths emerge in May. The infestation starts at the bottom of the tree and spreads up, causing the leaves to shrivel and turn brown. This leads to early leaf fall. Although this is not fatal, it makes the trees unsightly, and greatly shortens their period of leaf growth. As if this was not enough, the size of the nuts is also reduced, disappointing any children old-fashioned enough to like a game of conkers alongside their online activities.

So, what can be done? One thing that many local councils are doing is to gather up the fallen leaves and burn them – this will reduce the number of moth pupae that hatch and produce new moths. Birds, especially tits, have been seen eating the caterpillars, and may be responsible for munching up between two and four percent of the insects.

However, the final answer may come from a much smaller predator. There are hopes that parasitoid wasps may find the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner to their liking, and that they will start to increase their numbers as they discover how much tasty protein is lurking between the layers of the leaves. There is also evidence that some trees have immunity to the Leaf Miner, and suffer to a much lesser extent.

The Forestry Commission emphasise that there is no reason to destroy a tree with a Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner infestation – although unsightly, the hope is that gradually a balance between predator, prey and natural immunity will develop. There is some evidence that the degree of parasitism is increasing in areas like London, where the Leaf Miner has been present for the longest time.  In the meantime, we will have to wait, and hope that our Horse Chestnut trees are soon healthy and magnificent again, as they were in the days when Auntie Mary was alive.

 

 

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…..

Ivy is perhaps the most divisive wild plant in the UK. For some, it is a clambering, entwining seducer, a plant of overweening ambition, capable of pulling the mortar out of brickwork and dragginbg the mightiest Oak to the ground.   For others it’s the most valuable wildlife plant that you can grow, providing nectar and pollen for bees and butterflies and shiny black berries for the birds.

Firstly, Ivy as strangler.

In the photo above, we can see the ambitious roots grappling with the bark of a Hornbeam as the plant reaches for the sky. Whilst Ivy can exist perfectly happily in a sprawl in dense woodland (and it is one of the few plants that will survive where there is very heavy leaf cover), it is also not averse to clambering upwards when it comes into contact with a suitable support. But unless it finds soil or a deep crevice, Ivy will use the object solely as a climbing frame, and is not a parasite.

The problem comes when the ivy reaches the top of the tree. Here, it will flourish, and, in a windy spot, the sheer weight of growth can be enough to pull the tree over. In Plants Britannica, Richard Mabey quotes a Dorset man who states that, when clearing ivy from a fallen tree, ‘the weight of the ivy often exceeds the weight of its host’.

And yet, I have a sense that something else is going on here. In much plantlore, the bold, straightforward Holly is seen as expressing the male principle, the sinuous, all-encompassing ivy as embodying the female principle . Could some of the hatred of Ivy, of its clinging,nature, be a kind of sublimated misogyny, a fear of fecundity? We are complicated creatures, and our motives are often hidden, even from ourselves.

Ivy has a long connection with alcohol. Because ivy can smother grapevines, it was sometimes seen as being able to cure a hangover through sympathetic magic. Ivy used to be grown over poles as an advertisement for the quality of the wine on sale at a public house – these poles were known as ‘bushes’, hence the phrase ‘good wine needs no bush’. Many pubs, such as the one below, maintain the link with Ivy:

Furthermore, a bowl made of Ivy wood was said to neutralise the effects of drinking bad wine.

Ivy has a long history, also, as a magical plant, particularly with regard to the protection of domestic animals. In Plants Britannica, Richard Mabey tells how, in the Highlands and Islands, it was plaited into a wreath with Rowan and Honeysuckle to protect the cattle. Animals that have been poisoned by eating Yew or Ragwort are said to eat Ivy when they won’t eat anything else. It is said to tempt a sick ewe to eat after a difficult birth, and to cure eye disease in cattle.

One factor in Ivy’s success is its adaptability. It can form a modest sprawl, it can completely cover a building, or it can change its nature completely and become a shrub. Once Ivy flowers, it becomes a blessing for all kinds of insects when other sources of food are long dead.

All these creatures were photographed on one sunny afternoon last week, clustering around the Ivy flowers and filling the air with their buzzing. For the Red Admirals, who hibernate, this last food might make the difference between surviving the winter, and dying.

Ivy is also the larval foodplant of the Holly Blue butterfly, another reason for having some in the garden.

So, Ivy is generous, sometimes to a fault. From a little sunshine and a few soil nutrients, she can cover a fence and provide hiding places for the nests of blackbirds, niches for the webs of spiders, and food for all manner of flying things. I find it difficult not to love a plant that so many creatures find useful.

And in one  way, I have a link with this plant. Ivy is my middle name, and was given to me to honour my paternal grandmother. She was a tough, tenacious individual, bringing up three children single-handedly after her husband was killed during the Second World War. Like her namesake, she clung on in desperate times, and I hope that, if put to the test, I could summon up the indomitable spirit of my grandmother, and of the plant that we are both named after.

 

 

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…..

Nipplewort (Lapsana communis)

Dear readers, when I was photographing Trailing Bellflower last week, I found this elegant plant growing amongst the nettles in a mysterious  lane that the developers seemed to have overlooked. The long, graceful stems are surmounted by delicate yellow flowers, which seem to balance like trapeze artists.

This is Nipplewort, a native British plant which grows in disturbed land of all kinds. I hadn’t noticed it in East Finchley before, but of course, so many of the Wednesday Weeds were invisible to me before I got my plant-spotting eyes into focus.

The leaves of Nipplewort can be eaten in salads and, along with Chickweed and Shepherd’s Purse, it forms part of the Japanese Festival of Seven Herbs  (Nanakusa-no-sekku), where a porridge of fresh, local plants is eaten on January 7th.

Nipplewort got its name from the shape of its closed buds.

There was, in medieval times, a belief that God indicated how a plant should be used by creating a specific ‘sign’ encoded in its leaves or flowers. Hence, Eyebright, which is said to resemble an eye, was used for treating styes and eye infections. This idea is known as the Doctrine of Signatures  – the idea that each plant had a signature that could be read by a herbalist. Because of the resemblance of its buds to nipples, Nipplewort has been used as a treatment for breast ulcers, cracked nipples and for drying up milk.

I suspect that ,  although the ‘signature’ was said to come from God, the idea is much more ancient than that, dating back to pre-Christian times, when there was no need for a divine intercessor as the plants could speak directly to us, if we had ears to here.

It seems somehow appropriate that, on this sunny late autumn day, I was looking at a plant that was associated with motherhood. As I took these photos I had no idea that a cloud of troubles was forming overhead, or that by the end of the week I would be sitting at a hospital bed, holding my mother’s hand as she recovers from a stroke which has damaged her eyesight. But it gives me great comfort to think back to that patch of bright yellow flowers, the buzzing of bees in the ivy above, the Trailing Bellflower peeping from under the fence. It reminds me that everything is always in flux, blooming and falling fallow, and that I am part of that process. I need to  bow with the wind, to drink in the sunshine, to accept the dark times and to let go of the delusion that I can control anything important.

Nipplewort (Carl Axel Magnus Lindman [Public domain or Public domain], 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…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He shook his head, a little sadly I thought.

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

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

“Chickweed, groundsel, shepherd’s purse.

Yellow corydalis, green alkanet, dandelion.

Trailing bellflower, nettle, feverfew.

Canadian fleabane”.