Dear Readers, you might remember that I recently did a piece on a local front garden that was displaying a very fine display of ‘weeds’. Well, today, as I was limping back from a very pleasant coffee at Coffee Bank with my friend L, she noticed a tiny patch of scarlet pimpernel flowering in a crack in the path of the house next door. What a cheery little plant this is! And I see that the last time I wrote about it was in 2017, so it’s well worth a reminder. In 2017 I was busy looking after Mum and Dad in Dorset as their health gradually declined, and on many a morning it was the sight of an unexpected plant that jolted me out of my to-do list (medications! doctors’ appointments! dinner!) and into the present  moment. So let’s see what I said about this glorious plant seven years ago. Onwards!

Dear Readers, if there is one lesson in life that I should have learned by now, it’s ‘don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today’. When I was in Milborne St Andrew in Dorset last week, I spotted this delightful patch of scarlet pimpernel, every flower open in the sunshine. But, alas, I had milk and rich tea biscuits to buy, and a copy of Woman’s Weekly to pick up, so I hurried past instead of stopping to take a photograph.

For the next three days,  the flowers were closed up tight, what with the fog, and the cold, and the afternoon shadows. And so I’m afraid my photos show them in their ‘coy mode’. However, here is what they look like when they’re in full sun. The plant has alternative names like ‘poor man’s weather glass’ and ‘shepherd’s clock’; the flowers are said to open at 8 a.m. and close at about 2 p.m. unless there’s cloudy or damp weather, in which case they may not bother to put in an appearance at all. I don’t blame them. Now that the clocks have gone back and it’s dark before 5 I often feel like huddling under the duvet with a hot chocolate and a good book.

This plant is a member of the primrose family (Primulaceae) but as far as I know it’s the only  red species. Scarlet seems to be pushing it a bit though – it’s more of an orangey-red. But I am very fond of it – it’s small and unobtrusive, but repays close attention. It’s a plant of arable farmland and seaside environments, such as dunes and cliffs. It is native to the UK and to the whole of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, but has ended up being transported to almost everywhere else in the world, probably with grain crops.

In the Mediterranean area (and, I’ve learned, in some parts of the UK)  there is a rather lovely blue form, which gives rise to yet another alternative name, ‘blue-scarlet pimpernel’.

Despite its demure appearance, however, scarlet pimpernel has a fearsome reputation. It is said that it causes gastroenteritis in dogs and horses, rabbits and poultry, and the seed is said to be poisonous to birds. Fortunately, it also apparently has a very acrid and unpleasant taste, and so most animals avoid it. The plant can also be used as an insecticide (which is probably why it developed the toxins in the first place). However, scarlet pimpernel has also been used medicinally, and in Germany it’s known as Gauchheil (‘Fool heal’) and used to be made into a treatment for those who were melancholy or otherwise mentally indisposed. The  genus name, Anagallis, comes from the Greek ‘to laugh’, and was said to indicate the mood of someone when their depression was lifted.

Of course, many people unfamiliar with this small red flower will be well aware of the novels of Baroness Orczy, who wrote the first of many books featuring The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905. The Scarlet Pimpernel was a chivalrous gentleman who, with his band of loyal followers (‘ one to command and nineteen to obey’) worked to rescue French aristocrats who were destined for the guillotine. As you might expect from the name, the Scarlet Pimpernel left a flower at the scene of his rescues, and also used the symbol in his correspondence. Even if you are unfamiliar with the Pimpernel himself, you might be familiar with some of the parodies that his derring-do inspired, such as the Bugs Bunny episode featuring The Scarlet Pumpernickel, or the programme ‘Nob and Nobility’ in the third series of Blackadder that featured the eponymous hero’s disgust with the adulation accorded to the ‘bloody Pimpernel’.

This action-packed series of novels was the inspiration for many films and television series and radio plays, with probably the most famous cinematic version being the 1934 film starring Leslie Howard and and Merle Oberon.

A poem from the novel has passed surreptitiously into common usage:

‘We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel.’

You might recognise the first line from The Kinks 1966 song ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’.

Anyhow, enough excitement! Let’s get back to the plant.

It was believed that holding scarlet pimpernel in the hand would confer the gift of second sight, and also that the plant could give protection from enchantment and spells. I imagine that much of what we now see as mental illness might have been seen as the effect of witchcraft or demonic possession in earlier times, and so the plant’s use has remained consistent – if you are not ‘in your right mind’ for whatever reason, scarlet pimpernel seems to have been the go-to remedy.

It was used to make ‘pimpernel water’, which was considered to be a remedy for freckles (though as they are rather delightful I hardly think they need a ‘remedy’), and also for rough and discoloured skin.

In spite of their allegedly acrid flavour and rich collection of toxins, the leaves have been used in salads, especially in Germany and France. They certainly look very toothsome, but I would be a bit careful if I was you.

This blog often leads me to some very interesting places. In the search for art associated with The Scarlet Pimpernel, I discovered the wonderful illustrator Luisa Rivera, who is originally from Chile but is now based in London. She has recently illustrated a Spanish language edition of the novel by Baroness Orczy, and the cover illustration is below. For more of her dreamy, folkloric illustrations, have a look here. I particularly like the lady with the owl, but they are all haunting and original.

And finally, as you might expect, my search for a scarlet pimpernel poem has been somewhat hindered by about five hundred separate references to ‘They seek him here, they seek him there’ etc etc etc ad nauseum. But then, peeping through the rough grassland of the Google ads comes this tiny gem, by the Irish poet Paula Meehan. It’s called ‘Death of a Field’ and I think it’s both deeply poignant and beautifully observed. We need more homes, but let’s not forget what’s lost. To read it, click here. I will be looking out for Paula Meehan in future.

Photo Credits

Photo One (Scarlet Pimpernel flowers) by Pauline Eccles [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two (blue scarlet pimpernel ) by  Zachi Evenor, cropped by User:MathKnight – File:Anagallis-arvensis-Horashim2014-Zachi-Evenor.jpg, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39109428

Photo Three (Nob and Nobility) by By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28399167

Photo Four (Film 1934) by https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9780067

Photo Five (Cover illustration from The Scarlet Pimpernel) from http://www.luisarivera.cl/la-pimpinela-escarlata/ 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, over the years I’ve found a lot of unexpected plants in East Finchley, but this Pyramidal Orchid ( Anacamptis pyramidalis) was the most unexpected. It was growing in a tiny triangle of rough grass in the middle of a car park (forgive me for being a little coy  about the exact location, but I don’t want some eejit to pick it). My friend L spotted it at the weekend, and we are both astonished – we can only think that it’s growing because it’s in a remnant of the meadow that existed way before the tarmac went down. The seeds of Pyramidal Orchid don’t contain enough food to germinate on their own, so they go into partnership with a soil fungus.

Darwin was fascinated by orchids, and discovered that the pollen in orchids is clumped into little coherent ‘blobs’ known as pollinia. These then attach to the tongues of moths and butterflies and are transferred to the next orchid that the insect visits. Below is Darwin’s own drawing of the pollinia attached to the tongue of a butterfly. What an amazing scientist Darwin was, and what a debt we owe him.

Pyramidal orchids can be found throughout western Eurasia, and one of their strongholds is on the chalky soils of the Isle of Wight. They do like disturbed soils, so they can sometimes also be found on road verges and quarries, presumably where the fungi that they rely on to thrive can also be found. And of course, there is now at least one in East Finchley too, though just the one as far as I can see, having had a good walk around the vicinity to see if I could see any more.

As with all orchids, the individual flowers are very interestingly shaped, as you can see from the close-up below. As you might guess from the name, the flowerhead as a whole is pyramid- shaped.

When I look at a Pyramidal Orchid the thought ‘ooh that might be tasty’ doesn’t immediately occur to me, but in fact the root of this plant and various other orchid species are used to make a white, starchy powder called salep. Orchid roots have always been considered as powerful aphrodisiacs and fertility-enhancers (the word ‘orchid’ comes from the Ancient Greek for ‘testicle’, which the roots were thought to resemble). The Ancient Romans used the root of Pyramidal Orchid and other orchids to make drinks called ‘Satyrion‘ and ‘Priapiscus‘, both of which were thought to act to improve ‘performance’ (and I don’t mean in the 100 metres). Paracelsus, the ‘Father of Toxicology’ wrote:

“behold the Satyrion root, is it not formed like the male privy parts? No one can deny this. Accordingly, magic discovered it and revealed that it can restore a man’s virility and passion”

In the Ottoman Empire, the root was used to make a drink for young women in order to fatten them up before marriage. The drink then spread to the UK and Europe as an alternative to tea and coffee – in the UK it was known as ‘saloop‘. It was thought to cure ‘chronic alcoholic inebriety’ and, more shamefully, venereal disease, which meant that drinking it in public became a source of embarrassment. The drink was increasingly associated with ‘the lower orders’ – note that someone is drinking out of a saucer in the Rowlandson cartoon below. My mother used to drink her tea out of a saucer if it was too hot, so clearly she hadn’t got the memo.

Salep became so popular that it became illegal in Turkey to export it , due to the decline in wild orchid populations. However, the attention of the salep sellers has now turned to the orchids of Iran, where it was estimated that between 7 and 11 million orchids of nineteen species and sub-species were collected from northern Iran in 2013. Yikes! As we know there’s no price people won’t pay for sexual enhancement (see also tiger bone and gorilla meat), and this in the age of Viagra. Sigh.

And oh my goodness! Here’s a poem, by Peter Daniels. It won first prize in the Arvon International Poetry Competition back in 2008, and it feels even more apposite today. See what you think.

Shoreditch Orchid by Peter Daniels

They’re grubbing up the old modern
rusty concrete lampposts,
with a special orange grab
on a fixture removal unit.
The planters come up behind
with new old lampposts in lamppost green,
and bury each root in a freshly-dug hole.
The bus can’t get past, brooding in vibrations.
We’re stuck at the half-refurbished
late-Georgian crescent of handbag wholesalers.
The window won’t open. The man behind me
whistles “What a Wonderful World”,
and I think to myself:

Any day soon
the rubble will be sifted; the streets all swept,
and we’ll be aboard a millennium tram ride,
the smooth one we’ve been promised, with a while yet to go
until the rising sea and the exterminating meteor,
but close before the war
starting with the robocar disaster.
And when the millennium crumbles,
I’ll be squinting through the corrugated fence
at the wreck of the mayor’s armoured vehicle, upside down
where they dumped the files of the Inner City Partnership;
and as I kick an old kerbstone
I’ll find you, Shoreditch orchid, true and shy,
rooting in the meadow streets
through old cable, broken porcelain, rivets and springs;
living off the bones of the railway.
You’ll make your entry unannounced,
in the distraction of buddleia throwing its slender legs
out in the air from nothing,
from off the highest parapets, cheap
attention-seeking shrub from somewhere
like nowhere. But here
you’ll identify your own private genes,
a quiet specimen-bloom seeded in junk,
and no use to any of us; only an intricate bee-trap
composed in simple waxy petals, waiting
for the bees to reinvent their appetite.

We’ll be waiting for the maps to kindle
as we get settled, where we find ourselves
undiscovering the city,
its lost works, disestablished
under the bridges. There’s no more bargaining
for melons and good brass buttons.
We share your niche
and crouch as the falling sun
shines through smoke, and the lampposts
fail to light the night to the place all buses go.

 

Dear Readers, every year I look forward to the flowering of this Cabbage Palm on the County Roads here in East Finchley. On a calm, sunny day, I can smell its sweet scent from my office window, but today, sadly, it’s spitting with rain and there is not a whiff to be had. Normally it’s also covered with bees, but any self-respecting bee is, I hope, in bed with a good book.

I first wrote about this plant several years ago, in 2019. I still find this New Zealand native astonishing, both for its hardiness and for the wide range of uses to which it has been put. Have a read below.

Dear Readers, the cabbage palm is a plant that I have always been a little snooty about. For much of the year it just stands there, with its big leathery leaves, and looks rather out of place. But this year, this one in the County Roads of East Finchley has burst forth with three huge inflorescences. I stood there with my camera, breathing in the sweet scent and watching dozens of honeybees flying about, and realised that I had been completely wrong. This is a very fine tree indeed.

The cabbage palm is endemic to New Zealand, where the largest known tree is estimated to be over 400 years old, and has a height of 56 feet and a circumference of 30 feet. The fruit that follows the flowers is the favourite food of the New Zealand pigeon or kereru (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae), who is also endemic. I am fascinated by New Zealand and its unique wildlife, and I think that I shall have to visit at some point!

The flowers are eaten by the kakariki or New Zealand parakeet, a very attractive small parrot. I wonder if our ring-necked parakeets will start to recognise the plant as a source of food? They have certainly already developed a taste for spring blossom.

Cabbage palms grow in a variety of habitats in their native country, with different varieties occupying different niches. However, young plants are not frost-hardy (which means that it is limited as to altitude) and need open spaces to thrive – they will not survive if they are overtopped by other plants. The seedlings need a lot of water, and so the plant is not found on steep hills or among sand dunes unless there is underground water. The cabbage palm also needs fertile soil, and when European settlers first arrived in New Zealand they would use the presence of cabbage palms to indicate where to set up their farms and homesteads. This is probably why the ‘jungles of cabbage trees’ described by those settlers no longer exist – these days, cabbage palms are much more likely to be individual trees.

The nectar from the cabbage palm has compounds that make it attractive to moths as well as to bees, and I have seen our local tree surrounded by fluttery figures on a warm night. Bees use the nectar to stoke their developing hives, Each stalk on a cabbage palm bears a flower on alternate years, so there tends to be a heavy flowering every other year, and a bumper crop every three to five years. I suspect that this is a bumper year. One inflorescence can carry up to 40,000 seeds which are rich in linoleic acid (an important compound in the egg-laying of birds). Given that young plants need open space to grow well, it’s no wonder that the plant has developed to have its seeds transported away by the New Zealand pigeon, who will hopefully deposit it a good long way away from its parent (with a handy parcel of fertiliser to boot).

Much as the oak tree is a ‘mother tree’ to many British species, and constitutes a whole ecosystem in itself, so the cabbage palm is home to a whole variety of other species. Epiphytes such as orchids, ferns such as our old friend the Asplenium  and a whole fieldguide full of lichens and liverworts live on the plant.

The gold-striped gecko (Woodworthia chrysosiretica) scuttles over the bark, and New Zealand bellbirds nest under the leaves

Long-tailed bats roost in the hollow branches.

In winter the leaves are an excellent hiding-place for the weta, a giant flightless cricket and one of the largest insects in the world.

There are nine species of insects who are only found on the cabbage palm in New Zealand, including the cabbage tree moth (Epiphryne verriculata) which eats nothing else. The adult is camouflaged so that it can hide on the dead leaves of the plant. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a stripey moth.

As you might expect from a plant that has been so utterly entwined with the other inhabitants of New Zealand, the Maori people have a long relationship with the cabbage palm. The stems and rhizomes are rich in natural sugars, and were steamed in earth ovens to provide a sweet substance called kauru that was used to sweeten other foods. It was easily stored for long periods, and is said to taste like molasses.

The cabbage palm groves attracted thousands of pigeons, and the Maori would trap and eat these birds – they were often so fat that they couldn’t fly.

The fibre from the leaves was incredibly tough, and especially resilient in seawater, being used to make anchor ropes and swings. They were also used to make protective trousers for when people were travelling in the high country of the South Island, home to the prickly spear grasses.

Medicinally, different parts of the plant were used for everything from diarrhoea to colic.

Although the cabbage palm rarely sets seed in the UK, individual plants do often seem to appear in the ‘wild’ – the plant is the fifteenth commonest ‘alien’ plant in London according to Stace and Crawley’s book ‘Alien Plants’. In the Isles of Scilly, the cabbage palm is used as a shelter for the bulb fields, and it is generally a plant of the milder south west of England, where it is sometimes known as the ‘Torquay Palm’. I see that there has recently been a thinning out of the various ‘palm’ trees of Torquay by the local council, with a concomitant furore. Let’s hope that all is well by the start of the summer season.

There are also cabbage palms on the west coast of Ireland, a similarly mild spot.

In its native land, the cabbage palm has been threatened by a variety of pests and diseases. In 1987, populations of the plant sickened and died, often within a year of the first symptoms being noticed. Sudden Decline was eventually found to have been caused by a bacterium transmitted by a non-native sapsucking insect, the passion vine hopper, and there is some hope that the disease is lessening. However, individual cabbage palms are sometimes victims of what has been named ‘Rural Decline’. When the forests of the plant were originally cleared, individual specimens were left as shelter for livestock. Unfortunately, said livestock ate the seedlings and rubbed against the bark, eventually damaging the tree beyond hope of survival. Rabbits, possums and even horses also have a liking for the sweet stems and fruit. The cabbage palm’s richness as a source for other organisms seems to be hastening its demise in New Zealand, though the population is still at a healthy level at the moment.

Furthermore, the cabbage palm is very widely cultivated, both as a pot plant and as ‘bedding’ in many council flowerbeds. It is strange to think that this most individual of plants, so firmly embedded in the country from which it comes, is pretty much unremarked. I am looking at the cabbage palm with much more respect these days. What a very fine plant it is!

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Duncan – originally posted to Flickr as Kereru, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7903580

Photo Two by By Duncan Wright – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3020473

Photo Three by By Sid Mosdell from New Zealand – Bellbird, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21871769

Photo Four from https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/bats-pekapeka/long-tailed-bat/

Photo Five by By Mary Morgan-Richards – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70677446

Photo Six by By Dan Kluza – https://www.flickr.com/photos/72744226@N00/5398604491, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65837571

 

Dear Readers, when I was in the Azores last week, it felt as if every second open space was festooned and draped with Lantana, one of the IUCM’s 100 Worst Invasive Species, though a particularly pretty one.  This designation puts Lantana right up there with Japanese knotweed and the malarial mosquito, so it’s not a good sign. The battle against Lantana has been a long one, as you’ll see from my 2019 post below, and the plant is particularly destructive when it colonises an island full of delicately-poised endemic species, such as the Azores or (possibly even worse) the Galapagos. This is, however, a very interesting plant. Have a read below and see what you think. 

Dear Readers, anyone who has ever visited a tropical butterfly house will have come across lantana. There are about 150 species, but the one that’s mostly seen is Lantana camara, otherwise known as Spanish Flag. It comes in a wide variety of colours – the orange one shown above seems to be the commonest. The flowers change colour as they mature, leading to multicoloured umbels – in the plant above they varied through apricot to tomato-red, with the lighter-hued blooms being the ones that have not yet been pollinated. There are many, many varieties, including the rather more demure one below.

One thing is for sure: these plants are a butterfly magnet. They form part of a genus of 150 different species in the Verbena family, and are native to tropical regions of the Americas and Africa: I saw Lantana growing wild when I was in Costa Rica. A wide range of butterfly and moth species feed on the flowers, especially swallowtails and birdwings, skippers and brush-footed butterflies such as the glasswing butterfly (Greta oro) of Central America, shown below.

 

Furthermore, the seeds of lantana are loved by birds, and herein hangs a tale. Lantana is considered a noxious weed in many parts of the world where it has been introduced, notably Australia, South Africa and some parts of Asia. It has also become naturalised in the warmer parts of North America. Because the leaves of the plant are toxic to herbivores, most grazers and browsers won’t eat them (and become sick if they do). Meantime, the birds eat the berries and distribute the seeds in their droppings. Among the species that eat the seeds are the superb fairy wren (Malurus cyaneus) of Australia;

and the endemic Mauritius Bulbul (Hypsipetes olivaceus)

In Australia, lantana has become so prevalent that various insect controls have been tried in order to reduce its vigour. Of the thirty species introduced, some have become problems in their own right. The rather handsome Mexican lantana bug (Aconophora compressa)  was brought to Australia in 1995, in the hope that it would munch its way through the plants that it was named after. Alas, the lantana bug has extensive and varied tastes, and has eaten many plants that were not supposed to be on the menu, including the popular ornamental trees fiddlewoods (also from the Americas), which are related to lantana. The case of the lantana bug led to much greater testing of the appetites of proposed bio-remedial species: this insect was tested with 62 species to see if it ate any of them, but fiddlewoods were not included.

So, lantana continues to run riot in many parts of the world where there are no pests to contain it, though I was cheered to hear that the swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) is one of the few mammals that can eat the leaves without keeling over.

I was also happy to hear that in some places in Australia, lantana is actually increasing biodiversity. In urban green spaces, it provides nesting cover for birds such as the fairy wren in the absence of native species that will do the same thing, and so provides a refuge for these attractive little birds to reproduce. Urban areas are not pristine habitats, as a brisk walk around East Finchley will show: we have plants from all over the world here, and the insects and birds take advantage of the longer flowering period and range of different microhabitats. It’s a very different thing in an endangered habitat. As Stace says in his book ‘Alien Plants’:

‘In disturbed native forests, Prickly Lantana can quickly become the dominant understorey species, disrupting succession and decreasing biodiversity. At some sites, infestations have been so persistent that they have completely stalled the regeneration of rainforests for more than three decades‘.

A plant out of its own habitat, without the native pests that keep in check, can quickly become an environmental disaster. Plus, lantana produces chemicals in its roots that check the growth of other plants. In areas with cold winters, the plant doesn’t survive, but if I was planning on growing it, I would choose one of the sterile varieties that are available that don’t produce fruit.

Lantana leaves have been used medicinally for a wide range of complaints, including malaria, tetanus and rheumatism. They are also believed to be efficacious in cases of snakebite. In India, where lantana is particularly invasive in mountain regions, local people have been making furniture from the plant, as it is considered a good substitute for traditional materials such as bamboo. Because of the toxicity of the lantana, the furniture is also not eaten by termites and beetle larvae. In an IUCN report, it indicates that using lantana in this way has increased income and productive work days for the villagers who are involved. The problem now is a shortage of people with skills to create the furniture.

Now, have a look at the image below and see if you can guess who it’s by.

At first glance, I thought it was a photograph, but subsequent research revealed that the image, called ‘Tithorea harmonia in Lantana’ from 2009-10, is actually a faithful reproduction in oils of a photographic image. And I was very surprised to find that the artist was Damien Hirst. Of this series of paintings that aim to reproduce photographs, Hirst says;

“I want you to believe in them in the same way as you believe in the ‘Medicine Cabinets‘. I don’t want them to look clever, but to convince you. I’m using painting to produce something that looks like a bad quality reproduction – the painting process is hidden as it is in my work ‘Hymn’, which looks like plastic, but is bronze underneath.”[2]

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised: Hirst has long been fascinated by butterflies and other insects, and has used them extensively in his art. Usually, it hasn’t ended very happily for them, as in the image below, where real dead butterflies are stuck onto gloss paint (to be fair, I believe that Hirst acquired them when they were already dead).

To me, his relationship with animals has always been strictly functional – he uses them to prove a wider philosophical point, as in his famous piece ‘A Thousand Years’, where maggots hatch, feed on a cow’s head and are killed in an Insect-o-cuter. Another exhibit at Tate Modern in 2012 featured live butterflies who hatched, flew around and died, next to an exhibit of the gloss paint and dead butterfly paintings. And then, of course, there was the shark.

It’s interesting how Hirst has gone from being the Enfant Terrible with the shark in a tank to someone who reproduces photos in oil paints, but he has never been afraid to experiment and to change. I suppose that his early work, in particular, is difficult to ignore – I saw his ‘Mother and Child Divided’ in an exhibition in Oslo in the ’90’s, and found it both fascinating and deeply distressing. For me, he sums up everything that is wrong with our attitude to the rest of the living world; everything is there to be plundered and used for our entertainment. But for others the fact that he raises these questions is part of his appeal. He has always been polarising: for some, the most interesting of the Young British Artists of the 1980’s, for others a cynical showman. I would be very interested to hear what you think!

And finally, a poem. I can’t tell you how much I love this work by Grace Paley, especially her evocation of ‘sadness and hilarity’. I know exactly how that feels, having been alternately laughing and weeping for most of the past six months.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Eddy Van 3000 from in Flanders fields – Belgiquistan – United Tribes ov Europe – the wings-become-windows butterfly., CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3479928

Photo Two by By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12075434

Photo Three by By Josh Noseworthy – Mauritius Bulbul, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36538595

Photo Four by By James Niland from Brisbane, Australia – Lantana TreehopperUploaded by Lymantria, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24777384

Photo Five by By Vinayaraj – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27369697

Photo Six by By jjron – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4022225

Photo Seven by By RickP 12:16, 3 May 2006 (UTC) – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=753347

Photo Eight from https://tudelft.openresearch.net/page/15576/15-lantana-furniture-siruvani-india

Photo Nine from www.damienhirst.com/tithorea-harmonia-in-lantana

Photo Ten from http://www.damienhirst.com/for-boys-and-girls

Photo Eleven from http://www.damienhirst.com/the-physical-impossibility-of

Photo Twelve from http://www.damienhirst.com/mother-and-child-divided-ex

 

Dear Readers, at this time of year Herb Bennet appears (pretty vigorously if my garden is anything to go by) and causes all sorts of confusion. It’s such a delicate little thing, a member of the rose family and not too distantly related to the strawberry, and yet once it gets going you will find it popping up everywhere. Fittingly for a north-facing garden, it doesn’t  seem to mind the shade. I have a great fondness for the seedheads, which remind me of the miniature ‘hair-dos’ of clematis.

I note that in my original Wednesday Weed piece, written in 2015, I rather passed over the details of the medicinal virtues of the plant, but having recently acquired a Culpeper’s Herbal I can reveal that Culpeper described the plant as ‘governed by Jupiter, and that gives hopes of a wholesome, healthful herb’. The whole of the next paragraph sounds positively rhapsodic, and here’s just a sample:

‘The decoction also being drunk comforts the heart, and strengthens the stomach, and a cold brain, and therefore is good in the springtime to open obstructions of the liver; and helps the wind colic. It also helps those who have fluxes, or are bursten, or have a rupture….It is very safe, you need have no dose prescribed; and it is very fit to be kept in everyone’s house’. 

I find myself very moved by all this. In a time when medicine was hit or miss at the best, how reassuring this little plant with its multiple virtues must have been! And while it would be easy to find the idea of people ‘bursten’ or ‘having fluxes’ as slightly comic, I am of a serious humour today, and find myself empathising with people who were trying to live their lives in the midst of all sorts of pain and contagion, and with very little to help them outside of the herbalist and the apothecary. The thought of being able to gather something for free that might help must have been so comforting, and who knows what difference this humble herb would have made?

Another interesting thing that I’ve discovered since my original post concerns the plant’s Latin name, Geum urbanum. This always struck me as a rather strange name for a plant that’s an ancient woodland indicator, but it appears that Herb Bennet is often seen as an urban ‘weed’ on the streets of Stockholm and Oslo, and indeed in Edinburgh. Linnaeus, who named it, was a very observant man, and I don’t believe that the species name ‘urbanum‘ came out of nowhere. So, here we have a plant at home in the deepest, darkest wood, and growing out of the pavement. What a plant!

As I may have mentioned before, I’m not a botanist. In order to identify a plant that has appeared in the garden, I usually have to allow it to bloom before I can even start to put a name to it. And so it was with this delicate, straggly yellow flower, which turned up for the first time this year. At first, I wondered if it was some kind of buttercup, or even a renegade yellow strawberry. But eventually I worked out that it is a Herb Bennet, or Wood Avens, a member of the rose family and closely related to the cinquefoils and, yes, the strawberries.

The name ‘Herb Bennet’ comes from the word Benedictus, so the whole plant is seen as a blessing. Hanging the plant up above your door was said to protect against evil spirits, and also against venomous snakes and rabid dogs. These virtues were absorbed into the early Christian tradition: the plant has three leaves, said to reflect the Holy Trinity, and, usually, five petals, reminiscent of the Five Wounds of Christ. I say usually because my plant appears to have six petals. It was also thought to be associated with St Benedict, who formed the Benedictine order of monks.

The roots of the plant apparently have a clove-like smell, which has been used to flavour ale, and to deter clothes moths. The root, which had to be picked by 25th March in order to retain its vital qualities,  has been used to treat everything from diarrhoea to fever to headache. The lovely foraging site Celtnet suggests using it as a pot herb, or as a clove substitute in apple pie.

Herb Bennet, like Pendulous Sedge last week, is a plant of ancient woodland. Again, I am intrigued by the way that it has turned up in the garden for the first time. The seeds of this plant are normally transported by animals:

As you can see, the seedheads are covered in tiny hooks, and these can be transported from place to place on clothing, or in the fur of dogs, cats and rabbits. So, did my plant arrive attached to a wandering cat who had previously been in Coldfall Wood, and set up home because the conditions were right? I fear I will never know, but again I wonder if the land beneath my feet remembers that less than a hundred and fifty years ago, it was a wood too. Whatever the reason, I am very happy to be hosting this little plant, with its long tradition of culinary and medicinal blessings.