Dear Readers, dogwood is one of the few garden plants that’s more interesting in the winter than at any other time of year, especially when seen against a grey sky or, even better, snow. I wrote the piece below back in 2018, when dogwood was my Wednesday Weed. See what you think. 

Dear Readers, every gardening magazine  has a section on ‘winter colour’ in September (along with instructions on bulb planting), and one of the plants that is always mentioned is the dogwood (Cornus sanguinea). This is a shrub which is native to the UK and most of Europe and western Asia, and it is largely grown for the colour of its stems in winter – the species name sanguinea  meaning ‘bloody’ rather gives the game away. It is the youngest growth which has the brightest colour, and in many municipal parks and gardens the plant is cut right down to a few inches every year. There are many cultivated varieties of dogwood, with stem colour varying from crimson red to sunset orange.

However, dogwood is more than its stems. Although the white flowers are not particularly showy, the berries (sometimes called dogberries) are irresistible to birds, one reason that I don’t butcher my shrub every year. In fact, some organic gardens grow dogwood as a way of keeping the thrushes from the soft fruit, as it’s said that they prefer dogberries to any other fruit. I shall have to see if my bush proves to be interesting to our avian friends when it gets a bit bigger.

According to Richard Mabey’s ‘Flora Britannica’ the name ‘dogwood’ is not disparaging (unlike, say ‘Dog’s Mercury’), but comes from the name ‘dagwood’, a ‘dag’ being a wooden skewer. This is borne out by some of the other common names, such as ‘prickwood’. When the prehistoric man Otzi was discovered on the borders of Austria and Italy, he was carrying arrow shafts made of dogwood and viburnum, and an axe with a handle made of yew. He was estimated to have been buried in about 3400 BCE, and was approximately 45 years old when he met his violent death. The story of the discovery, and of what has been ascertained about Otzi’s way of life, is a fascinating one. Furthermore, the fact that the body is in a museum in Italy and not in Austria is still a source of some disgruntlement in Austria to this day.

Dogwood is mentioned in classical literature: in the Aeneid, Aeneas finds a haunted copse of dogwood and myrtle, and when he breaks off branches to make an altar, the dogwood bleeds black blood.

There is also a legend that Christ was crucified on a cross made of dogwood, and that the flowers became cruciform as a result.

Finally, it’s said in the UK that when the dogwood flowers, there will be no more frosts.

Dogwood bark and berries both contain natural tannins, which make them both unpalatable, and useful as emetics. The plant has also been used as a treatment for rabies (hydrophobia), which may have been due to a misunderstanding of the derivation of its name. A solution made from the bark has been used by veterinarians to treat mangy dogs.

The fruit of dogwood was also used to produce a dye called Vesica green, until it was replaced by more exciting substitutes such as, er, arsenic. For a rather wonderful account of how THAT particular decision went down, have a look at the Racked website here.

Dogwood is one of the many foodplants of the larvae of the green hairstreak butterfly. As this is a) the UK’s only green butterfly, and b) as its Latin name means ‘beautiful eyebrow’ I thought that we should have a photo. What a delightful creature!

And, to return to the subject of ‘winter fire’, here is a wonderful poem by American poet Hyam Plutzik, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who died at the age of 50 in 1962. This really touched a chord in me, and I hope it does the same for you.

Because the Red Osier Dogwood

Because the red osier dogwood
Is the winter lightning,
The retention of the prime fire
In the naked and forlorn season
When snow is winner
(For he flames quietly above the shivering mouse
In the moldy tunnel,
The eggs of the grasshopper awaiting metamorphosis
Into the lands of hay and the times of the daisy,
The snake contorted in the gravel,
His brain suspended in thought
Over an abyss that summer will fill with murmuring
And frogs make laughable: the cricket-haunted time)—
I, seeing in the still red branches
The stubborn, unflinching fire of that time,
Will not believe the horror at the door, the snow-white worm
Gnawing at the edges of the mind,
The hissing tree when the sleet falls.
For because the red osier dogwood
Is the winter sentinel,
I am certain of the return of the moth
(Who was not destroyed when an August flame licked him),
And the cabbage butterfly, and all the families
Whom the sun fathers, in the cauldron of his mercy.

Photo Credit

Photo One (Dogwood berries ) by Sten Porse – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92313

Photo Two (Otzi reconstruction) by By Thilo Parg – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35621968

Photo Three (Dogwood flowers) by By Kurt Stüber [1] [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Four (Green Hairstreak) by By Charlesjsharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39829980

 

 

Dear Readers, the Crape (or Crepe or Crêpe) Myrtle is originally from India, China and other areas of eastern Asia, though I think of it as being a tree that is synonymous with the southern states of the USA. I was in Washington DC a few years ago, and between the singing of the cicadas and the flowers on the Crape Myrtles it felt very sultry. All I needed was a mint julep and I’d have been in my element.

In China, the tree is known as Pai Jih Hung, which apparently means ‘100 days of red’, after the plant’s long flowering time and red flowers (the pink, mauve and white varieties are cultivars). It was also known as the ‘monkey tree’ because the bark is smooth and difficult to climb. So I suppose it should be called the ‘no monkey tree’. Or possibly the ‘monkey puzzle tree’, except that we already have one of those.

But what is this tree doing in East Finchley, parked at the end of Huntingdon Road in the County Roads and blooming away to its heart’s content? A while back I mentioned that the council was getting much more ambitious with its street trees, and Crape Myrtle was one of the trees mentioned. It really is spectacular, and most unexpected. In his book ‘London’s Street Trees’, Paul Wood mentions that in previous years the tree was considered only half-hardy in London’s winters, but as climate change kicks in, it seems to be thriving. Crape Myrtle doesn’t flower every year, so when it does it’s a real treat.

The fact that the tree doesn’t flower annually has led to some brutal pruning practices (actually known as ‘crape murder’) particularly in the US. All the outer branches are cut off in the autumn, leaving just a stump. In fact, the tree will flower whenever conditions are right and it has the resources to do so, and pruning that hard leads to soft growth, which can attract aphids and mildew, and suckering from the bottom. Be kind to your Crape Myrtle, people! It will flower when it feels like it!

Crape Myrtle is a member of the Lythraceae family, which also includes purple loosestrife of all things. Who knew? I guess they’re both pink (though bear in mind that Crape Myrtle comes in a variety of colours, including bright red.

As far as pollinators go, Crape Myrtle doesn’t have a lot of nectar but it is said to have two types of pollen – the usual stuff, which is full of protein, and ‘false’ pollen, which is generated specifically to attract pollinators. As it blooms in September/October in the UK, it could potentially be a good source of late pollen for any bees who are still active. I shall keep an eye on the one on our street to see if anyone is popping in for a bite.

What I’ve found interesting from reading some of the legends about Crape Myrtle is how, all of a sudden, it’s associated with Aphrodite. What? This is a plant originating in eastern Asia and then heading to the US without so much as a stopover in Europe. What’s happened (I think) is that people are getting confused with a European plant that is interwoven with myth called Myrtle. This is a completely different plant, associated with love and marriage and all those other pleasant things. It is not, however, a Crape Myrtle, so enough already. This is where (Pedant alert) those so-called  boring, elitist Latin names come in so handy when we are trying to identify something precisely.

Back to Crape Myrtle. This really is an excellent tree for a small garden if you want something that has more than one season of interest (though for wildlife value I think there are better choices) – the bark of the tree is apparently very smooth (as mentioned above), and I must go and inspect the East Finchley tree to see what it looks like. The author of the photo below says that you have to actually stroke the tree to appreciate the smoothness (from the Wild in Japan blog, which is a very good read). In the photo below it looks rather like a more-refined London Plane, which is anything but smooth, as we know.

And then there’s the autumn foliage colour, something else for me to look out for later in the year.

Medicinally, Crape Myrtle is one of those trees that is literally meant to cure everything from diabetes to cancer. stroke to heart attack. A more reasonable assessment is given over on the Plants for a Future website, where it seems to be more use as a ‘drastic purgative’ (yikes!), as a paste for the treatment of wounds, and as a treatment for colds (if you use a decoction of the flowers). As usual, Bug Woman advises extreme caution.

And finally, here’s a poem by Evie Shockley, a black woman who grew in in the Deep South of the US. Here’s what she says about being ‘a southern poet’ –

I grew up: hearing certain accents and vocabularies and speech patterns that were the aural essence of ‘home’ or the audible signal of danger, depending; thinking that racism wasn’t much of a problem in other parts of the country; eating a cuisine that was originally developed under conditions of make-do and make-last; enjoying five- or six-month summers and getting ‘snow days’ out of school when the forecast called for nothing other than ‘possible icy conditions’; knowing that my region was considered laughable almost everywhere else; assuming there was nothing unusual about finding churches on two out of every four corners; and believing that any six or seven people with vocal chords could produce four-part harmony at the drop of a dime—and that all of this informs my poetry, sometimes directly and sometimes in ways that might be unpredictable or illegible.”

I love this, and I love this poem. See what you think.

Dear Readers, some people might dispute whether this common London street tree is actually a tree of hell rather than heaven, largely because male trees have enormous leaves that  smell of old trainers. Lovely! The tree also reproduces with abandon, and suckers pop up in cracks in the pavement, in drains, in patches of wasteland and anywhere with a tiny bit of soil.  Nonetheless, this is an extremely resilient if short-lived street tree – it shrugs off pollution, drought, graffiti and general misuse happily for the roughly seventy years that it lives, and I think it’s actually rather graceful and attractive. The leaves, which can grow to 60-70 cms long look like those of a giant ash tree, and the seeds can be orange, yellow, rust-coloured or even bright red. As the male flowers also have that delightful odour of sweaty feet, it’s not surprising that most trees planted in urban settings (like the one opposite Martin School in East Finchley, above) are female.

Tree of Heaven originated in China, and was first planted in the UK in the late 18th Century when there was a fashion for all things Chinese. Once the trees’ reproductive enthusiasm was noted, it was abandoned in favour of the London Plane, until the pollution levels of industrial London killed off most smaller trees, and it started to be planted again. Ada Salter, who became Mayor of Bermondsey in 1922, was determined to make her desperately-deprived borough more beautiful, and succeeded in planting over 7000 Trees of Heaven, a number not to be exceeded until the urban tree. planting boom that’s happening at the moment. Most of the planted trees will not be Trees of Heaven, but I note that a new one was planted alongside the statue of Ada Salter that was set up in Bermondsey Spa Gardens.

Ecologically, Tree of Heaven has another trick up its ‘sleeve’ – it produces a chemical called ailanthone, which inhibits the growth of other plants in the vicinity, but which doesn’t impact upon its own seedlings. Plants that produce these chemicals are called allelopathic, and it’s clearly a great advantage to invasive plants: another species which can lessen the success of competitors is garlic mustard, which might explain why it takes over so easily in new environments. In addition, the leaves are eaten by the Spotted Lanternfly, which is indigenous to China and parts of Vietnam but which has been imported into North America, where it is now cheerfully munching its way through fruit trees, grape vines and timber in addition to Tree of Heaven.

Tree of Heaven has a long cultural history too – it is the tree in ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ by Betty Smith. See if you can spot the metaphor…

“There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly…survives without sun, water, and seemingly earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.”

And in Chinese stories, a mature Tree of Heaven represents an ideal father, while a stump represents a spoiled child. Apparently (and this not something my mother ever scolded me with), it’s perfectly fine to call a careless child a ‘good-for-nothing ailanthus stump sprout’.

And finally, I realise that it’s been a while since we’ve had a poem, so here we go: this one, by Naomi Long Madgett, seems to sum up the Tree of Heaven’s tenacity. I do think it has rather more redeeming features than Madgett seems to think, but then I’ve always loved tough, adaptable, ‘common’ plants. This is the Wednesday Weed, after all.

Tree of Heaven
Naomi Long Madgett

I will live.

The ax’s angry edge against my trunk

cannot deny me. Though I thunder down

to lie prostrate among exalted grasses

that do not mourn me, I will rise.

I will grow:

Persistent roots deep-burrowed in the earth

avenge my fall. Tentacles will shoot out swiftly

in all directions, stubborn leaves explode their force

into the sun. I will thrive.

Curse of the orchard, blemish of the land’s fair

countenance,

I have grown strong for strength denied, for struggle

in hostile woods. I keep alive by being troublesome,

indestructible, stinkweed of truth.

 

Dear Readers, there are many, many little willowherbs about, popping up all over the place and largely going unnoticed. Broad-leaved willowherb (Epilobium montanum) is one of the commonest, but there are half a dozen others, all going about their business without anyone to celebrate them. So here I am! In urban areas you might also see American willowherb (Epilobium ciliatum) which is usually tinged red. You can see one below for comparison.

My broad-leaved willowherb has popped up in a neglected pot, where it has grown to about two feet tall without any attention whatsoever. As you can see from my original article (below) it is very popular with a whole range of caterpillars, and has been used as a cure for urinary problems and prostate disorders. Different small willowherbs grow everywhere, from the sides of streams to the edges of woodlands, from urban streets to rolling grasslands, and everywhere they go they flower prolifically, with their four pink petals, fires their seeds and then depart, until the next generation arrives in spring. And on this hot summer day (in London at least), let me share a poem by Edward Thomas that seems to sum up the languor of these June days.

Adlestrop
BY EDWARD THOMAS

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

And now, let’s find out what I was writing about back in 2015, when this first Wednesday Weed piece was posted.

Dear Readers, I am always surprised at what turns up along the dark, gravelly path that leads to the side entrance of my house. Yellow corydalis, greater celandine, forget-me-not, buddleia, Mexican fleabane, Canadian fleabane, sow thistle and chickweed all put in an appearance, but this is the first time that I have spotted this little beauty – Broad-leaved Willowherb (Epilobium montanum). I have a garden full of Great Willowherb, but this plant passed me by. It has a delicate, shy habit that means that it is often overlooked but once I’d noticed it, I realised that it was everywhere.

The plant has four, deeply-notched mauve-ish petals, and the stigma in the centre form a distinctive four-lobed shape. The leaves are rounded at the bottom (hence the ‘broad-leaved’), and are practically stemless.  Like most of the other willowherbs, it’s native.

As with all the willowherbs, the soft leaves seem irresistible to insects, and the plant that I used for identifications was covered in enthusiastic greenfly. However, the genus is also subject to the depredations of some larger creatures, such as the caterpillars of the Small Phoenix:

the Striped Hawkmoth:

and, most spectacularly, the Elephant Hawkmoth and the Small Elephant Hawkmoth, shown below:

Plants of the Epilobium genus have long been used as a treatment for prostate and urinary complaints, and indeed a company which manufactures supplements made from willowherb has taken the genus name of Epilobium  for its company name (note that this is not an endorsement).  Although the showier members of the family are the ones most often used in herbal medicine, Broad-leaved Willowherb was singled out in an Austrian study as having a stronger effect than the others. While there is a lot of interest in Chinese herbal medicine and Ayurveda, herbal medicine in the West is still seen as something of a niche area. Maybe this is because when something grows all around us, it’s difficult to make money from it.

I love Rosebay Willowherb and Great Willowherb.  I admire the way that they can take over a spot of damaged and derelict land and turn it into a sea of cerise. But this little plant lurks in the interstices of the city, at the bottom of walls, in the crevices and the dark places, cheering them up with its mauve flowers and graceful habit. And, when the time is right, it fires its fluffy seeds with just as much vigour as its bigger relatives. It might be little, but it’s a plant with ambition.