Wednesday Weed – Columbine

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Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris)

Dear Readers, this seems to have been a particularly good year for columbines.They are the quintessential cottage garden plant, but I was surprised to discover that the small flowered blue form, as seen above, is a native. Because various forms of columbine are grown so frequently in the garden it’s hard to determine what the actual range of the plant is, but Aquilegia, a genus of about 70 species, are found throughout the northern hemisphere. Aquilegia vulgaris seems to like calcium-rich soils, woodland areas and damp grassland, and is most common in the south and west of the UK – I found the flowers in the photos today in Somerset and Dorset.

Columbine has many, many local names. Most refer to the shape of the flowers: my Vickery’s Folk Flora tells me that the plant is known as ‘Doves-in-the-ark’ in Somerset; the name ‘Columbine’ comes from the Latin word for dove, ‘columba‘, with the inverted flower being said to resemble five doves clustered together. In Yorkshire it’s called ‘Fool’s hat’, a reference to flower’s resemblance to a jester’s cap. In Wiltshire it bears the name of ‘Granny-jump-out-of-bed’, possible because the petals resemble a skirt, though why granny was wearing her clothes in bed would probably make a story all on its own. ‘Aquilegia’ means ‘eagle-like’, and this is because the petals are supposed to look like an eagle’s claw.

The wild form of columbine is usually dark blue, though it can also be found in pale pink and white. However, the ‘domesticated’ forms come in a huge variety of colours and flower shapes. Here are a selection: first, the cultivar ‘Magpie’

Photo One by By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5516707

‘Magpie’ cultivar (Photo One)

Then this rather pretty blue cultivar

And this pink one….

Pink flowered columbine (Public Domain)

And a double-flowered one for good measure.

Double-flowered columbine (Public Domain)

What is interesting about the structure of the columbine, however, is that it is the spurs at the back of the flower hold the nectar. The length of these structures varies from species to species, but in all wild plants the spurs have evolved to match the bird or insect that pollinates it. In California, Aquilegia pubescens (also known as the Sierra columbine) is a high-altitude plant that has white flowers, and spurs up to 5 centimetres long. The plant is pollinated by hawk moths, insects with a liking for white-flowered plants and with a tongue long enough to reach the nectar.

Photo Two by By Dcrjsr - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10776732

Sierra columbine (Aquilegia pubescens) (Photo Two)

At lower altitudes, from Alaska to Baja California is the crimson columbine (Aquilegia formosa). Its red colour and much shorter spurs are a giveaway that its main pollinators are hummingbirds (most red-flowered wild plants were originally bird-pollinated). In between there are a whole host of hybrids between the two species, illustrating the way that the plant is adapting to the chief pollinators in each area. The process illustrates the way that plants and pollinators are locked into a dance of evolution, with each dependent on the other.

Photo Three by Dcrjsr - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50586172

The transition from Aquilegia pubescens to Aquilegia formosa (Photo Three)

Photo Four By Walter Siegmund (talk) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5491242

Crimson columbine (Aquilegia formosa) (Photo Four)

For anyone who would like a closer look at the structure of the columbine flower, I recommend the UK Microscopy website, which has many fascinating insights. One of these days I shall treat myself to a microscope, maybe for my fast-approaching sixtieth birthday – I love the way that a close-up view reveals so many wonders. But in the meantime I shall keep going to UK Microscopy for my high-magnification fix.

In the UK, columbine is a good bee plant, and is a nice choice for a woodland garden. It attracts mainly long-tongued bumblebees, and as seven of these species are considered endangered, it is well worth popping a few columbines into your understorey (should you have one). The bumblebee with the longest tongue in the UK is the garden bumblebee (Bombus hortorum), who has a tongue which can reach 2 cms long and is hence a match for any native columbine. My advice is to avoid the highly-bred fancy cultivars, and go for the dark blue natives.  Plus, you don’t have to worry about isolating individual cultivars or even species in order to get them to ‘come true’ – as we have seen, columbines hybridize at the drop of a hat.

Photo Five by Roo72 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Bee pollinating columbine (Photo Five)

There seems to be some debate over whether Aquilegia vulgaris (‘our’ columbine) is poisonous – they are members of the Ranunculaceae or buttercup family, and are closely related to monkshood (Aconitum napellus), described as ‘the most toxic wild plant in Britain’. Some sites described the roots and stems as being toxic, and on the Poison Garden website, the dark columbine (Aquilegia atrata), which is native to northern Europe, is said to have been used to cause miscarriage. However, there are no recorded cases of poisoning, and it is often a favourite in children’s gardens because of its interesting flowers and bee-attracting properties. Plus, certain Native American tribes have long eaten the flowers, which I imagine are very sweet due to the concentrated nectar that they contain.

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) used the plant medicinally as a treatment for swollen glands, and it was also used to hasten childbirth. As with most herbal remedies, the dosage and the wisdom and understanding with which the plants were used has been largely lost, to all of our detriment.

Many species of moth caterpillar munch upon the poor old columbine, and one of them is the saddleback looper, the larva of The Engrailed (Ectropis crepuscularia). The moth is not particularly exciting to look at, but I include it here because I have learned that the word ‘engrailed’ means ‘to have semicircular indentations along the edge’ in heraldry. You’re welcome.

Photo Six by By ©entomartIn case of publication or commercial use, Entomart wishes then to be warned (http://www.entomart.be/contact.html), but this without obligation. Thank you., Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=806463

Adult male Engrailed moth (Ectropis crepuscularia) (Photo Six)

A plant which has been grown in the UK since the 13th century is bound to have attracted some folklore, and one story is that lions ate columbine in order to give themselves strength – it was said that, to get the courage of a lion, all you needed to do was to rub the plant over your hands. However, if you are female and someone gives you a bunch of columbine, this is an indication that you are said to have ‘flexible morals’, and I think you would be well within your rights to summon up the courage of a lion and ‘clip them round the ear’ole’ as my Dad used to say.

And, of course, a poem or two. When I looked for ‘Columbine poems’,  I found many, many works about the school shooting at Columbine, a great outpouring of grief and rage and questioning. But I was most intrigued by, firstly, this work by Melissa Stein, who we encountered a few weeks ago writing about lily of the valley.

Dear Columbine, Dear Engine

by Melissa Stein

Dear columbine, dear engine.
Mere water will force a flower
open. Then with a touch
the beautiful intact collapses
into color filament and powder.
It’s all my fault. All hands on deck
to help collect what’s spilled.
That could be me beneath
a bridge. Torn up beside the road,
a bloat of skin and fur.
Afloat in bathtub, clean,
blue-lipped, forgiven. Face-down
in the snow. Why do you
imagine these terrible things?
asks my mother, or her
ghost. Because the paper’s
crisp and white. Because
no slate’s unwritten.
Because the ant that scaled
this flower head
has nowhere else to go.

And to end on a less distressing note, here is Emily Dickinson. There is a fine blogpost here by someone who is reproducing Emily Dickinson’s garden, and what a lovely idea that is.

It’s Father’s Day here today as I write, and for some reason this poem made me think of my mother. See what you think.

Columbine

by Emily Dickinson

Glowing in her bonnet-
Glowing in her cheek-
Glowing is her Kirtle-
Yet she cannot speak.

Better as the Daisy
From the summer hill
Vanish unrecorded
Save by tearful rill-

Save by loving sunrise
Looking for her face.
Save by feet unnumbered
Pausing at the place.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5516707

Photo Two by By Dcrjsr – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10776732

Photo Three by Dcrjsr – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50586172

Photo Four By Walter Siegmund (talk) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5491242

Photo Five by Roo72 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Photo Six by By ©entomartIn case of publication or commercial use, Entomart wishes then to be warned (http://www.entomart.be/contact.html), but this without obligation. Thank you., Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=806463

Bugwoman on Location – Crossrail Place Roof Garden

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Dear Readers, I am intrigued by the number of new imaginative green spaces that are springing up in Central London. Not long ago I popped in to see the roof garden at Fenchurch Street , and I was most impressed. However, I have been hearing great things about the roof garden at Canary Wharf. and so on a wet day earlier this week I took the Jubilee Line to Docklands, and popped in for a look.

The garden is part of the Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) station, a project which, as we know, is well behind schedule. When completed, the trains will arrive on Level Four of the station, below the shops and restaurants and the garden. The architecture is typical of its designer Norman Foster and Partners, who was responsible for the Great Court at the British Museum and the new Kings Cross Station. What is particularly interesting however is that large sections of the roof  of the garden are open to the elements (you can see an aerial photograph here. I had a chat with the gardeners who told me that this makes it quite a challenging space, with very differing levels of moisture and humidity. However, it looked absolutely splendid when I was there.

The planting design is based around the kinds of plants that would originally have arrived in the docks, either as food plants or as ‘stowaways’ – there is sugar cane and banana, tea, coffee and black pepper.  The garden is  divided in two, with plants from the east on one side of the main path, and plants from the west on the other. This could make for a right old jumble, but actually it is a lovely place to stroll through, and the plants are in excellent condition.

Rodgersia, palms and ferns

Bottlebrush plant

I was pleasantly surprised at how quiet it was at 10 a.m., though the gardeners told me that it is rammed at lunchtime. There are restaurants at either end, and a performance space called Giant Robot. There is a space for cookery lessons, and it was advertising sessions on Cuban and Persian food. By the time I left there were lots of London Mums from a dozen different cultures, walking their toddlers along the paths. It is a surprisingly child-friendly space, with lifts and escalators taking you down to very swish toilets with bright red glass doors.

But what is so lovely about this place is that, unlike more enclosed spaces, it is full of birdsong – the full-throated warbling of a blackbird, and the bell-like chimes of a flock of goldfinches, feeding on the seeds of the American Sweet Gum tree.

I loved the tree ferns too, such imposing plants.

There is some fine bamboo in a variety of greens and yellows.

And the roof frames some very unusual views of all the glass and steel buildings that surround the garden.

The calls of gulls can be heard too, and I watched one herring gull harassing a crow – gulls nest on some of the flat roofs and rafts in the old docks, and can recognise trouble when they see it.

So my advice is to go to the gardens early, avoid lunchtime and the evenings if you want a quieter experience, but do go and have a look. I suspect that it will be very attractive when some of the leaves change colour later in the year, and I have rarely seen a garden where the plants are so well looked-after. And who knows what other animals will move in? I saw several bees and hoverflies, all enjoying the plentiful flowers.

So, if you are in London and want to visit Crossrail Place Roof Garden I would definitely make a detour to see it. I suspect it will be much busier once Crossrail actually happens, so don’t hang around! It’s only a five minute trot from Canary Wharf Station, and you could catch the whizzy Docklands Light Railway from Bank or Tower Gateway or Stratford. Try to sit at the front to get the full ‘rollercoaster’ experience.

I have always thought of Docklands as being a soulless realm of men in suits, but it really is developing, finally, into something else. I  was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was, and by the variety of people who were enjoying it. London never ceases to surprise me.

 

 

Wednesday Weed – Foxglove

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Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)

Dear Readers, I can never get past my mental image of a fox tiptoeing around the garden wearing pink ‘gloves’ on each foot when I look at this plant. The allusion goes right back to the Anglo Saxon, when it was known as ‘foxes glova‘, and the Latin name digitalis means ‘finger-like’. In some parts of the country it is also known as fairy gloves. I remember putting the spent blooms on my fingers and drawing little faces on them when I was a child, and Richard Mabey reports how, by leaving the stem of each flower intact, they can be turned into ‘claws’. In Vickery’s Folk Flora, there are many tales of children using the flowers as tiny balloons, holding each end of the flower and pushing the ends until they popped. It was also considered a great game to capture a bumblebee inside one of the flowers, and to delight in its frantic buzzing. In the Forest of Dean, foxgloves were known as ‘snowpers’, and a favourite admonition to a noisy child was ‘Shut thee chops; thee bist like a bumble bee in a snowper’. Certainly these always feel like the most playful of plants, and from memory they seemed to be in full bloom at just about the time that the school holidays started.

Foxgloves are certainly having their moment ‘in the sun’ (though they are actually woodland flowers and most varieties don’t thrive without some shade). Every time I go to the garden centre there seem to be new varieties in every shade of cream, apricot, white and pink. They are biennials, bulking up during year one and producing flowers in year two. They self-seed enthusiastically, and are beloved by bumblebees. Digitalis purpurea is native to most of temperate Europe, but is also naturalised in many parts of North America. It is, rather counter-intuitively, a member of the plantain family (Plantaginaceae) which has been muchly enlarged of late.

White foxgloves in my garden

The story of foxgloves, however, is most closely associated with its toxicity and its medicinal properties. The leaves of foxglove were long used as a diuretic against dropsy (fluid accumulation), but it was also known that foxglove was toxic, and that giving the wrong dosage could be fatal. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey describes how it was a study of the plant’s usage by botanist and physician William Withering that created the split between traditional herbalism and modern pharmacology.

Withering realised that the principal action of foxglove was on the heart, slowing and strengthening its beat and hence, in dropsy, stimulating the kidneys to clear fluid from the body. He also noted that the leaf could be useful in cases of heart failure. However, he insisted on carefully measured doses of the dried leaf, and was aware that too high a dose could cause the heart to falter and cease. Over time, the foxglove’s key active ingredient, digitalis, was isolated and purified, and is used today (as digitoxin and digoxin) for heart conditions. Incidentally, if you have an elderly relative taking either of these drugs who seems to be in a habit of falling, do check that the drug is not lowering blood pressure too much. Dad had six falls in as many months until a junior doctor checked his medication and realised what was happening.

These days, the chemicals for medication are largely prepared from imported leaves of a European foxglove, Digitalis lanata. However, during both World Wars the leaves were gathered and dried by members of The Womens’ Institute, just to make sure that there was an adequate supply. In 1941 the women of the Oxfordshire Women’s Institute collected enough foxglove leaves to provide 350,000 doses of the drug (enough to treat 1,000 patients for a year). Never underestimate a group of woman on a mission.

Although the plant is very poisonous, it is also emetic, which means that you are likely to vomit before suffering the worst cardiac effects. However, it was used as a salad ingredient by someone trying to murder their husband (in Colorado in 2010). The husband realised that the salad tasted bitter, but thought it was one of these antsy-fancy new leaves that are all the rage (I can relate). He suffered a gastrointestinal upset but survived, and his wife was sentenced to four and a half years in jail.

In the Vickery book mentioned earlier, it seems that foxglove was also used for a deeply sinister purpose: the killing of unwanted children. There are several folk legends indicating that foxglove is poisonous to ‘fairies’, and it was used as a test to see if a sickly child was a changeling ( a fairy child who had been exchanged for the original human child) in both County Leitrim and Caernarvonshire, the latter as recently as 1857. A child was given a small dose of foxglove, and it was believed that if the child was human, it would survive, whereas if it was a fairy it would die. It would not take a very large dose to kill a child, especially one who was already ill.  Vickery comments that

‘Thus it seems that the use of foxglove (and other ordeals to which supposed changelings were subjected) might have been an acceptable method of infanticide which enabled families to rid themselves of sickly offspring‘.

Photo One by By i_am_jim - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68449634

Photo One

The poisonous nature of the plant doesn’t put off the caterpillars of the foxglove pug moth (Eupithecia pulchellata), who feed on the internal parts of the flowers, after sewing them shut with silk. Both moth and caterpillar are unassuming in appearance, but for sheer ingenuity I think they deserve a brief moment of fame here.

Photo Two by user janenannierocks at waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands. - This image is uploaded as image number 3702949 at waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20563006

A foxglove pug (Eupithecia pulchellata) (Photo Two)

And now, a picture. Regular readers will know of my fondness for Vincent Van Gogh, who loved flowers of all kinds so much that I believe he saw into their innermost nature. The portrait below shows Dr Paul Gachet, a homeopath and medical doctor, who took care of Van Gogh following his release from the asylum at Saint-Remy-de-Provence, and was with the artist for the last few months of his life. Following an inauspicious start, Van Gogh grew to love Dr Gachet, describing him as ‘a true friend, something like another brother’. The portrait shows Dr Gachet with a bunch of foxgloves, probably as an indication of his medical background. Van Gogh painted two versions of the picture, and said that:

“I’ve done the portrait of M. Gachet with a melancholy expression, which might well seem like a grimace to those who see it… Sad but gentle, yet clear and intelligent, that is how many portraits ought to be done… There are modern heads that may be looked at for a long time, and that may perhaps be looked back on with longing a hundred years later”.

Six weeks later, Van Gogh shot himself in the woods surrounding Dr Gachet’s home.

In 1990 the painting was bought by Ryoei Saito, chairman of the Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co, for $82m, making it the world’s most expensive painting at the time. The 75 year-old businessman was so fond of the painting that he threatened to have it cremated with him. When Saito died in 1996, the painting seems to have been sold, but the new owner suffered financial problems and sold it on again. Like so many masterpieces, it is probably now in a vault somewhere, or in a secret private collection.

Portrait of Dr Gachet by Vincent Van Gogh (1890) (Public Domain)

And of course, a poem. Here is ‘The Miracle of the Bees and the Foxgloves’ by Anne Stevenson, which manages to combine close observation with a sly humour.

The Miracle of the Bees and the Foxgloves

Because hairs on their speckled daybeds baffle the little bees,
foxgloves come out to advertise for rich bumbling hummers,
who crawl into their tunnels-of-delight with drunken ease
(see Darwin’s chapters on his foxglove summers)
plunging over heckles caked with sex-appealing stuff
to sip from every hooker its intoxicating liquor
and stop it propagating in a corner with itself.
And this is how the foxflower keeps its sex life in order.
Two anthers—adolescent, in a hurry to dehisce—
let fly too soon, so pollen lies in drifts around the floor.  
Along swims bumbler bee and makes an undercoat of this,
reverses, exits, lets it fall by accident next door.  
So ripeness climbs the bells of Digitalis, flower by flower,
undistracted by a Mind, or a Design, or by desire.
Notes:

In eight pages of The Effects of Cross- and Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom (London, 1876: 81–88), Charles Darwin describes an experiment he began in June 1869 among the fox- gloves of North Wales, this just one of his thousands of experiments demonstrating the superiority of cross-fertilization and throwing light on the origin of sexuality.
Photo Credits
Photo One by By i_am_jim – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68449634

 

Photo Two by user janenannierocks at waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands. – This image is uploaded as image number 3702949 at waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20563006

Settling Back

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Dear Readers, I am now home for eighteen whole days, which is my longest stay in East Finchley for at least a year. But before I tell you about London, I want to give you an update from my latest visit to Dad’s nursing home in Dorchester. Dad was chatting away to a new chap  when I arrived at the home. P had been in the forces and had lived abroad extensively, and, as Dad travelled a fair bit when he was a gin distiller, they were gently ‘one-upping’ one another with tales of jaunts abroad. I have learned that while people with dementia don’t always get their facts in perfect order, there is normally a kernel of truth in what they say however confused they are, and I have no doubt that P had lived in the Far East, and had learned Japanese.  P had a postcard from his daughter which he was showing to everyone who came in. Dad had been planning to write a letter to me, my brother and Mum, and had started to write it on one of the handkerchiefs that I bought him, but when I asked him about it he’d forgotten what he wanted to write. I was surprised both that he could still spell my name, and that he could still write. I’ve left him with a pad and some pens in case the urge to write strikes him again.

Dad’s face absolutely lights up when I walk in, and it’s one of the greatest joys of my life. I tell him when I’m going to visit him, but he always forgets. This time, he grabbed my hand and kissed it.

‘I didn’t know you were going to come in’, he said, and cried.

Dementia has made Dad more emotional, gentler. He has developed a taste for Portuguese custard tarts and ‘frothy coffee’, and it touches me how much he enjoys both of them. I thought that maybe he would be upset by the unusual behaviour of some of the other residents, but he seems completely at ease with them, and sometimes tries to help if someone has ‘lost’ something or seems particularly distressed.

One lady asked if I’d seen her daughter, and I told her that I hadn’t seen her today, but I was sure she’d  be in soon (she visits her Mum very regularly).

‘She’s the best girl in the world’, said the lady, and I had to go outside because that was what Mum always said about me.

One of the guys, B, used to be a London taxi driver and hasn’t lost any of the repartee. One of the carers asked him if he liked children.

‘I like children but I couldn’t eat a whole one’, he said.

When I popped in on Wednesday to have breakfast with Dad and to say goodbye, he was all geared up to ‘walk into town and have a look at a secondhand car’. I know that Dad misses driving, but while I’m sure he could do the mechanics of driving, he wouldn’t know where he was going. Fortunately, the home had organised a trip to the local market, and Dad was going to help choose some plants for the garden.

‘We’ll have a look at the cars if we can find any’, said the carer.

Initially I was really disconcerted at the degree to which I needed to lie to Dad about what was going to happen, and yet the alternative is so much more distressing and painful for him. No one is going to tell him that he will never own a car or drive again, and so the constant promise of it in the future keeps him calm and happy. There was a positive spring in his step as he headed off with his zimmer frame to get his jacket on, and I know that once he’s in the market he’ll be distracted by all the minutiae of tomato varieties and which geraniums are best.

As I waved goodbye, all the other residents waved as well. It really is a little family.

And yet when I got back to London, I was having a coffee and got into a chat with a lady who had a little dog. We talked about pets for a bit, and then I mentioned that I was just back from visiting with my Dad who has dementia. She sympathised, and then, as she was getting up to go, she turned and said

‘Oh, I do hope it doesn’t drag on too long for you’.

And yet again I was lost for words. I know that dementia is a terminal and progressive disease, but really? I think not just about my dad, but about all the people in the home that I’m getting to know, and I know that not only do they have a quality of life that makes it worth living, but that they are still valuable, loving human beings. This is the fourth time in the past six months that someone has suggested that my Dad and his friends would be better off dead, and that I must be hoping for such a speedy outcome. What does it say about our society that we can wish the oldest and most vulnerable people in it dead? My Dad is teaching me lessons about compassion and patience and understanding every single day.

And so, I really needed the solace of the garden when I got home, and all kinds of things were going on.

Take the fabulous cabbage palm (Cordyline australis) next door, for example. This year it is carrying three whole spikes full of flowers which are constantly abuzz with honeybees. I went outside to take a photograph and realised how sweet-smelling it is. No wonder the bees love it.

Outside the back door, I notice that everything is hideously overgrown, and that the pond is turning into a bog as fast as I can pull things out. However, some yellow flag irises are flowering for the first time this year. I can’t even remember planting them, so maybe they came with something else. This will certainly be something for the dragonfly larvae to climb up, and I check every day just in case.

And I love the way that the sunlight touches the water. The pond is absolutely full of frogs of all sizes this year, from adults to tiny new froglets the size of my fingernail. They are hanging around a lot later this year too, so maybe being so overgrown isn’t such an absolutely bad thing.

My white foxgloves are flowering, and the Bowles Mauve perennial wallflower is covered in bumblebees.

And so is the mock orange, which is just finishing but which is still headily-scented.

But there has been one disaster. The box moth caterpillars have been particularly vigorous this year – last year I managed to trim the bush back in the spring and get rid of most of the damage, but this year they have killed the bushes completely. I shall be cutting them back, digging them out and planting something else. I even spotted one of the caterpillars walking nonchalantly across the path a few days ago, probably en route from one bush to another. This is a pest that has marched through the  country over the past ten years, although the adult moth is rather lovely. I spotted the first one I’d ever seen at the Barbican Centre in London in 2015, but it was noticed in private gardens in 2011. It has probably arrived in imported box plants (the moth comes originally from East Asia) and while it can be treated with nematodes if caught in the early stages, the advice from RHS Wisley is to plant something else. Climate change is making the environment much more pleasant for the moth, and I suspect that we are going to have to adapt too. Privet, anyone?

RIP to my box bush.

Adult Box Worm Moth (Cydalima perspectalis)

And, in more exciting news, we are going to get our external decorations done. It’s been more than ten years, and the paintwork is, shall we say, a bit on the dodgy side. The scaffolding is up, but the best news is that I have bought this.

A sparrow nesting box

Sparrows like to nest communally, and so I have this little terrace of nestboxes that I have persuaded the decorator to put up for me while he’s on the scaffolding. Sparrows have already been investigating the eaves but have never stayed, so I am very hopeful that maybe next year they’ll take up residence. And if they don’t, maybe somebody else will. And once that’s done, I shall be looking into getting the garden back into some kind of order. I need to move my centre of gravity back east from Dorset, and start getting back into my own life. It will be interesting to see how that works out.

Roxanne geranium in the garden

Wednesday Weed – Eastern Gladiolus

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Eastern gladioulus (Gladiolus communis ssp byzantina)

Dear Readers, I hope you will forgive me for writing about a very non-urban ‘weed’ this week – eastern gladiolus is a ‘weed’ of Somerset but I have not yet seen it in the wild in London. However, it seems so local to the West Country that I wanted to ferret out some information on a plant that seems to have gone largely unreported.

We do have one native gladiolus (Gladiolus illyrica) in the UK, which is confined to the New Forest and seems to have escaped the grazing predations of New Forest ponies and deer by growing amongst the bracken. Eastern gladiolus, however, is clearly a garden escape, and is widespread in the Isles of Scilly, where it is known as Slippery or Whistling Jacks. All gladioli are members of the iris family (Iridaceae) and are named from the Latin for ‘little sword’, probably referring to the shape of the leaves (this also explains their alternative name ‘sword lily’). They grow from corms, and the wild forms are often delicate and subtle. You can not say this for the larger, showier florist gladioli, which come in brash rainbow colours.

Photo One by Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/Capri23auto-1767157/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2538065">Capri23auto</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2538065">Pixabay</a>

Florists gladioli (Photo One)

There are about 300 species of gladioli and the epicentre of diversity, as with so many plants, is in the Cape area of South Africa. Eastern gladiolus comes originally from a swathe of countries from North Africa in the west to the Caucausus in the east. I rather love its delicacy and elegance, and it certainly seems to pop up in the verges and gardens of my Aunt Hilary’s village in Somerset with very little encouragement. The first recorded sighting of the plant in a garden is 1596, so it’s had plenty of time to burst forth.

Many different insects are gladioli pollinators, but the one I would keep an eye open for if I had some of this plant in my garden would be the stunning hummingbird hawkmoth (Macroglossum stellatarum). Actually, I’ve seen this creature twice in the wild, once on red valerian in Mum and Dad’s Dorset garden, and once on lavender in my garden in East Finchley, and I ache to see it again. Sometimes, people take quite some persuading that they haven’t seen an actual hummingbird, so similar are the flight patterns of insect and bird. The fact that hummingbirds don’t live wild in the UK is not enough to convince some folk that they haven’t seen an escaped one.

Photo Two by By Yusuf Akgul - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42615658

Hummingbird hawkmoth (Macroglossum stellaratum) (Photo Two)

The caterpillars of the Large Yellow Underwing moth can feed on the leaves of gladioli too, and the moths are some of the commonest in my area.

Photo Three by By Holger Gröschl - http://www.naturspektrum.de/ns1.htm, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=217437

Large Yellow Underwing moth (Noctua pronuba) (Photo Three)

‘Gladdies’ are, of course, synonymous with that ‘Housewife Superstar’ Dame Edna Everage, and even feature in a bronze statue of her in Melbourne.

Photo Four by By WalkingMelbourne - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16084775

Dame Edna statue in Melbourne (Photo Four)

As a family we used to roar with laughter at her wicked observations, and her relationship with her bridesmaid Madge was a particular source of glee. It was no wonder, then, that at a fancy dress party that Mum and Dad held when we lived in Seven Kings in the outer reaches of East London, Mum dressed as Dame Edna, and even had some gladioli to hand out. It’s true that Mum’s Dame Edna vocabulary was limited to ‘Hello Possums’ in an accent that owed more to Stratford than the antipodes, but she was such a comedienne that this was quite enough. Mum loved to make people laugh, and would play to the gallery given the slightest encouragement. Her particular gift, especially as she got older, would be to say something outrageous and giggle inwardly as everyone tried to work out if she knew the connotations of what she’d said.

I do believe that there may be vol-au-vents in the buffet spread behind Mum in this picture, and probably devilled eggs, just to date it accurately to the early 19080’s.

Mum as Dame Edna Everage

Another cultural figure associated with the gladiolus is Morrissey of The Smiths, who used to whip the flower out of his back pocket and throw it into the audience at his concerts . How I loved his lyrics when I was growing up! He seemed to understand the angst of the lonely and the rejected. However, he’s turned into a fascist, sporting a ‘Britain First’ badge at his concerts, and so I shall pass on without even so much as a photograph. It is always disappointing when the people that we loved when we were young turn out to have clay feet, but goodness knows there’s been a lot of that about lately.

For such an attractive plant, gladioli have been rather out of garden fashion lately – maybe the Dame Edna link makes us think that all of them are blousy, and there are some pretty horrific, overblown gladdies out there. I really like the eastern gladioli though, and if they are too subdued for your tastes they could always be paired up with montbretia for a real cerise and orange ‘kick’. I think they look rather lovely against the silvered wood of this fence. Although gardeners are often advised to lift gladioli corms for the winter, the doyen of cut flower gardening Sarah Raven suggests that a healthy layer of mulch keeps them just as happy.

I was pleased to find that one of my favourite artists, Vincent van Gogh, also rather liked gladioli, though he chose to feature the bright red ones.

Vase of Red Gladioli by Vincent van Gogh (1886) (Public Domain)

And here is a treat. This wonderful poem, by Amy Clampitt, speaks of the way that we have grown used to having everything that the world has to offer available to us, the way that everything is in motion these days. And if you have time, have a listen here to the choreographer and artistic director Bill T.Jones reading this poem and three others, including one of my all time favourites, ‘A Blessing’ by James Wright. You will not be disappointed, I promise. And if you do not already follow ‘Brain Pickings’, I can thoroughly recommend it.

NOTHING STAYS PUT
by Amy Clampitt

In memory of Father Flye, 1884–1985

The strange and wonderful are too much with us.
The protea of the antipodes—a great,
globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom—
for sale in the supermarket! We are in
our decadence, we are not entitled.
What have we done to deserve
all the produce of the tropics—
this fiery trove, the largesse of it
heaped up like cannonballs, these pineapples, bossed
and crested, standing like troops at attention,
these tiers, these balconies of green, festoons
grown sumptuous with stoop labor?

The exotic is everywhere, it comes to us
before there is a yen or a need for it. The green-
grocers, uptown and down, are from South Korea.
Orchids, opulence by the pailful, just slightly
fatigued by the plane trip from Hawaii, are
disposed on the sidewalks; alstroemerias, freesias
fattened a bit in translation from overseas; gladioli
likewise estranged from their piercing ancestral crimson;
as well as, less altered from the original blue cornflower
of the roadsides and railway embankments of Europe, these
bachelor’s buttons. But it isn’t the railway embankments
their featherweight wheels of cobalt remind me of, it’s

a row of them among prim colonnades of cosmos,
snapdragon, nasturtium, bloodsilk red poppies,
in my grandmother’s garden: a prairie childhood,
the grassland shorn, overlaid with a grid,
unsealed, furrowed, harrowed and sown with immigrant grasses,
their massive corduroy, their wavering feltings embroidered
here and there by the scarlet shoulder patch of cannas
on a courthouse lawn, by a love knot, a cross stitch
of living matter, sown and tended by women,
nurturers everywhere of the strange and wonderful,
beneath whose hands what had been alien begins,
as it alters, to grow as though it were indigenous.

But at this remove what I think of as
strange and wonderful, strolling the side streets of Manhattan
on an April afternoon, seeing hybrid pear trees in blossom,
a tossing, vertiginous colonnade of foam, up above–
is the white petalfall, the warm snowdrift
of the indigenous wild plum of my childhood.
Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we’re
made of, is motion.

Photo Credits

Photo One from https://pixabay.com/users/Capri23auto-1767157

Photo Two by By Yusuf Akgul – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42615658

Photo Three by By Holger Gröschl – http://www.naturspektrum.de/ns1.htm, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=217437

Photo Four by By WalkingMelbourne – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16084775

Cuckoo Spit and Xylella – The Story So Far

16 Replies

Cuckoo Spit on the lavender in the front garden

Dear Readers, I am a member of several garden wildlife and insect groups online, and during this past week I have seen a rise in questions along the lines of ‘ I have cuckoo spit on my lavender, should I hose it all off? Is there any way to get rid of it? Are we on the verge of Armageddon?’ As someone who is entranced with the miracle of these annual foamy masses and the insects that make them, I figured that someone had gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick, and so they have. Reports that have superficially demonised the froghopper have appeared on the BBC and in most major and local newspapers, and I am frankly bewildered by the lack of knowledge shown. Science is often complicated, and it’s sometimes easy to read a headline and panic. So here is what is happening, as I understand it, and here is what we should be doing.

  1. What is cuckoo spit?

Cuckoo spit is produced by the nymph of the froghopper, a ‘true bug’ which feeds on the sap of plants such as lavender and rosemary. The froth is a protection for the toothsome youngster: it is produced from the insect’s excreta, and is turned into froth by the creature passing air through its anus. As I put it in my original piece on froghoppers here,

‘The foam is the only protection that Froghoppers have, and schoolchildren are always delighted by how it’s made. The bug sucks up the sap from its chosen plant, excretes what’s left, and blows air through it – so, it lives in a house built from faeces, and created by flatulence. What youngster could resist such a story? I’m surprised that they’re not all queueing up to be biologists as we speak.’

2. Do froghoppers do any harm?

The RHS website says that froghoppers rarely cause any real damage to plants, and can be left unmolested. I concur. My lavender has been a-froth with froghoppers for years, and is still splendid.

Froghopper nymph denuded

3. So why all the sudden fuss?

A bacterial disease known as Xylella fastidiosa, first discovered in the US in the 1890’s, is on the move. It turned up in Brazil at the end of the 20th Century, was in Europe by 2013 and has been advancing at a surprising pace. It was previously thought to be confined to warm areas such as the olive plantations of Greece, but in the past few years it has been found in France and Germany. Xylella works by blocking the uptake of water to the plant, and can be devastating – it has been identified in over 560 species of plant worldwide. In the UK, trees such as the oak and plane are thought to be most at risk. The RHS and DEFRA have been putting plans in place to arrest the spread of the disease if (or more likely when) it arrives. It is not, as far as we know, here yet.

The disease is probably going to arrive in the UK via a plant imported by a garden centre or tree nursery.  – the most recent outbreak of the disease was in Oleander, a popular garden plant in this country. However, once here it could be transmitted via sapsucking insects such as the froghopper. Although froghoppers are homebodies and don’t usually move more than about 100 metres during their lifetimes, they can be carried much further by the wind.

Photo One by By Charles J Sharp - Own work, from Sharp Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38317620

An adult froghopper (Philaenus spumarius) waiting to ping away. It is a very froggy-looking creature! (Photo One)

4. Why all the requests to report cuckoo spit?

This is pre-emptive. It’s hoped that by building up a picture of where froghoppers are at the moment, it will be easier to understand exactly when the insects are active and the extent of their range.  I will be reporting my froghoppers to the iRecord site below, which can be used to report other critters too, and is very useful for getting a picture of what’s around in your local area. You will need to set up an account, and then you are looking for a ‘project-specific record’ – the project is ‘xylem-feeding insects’, and the common cuckoo spit froghopper’s Latin name is Philaenus spumarius. There is a useful pictorial guide here, just in case you have one of the other two common British species.

https://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/

5. What is being done to fight the disease?

Certain EU regulations are already in place to control the spread of the disease: this is from the Henry Doubleday website.

  • All plant importers have to show evidence that their plants are sourced from areas that are free from Xylella.
  • Proposed imports of host species such as plane, elm and oak plants must be pre-notified to the UK plant health authorities to enable inspection This will allow a sequence of spot checks at the UK borders.
  • Other regulations are in place that restrict movements of specified host plants from the infected region of Apulia in southern Italy, and from countries outside the EU, to reduce the risk of entry.

However, if it did become established in the UK, control would focus on the targeted removal of host plants and management of the vector insects’ habitats. An outbreak (as opposed to an isolated incidence) would mean eradication of all possible hosts within 100m of the outbreak and very tight restrictions on commercial plant producers or garden centres within 10km of the outbreak for 10 years.

In other words, this is an extremely strong incentive to garden centres to ensure that their plants are properly sourced.

Photo Two by By I, Pompilid, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2260500

Oleander infected by Xylella (Photo Two)

6. What plants does DEFRA consider are most at risk?

In addition to the oak and plane, there are a whole range of other plants who would be endangered by Xylella.

  • Acer rubrum L.
  • Catharanthus roseus (L.) G.Don
  • Citrus sinensis (Linnaeus) Osbeck
  • Coffea L.
  • Gramineae Adans., Nom. Cons.
  • Medicago sativa L.
  • Morus rubra L.
  • Nerium oleander L.
  • Platanus occidentalis L.
  • Prunus L.
  • Prunus persica Batsch
  • Quercus rubra L.
  • Ulmus americana L.
  • Vaccinium L.
  • Vinca minor L.
  • Vitis L.
  • Woody plants
  • Liliaceae (family)
  • Citrus

7. What are the symptoms of Xylella?

Unfortunately, Xylella can look rather like many other diseases. The Forestry Commission says that:

‘The visible symptoms on plane, maple (Acer), oak and elm trees include leaf scorch, sometimes also with dieback of twigs and branches. The characteristic leaf symptoms which are visible in summer include browning at the leaf margins (but not along the main veins), and there is often a yellow edge to the browned areas.’

I suspect that concrete identification can only be achieved by scientists with microscopes. The bacteria produces many different species-specific syndromes, varying from oleander leaf scorch to citrus variegated cholorosis to olive quick decline syndrome. You will have noticed that many of the plants attacked are important food crops, often intensively grown and lacking in genetic diversity. There is much to be said for proper husbandry and stocking, and for the preservation of different varieties of plants, for just this situation.

The bacteria works by blocking the xylem, the main water-transport system of the plant. If only a few vessels are affected, the plant might be asymptomatic but still a carrier of the bacteria. If it is planted elsewhere and subsequently fed upon by a froghopper, the bacterium can be spread to another plant. The infected plant can also transmit the disease if it is grafted to a healthy plant.

Photo Three by Alexander Purcell, University of California, Bugwood.org - [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]

Pierce’s disease, caused by Xylella, on citrus (Photo Three)

8. Do we have to worry now? Should I be hosing off my froghoppers and burning my lavender?

No. As mentioned above, the reporting of cuckoo spit is pre-emptive. Our froghoppers are currently completely innocent, and will hopefully remain uninfected with Xylella. I think it is a hopeful sign that DEFRA and other bodies are getting on the case now, in unison with the EU, in order to head this threat off at the pass before it gets to the UK. We have already lost our elms, are likely to lose most of our ash trees, and our horse chestnuts are under siege every year. Let’s hope that this will be one disease that doesn’t get a grip.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Charles J Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38317620

Photo Two by By I, Pompilid, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2260500

Photo Three by Alexander Purcell, University of California, Bugwood.org – [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]

Wednesday Weed – Lily of the Valley

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Lily-of-the-valley(Convallaria majalis)

Dear Readers, I have found such comfort lately in the scent of lily-of-the-valley. One day, while I was wandering in Dorchester and trying to decide what to do after a visit to Dad in the nursing home, I found a tiny garden behind St Peter’s Church. I sat on a wall in a tucked-away corner, and the perfume from these small, shy flowers wafted up and distracted me from my sadness. There is something about some smells that can restore us to the here and now and fill us with a kind of ecstasy. No wonder many religious orders use incense to heighten the senses, though for me honeysuckle or rose would do just as nicely.

And one of the things that I found when I was clearing out Mum and Dad’s bungalow was the Bible that she carried on her wedding day, 62 years ago, and the satin bookmark hung with artificial lily-of-the-valley flowers. I note that Kate Middleton followed Mum’s example when she was married to Prince William in 2011, though she was lucky enough to be able to afford the real thing. As she was married in April, well before the plant’s normal flowering time, I imagine they were greenhouse grown.

The Bible that Mum carried at her wedding, complete with lily-of-the-valley flowers

Mum and Dad on their wedding day, 21st September 1957

Photo One by By The_royal_family_on_the_balcony.jpg: Magnus Dderivative work: Blofeld Dr. (talk / cont) - The_royal_family_on_the_balcony.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15064609

William and Kate’s wedding (Photo One)

Some people find that lily-of-the-valley sets up home in their gardens and is impossible to get rid of – the plant spreads by rhizomes and each colony is clonal, though it does also set seed. It is a native in the UK and across Europe and Asia, and there is even a colony in the Eastern United States, though its origins are open to question. Richard Mabey notes that in the south and east of the UK it favours ancient woodlands on sandy, acidic soils, whereas in the west and north it grows in limestone woods. Wherever it grows it likes shade, and so you would think it would do well in my garden, but, so far, not a bit of it. I shall have to have another go this autumn.

The lily of the valley which grows in St Leonard’s Forest near Horsham is said to have sprung up from the blood of a dragon killed by St Leonard, so maybe this is what my garden is lacking: both a dragon and a saint to come and deal with it.

Although in the UK peak flowering for lily-of-the-valley is in June, in France, where it is known as muguet, it is associated with May Day, and is given as a gift. My new favourite read, Roy Vickery’s Folk Flora, has this story:

“…..during the Second World War, when her home in Bignor, Sussex, was being used as a ‘secret house’ for French Resistance workers, Barbara Bertram recalled that amongst the embarrassing number of presents that the workers brought, perhaps the one she valued most was a bunch of lily of the valley which she found on her breakfast plate one May Day:

‘They had been picked in France the night before, following the charming French habit of giving Our Lady’s Tears on the first of her month’ (Vickery’s Folk Flora pg 423)”

The flower is also worn by participants in the annual Furry Dance in Helston, Cornwall. Gentlemen wear it the right way up, on the left, while ladies wear it upside down, on the right. It is worn by dancers, bandsmen, officials and by those who are ‘Helston-born’. I note from the film here that the bandsmen also often tuck it into their hats, no doubt to keep it out of the way of trombones and French horns.

However, Vickery also points out that lily of the valley is one of those plants that it is considered fatal to bring into the house. There are so many plants that apparently cause destruction on crossing the threshold that it’s a wonder that we ever put anything into a vase. However, lily of the valley is poisonous, so those innocent-looking waxy flowers and the red berries that follow them do need to be treated with a modicum of respect. There is only one recorded case of poisoning in the UK from 1989, when a family of four ate the bulbs under the misapprehension that they were onions (something that has also happened with daffodils). The symptoms of lily of the valley poisoning are similar to those caused by digitalis from foxgloves – the heart beat slows, and heart failure can occur. To add to the fun, the plant contains saponins which can cause gastrointestinal poisoning. This didn’t go unnoticed by Walter White in Breaking Bad, where it was used as a naturally occurring poison.

All of this hasn’t prevented lily of the valley being used as a medicinal plant: with the roots used as a diuretic and the leaves as a poultice for bruises and abrasions.

The scent of lily of the valley has not gone unnoticed by perfumiers, and it was incorporated into Diorissimo, produced by Christian Dior. Dior adored the flower, and it featured on his stationary and in his garden. It is, however, very difficult to produce a perfume from the plant as it contains no essential oils, so any scents that bear its name are likely to be artificial. Although it was first created in 1956 Diorissimo, with its other notes of ylang-yland, amaryllis, boronia and jasmine, continues to be a favourite, and was apparently much loved by Diana, Princess of Wales.

Lily of the valley was associated with the Second Coming of Christ in the Christian tradition,and in the language of flowers it is said to signify the return of happiness. It certainly kicked me out of the doldrums when I spotted it last week, and it seems to be seen by most people as a most hopeful little plant. I am rather with Elizabeth Gaskell on this: in ‘Wives and Daughters’ she writes that:

“I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!”

And so, to a poem. Well, two poems actually. One is so disconcerting that I wondered about including it, but I think that it is so evocative and unexpected that it’s worth a read. There’s an interesting analysis of it here.

Lily of the Valley by Melissa Stein

In the lake bodies shift
with the currents. Waterskaters
traverse their tapestries. On the bank
grow plants that no longer have names.
Some have tongues to catch the feet
of flying things. Two shoes lie
on the bank as well. A child’s shoes.
A girl’s. Can you see her, dirty dress,
dirty soles? The arms that held her?
In a convulsion of tenderness
that wasn’t tenderness. In a fever
that wasn’t fever. In this heat
the lily of the valley exudes
such sweetness a man can’t think.
All you want to do is stop up
those pealing mouths. Those white
white skirts, unutterably clean.

And, finally, back to my mother, as all roads seem to lead to her at the moment. In her youth she was a delicate, lily of the valley kind of girl, but in her later years she bloomed into someone with a love of vibrant colours, heady, blousy scents and striking textures. This poem by e.e.cummings jumped out at me. Yep, I think this is exactly what Mum’s heaven will be like.

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses….
& the whole garden will bow

–e.e. cummings

Photo Credits

Photo One by By The_royal_family_on_the_balcony.jpg: Magnus Dderivative work: Blofeld Dr. (talk / cont) – The_royal_family_on_the_balcony.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15064609

 

Another Year

12 Replies

Fledgling starling

Dear Readers , it seems impossible that I was writing about the new cohort of fledgling starlings a whole year ago, but here we are again. A couple of weekends ago we were woken at stupid o’clock by the insistent, wheezy calls of young starlings, fresh out of the nest and eager to be fed. The sky was alive with parent birds flying fast and low, hotly pursued by their ravenous offspring. I have noted before how the parents ‘park’ their freshly emerged youngsters in a tree, or on the ground, and then fly off to gather food for them. Left to their own devices, even briefly, the youngsters get into all kinds of mischief, and every year there’s something new. For example, I had never seen a starling sunning itself before. This one looked as if s/he was enjoying being able to stretch her wings. Maybe it was a very cramped nest.

Another group decided to bathe in the bird bath.

One fell into the pond and had to be rescued – I fished him out with a leaf-rake and he sat under the hedge looking very bedraggled.

I expected the kerfuffle to attract some predators – in the past I’ve seen fledglings killed by jays, cats and a sparrowhawk. But the afternoon went on, and the parents flew back and forth with mouthfuls of tasty caterpillars and suet pellets. It interests me that the babies will beg from any adult, but the adults are most particular about who they feed. They aren’t going to let all that work of incubating the eggs and feeding the nestlings go to waste now.

The period when the parents look after their offspring is vanishingly short, however. In the course of a few hours, the parents seem to move from feeding their fledglings every ten minutes to returning about once every half hour. I would almost swear that by the end of the day, the youngsters are left largely to their own devices. They certainly seem to pick up this pecking thing pretty quickly. By the end of the week, there were ‘gangs’ of adolescent starlings, but scarcely an adult to be seen. I’m wondering if the adults are just desperate for a break, and to get on with moulting. Nature is nothing if not pragmatic.

How vulnerable the fledglings look, though. I wonder if they feel at all nervous, out in the big wild world? What they seem to resemble most is some Dickensian ingenue, fresh to the Big City and ready to be fleeced by any passing rascal. Let’s hope they’ve learnt at least the minimal street smarts from their parents.

I was extremely surprised by the suddenness of the ‘switch’ in maternal behaviour when I was fostering cats for Cats Protection. We only had one mother cat who gave birth in the house, and this was Rosa.

Rosa

She was the most diligent mother to her four kittens: they were born on the 4th November and on the 5th November there was a massive firework display outside, complete with house-shaking explosions. I was afraid that Rosa would desert the babies in order to find safety for herself (she was nursing right under the window) but not a bit of it. The kittens were the centre of her life for ten weeks, during which time she fed them, cleaned them, protected them and taught them how to behave.

Rosa with her babies

And then, one morning, one of the kittens tried to suckle and she walloped him with a paw, sending him rolling across the floor. She had been moving away and allowing them to suckle less, plus they were all eating solid food by then, but had allowed them to ‘comfort-feed’. From then on, she was grumpy with the kittens, getting away from them whenever she could. She was extremely affectionate with us, though, and it became clear that she was coming back into heat. It was as if she’d decided that her work on this bunch of kittens was done, and she was getting ready to make some more. The kittens were rehomed soon after this, in pairs so that they wouldn’t be lonely, and once Rosa had been through her heat she was spayed and a new home was found for her too. It was a sharp lesson for me in how unsentimental nature is, and how quickly young animals can be ‘cast out’ to fend for themselves.

Incidentally, it also made me think that most kittens are rehomed much too young – 8 weeks feels too early for me, with ten weeks being the ideal. Mothers still have a lot to teach their kittens before they get fed up with them!

And although this isn’t a cat blog, here are the kittens. We gave them descriptive names so that we ‘wouldn’t get too attached to them’. That went well, as you can imagine.

Mostly White at ten days

Mostly White at five weeks

Stripey at six weeks

Stripey Tail at ten days

Mostly Black at eight weeks

Stripey Tail at 2 weeks

The whole gang…

And, of course, all this makes me think about human mothers and their children. I remember how desperately I wanted to be independent when I was in my teens, how hard I fought to break away from what felt like suffocation to me, though my mother saw it as love and protection.I am sure it’s a battle that is repeated in some form or another in most households, with a greater or lesser degree of heartbreak. And yet, when I did remake my relationship with my Mum when I was in my forties, it was all the stronger because of the previous fracture, because the lines had been largely redrawn. We came back together, tentatively at first, as adults meeting and  appreciating one another as if for the first time. Of course Mum was always my mother, and she always told me to put a coat on when she felt cold, but we had a new and enduring respect for one another. She encouraged me to be a writer, and when I was clearing through her things last week, I discovered a plastic file full of the stories that I’d sent to her, pieces that I don’t even remember writing, and yet here they are.She believed in me long before I believed in myself, and it is probably the greatest gift that she gave me.

When animals insist that their youngsters move on, it’s usually permanent – there frequently aren’t the resources to enable two generations to share the same territory. How lucky we are, as humans, to be able to make those decisions for ourselves, and to have the choice to have a new kind of relationship with our parents once we are no longer dependent upon them. The redrawing of boundaries and the conversations that need to be had can be excruciating, but they do open up new possibilities, if (and only if) both parties are willing to try. This is not to say that some relationships  between parents and children are not too toxic, too damaging, to be redeemed. But we often seem so lonely and exposed, so unprepared for what’s to come. As I have learned, there will be a time when there are no ears to hear the things that we meant to say, and the stories of our parents will go with them into the dust.

As the Buddha said, ‘the problem is, you think you have time’.

 

Wednesday Weed – Tamarisk

12 Replies

Tamarisk (Tamarix ramosissima)

Dear Readers, this seems to be a particularly good year for tamarisk in the UK – the tree above, spotted in a lane in Dorchester, was stunning, but there are some splendid examples in the County Roads in East Finchley as well. I have never seen a flowering plant with so many individual flowers, and according to my new wildlife gardening bible, ‘Gardening for Wildlife’ by Adrian Thomas, it is very popular with bees.A single flower can produce thousands of tiny seeds, each one adorned with a mini-mohican of hairs to aid in dispersal. This profligacy has made it a problem in some parts of the world, as we shall see.

Also known as salt cedar, the name ‘tamarisk’ encompasses a genus of about 60 species of plants. They all come from the drier parts of Eurasia and Africa, and the name ‘tamarisk’ might come from the Tamaris river in Spain. They are extremely salt-tolerant, and hence are often seen in the coastal areas of southern England, where they are used as windbreaks and for their prettiness. The RHS website suggests cutting them back hard after flowering, so that they don’t become spindly and blow over in a gale.

Being desert plants, tamarisks are extremely hardy – they have long tap roots which enable them to access ground water. They can also use their salt-tolerance to diminish competition – they accumulate salt in their foliage which is then deposited in the surrounding soil, making it impossible for other plants to grow. They are also adapted to survive fires. No doubt being in an East Finchley garden is a pleasant change from the normally harsh conditions that the tamarisk is more familiar with.

Photo One - no attribution CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=293521

Tamarisk aphylla growing in the desert in Israel (Photo One)

Tamarisk was introduced to the US in the nineteenth century as a shade tree and windbreak. In the 1930’s, during the Great Depression, it was used as a tool to fight soil erosion on the Great Plains, and it was hoped that it would be able to stabilise the soil, and prevent water loss. The photo below, of a tamarisk tree planted beside the Escalante river in Utah, was taken in 1936. I can well imagine how much people hoped that this plant would help the situation.

Tamarisk tree beside the Escalante river, Utah (Boyd Norton, circa 1936) (Public Domain)

Since then the tamarisk has taken to the desert areas of California and the southwestern US with much enthusiasm, using up the groundwater, making the soil salty and changing the habitat for native plants. There are now vast forests of tamarisk. How far they are a good or bad thing remains to be seen; ecosystems are complex, and humans often rush to change things without realising that a balance might be achieved in time without our intervention. Certainly the rush to rid the desert of tamarisk has seen some drastic measures: programmes have tended to concentrate on cutting the adult trees down and applying herbicide to the stumps. However, as we have seen, the tamarisk produces seeds with great profligacy, and also has roots that pop up everywhere, so this has proved to be something of a losing battle.

A more successful method has been the introduction of the northern tamarisk beetle (Diorhabda carinulata) which comes originally from China. It defoliates the tamarisk, and doesn’t eat anything else, so will die once the tamarisk is gone. Normally the introduction of one alien species to eat another brings all kinds of risks, but this has been tested in the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, and seems to have been successful. Removing such a well-established species as the tamarisk will not be easy, and it remains to see what the impact of climate change and other environmental impacts will be: increased sea-flooding, for example, creates conditions that favour the plant.

Northern Tamarisk Beetle (Diorhabda carinulata) (Public Domain)

Fortunately, in the UK there are no equivalent habitats to the arid regions of the US, and so the plant has not become a major invasive here. In fact, it is a foodplant for the tamarisk plume moth (Agdistis tamaricis), a species unknown in the UK until 2007. Like all plume moths, this is an elegant and easily-overlooked creature. You can often see other species of plume moth sitting on the window panes after dark, their wings sticking out at right angles to their bodies. You are unlikely to see this particular species, however, unless you live in Jersey, as so far it hasn’t crossed the rest of the Channel.

Photo Two by Keith Tailby taken from https://www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/agdistis-tamaricis

Tamarisk plume moth (Agdistis tamaricis) (Photo Two)

Photo Three from http://www.atarn.org/chinese/Yanghai/Scythian_bow_ATARN.pdf

Model of a composite Scythian bow (Photo Three)

Tamarisk is mentioned in both the Bible and the Quran, and is said to have been the favourite tree of the god Apollo. It is also often seen in the art of the Scythians, a nomadic people who are thought to have originated in Persia before spreading west into the Crimea, Caucasus and Balkan regions. The Scythians are thought to have used a bow made of ibex horn, sinew and the wood of the tamarisk tree: this made a weapon that was stronger, more flexible and capable of firing an arrow for much greater distances than a wooden bow. This was also the type of bow that the Amazons were depicted as using. Tamarisk wood can be used for many other purposes, including as firewood, though it should be remembered that it burns at a much higher temperature than other timber. This rather splendid statue of the goddess Isis, from the Louvre, is made of gilded tamarisk wood.

Photo Four by Gary Todd from https://www.flickr.com/photos/101561334@N08/28424255305

Statue of the Goddess Isis made from gilded tamarisk wood inlaid with bronze and glass, from the Louvre, Paris (Photo Four)

The tamarisk tree has featured in the art of Judaism, Islam and Christianity – Abraham was said to have planted a tamarisk tree, and in the Quran, the people of Saba were punished by having their garden transformed until it bore only ‘bitter fruits and tamarisk’ by Allah. The tree is also thought to be one possible origin for the idea of ‘manna’ falling from heaven. In some desert regions (including the Sinai), the tree is host to a mealy bug (Trabutina mannipara) which exudes large quantities of honeydew. This would quickly crystallize during the cold conditions overnight, and forms large flakes. Some people have also suggested that the resin of the tree itself could be the source of the legend, though the sugar concentration is much higher once it’s been passed through the guts of the insect, and most people now concur that it was the insect that was the source of the legend. In some countries in the Middle East ‘manna’ is still considered a delicacy.

Sadly, the UK tamarisks seem devoid of any sugar-producing insects, and we shall have to make do with them looking pretty.

Medically, tamarisk has been used for dysentery, snake bite, and as an anti-inflammatory. I can see few uses for it as food for humans, although Sue Eland’s Plant Lives mentions that North American children have eaten the flowers as ‘cedar bread’. I wonder if the salt that the tree metabolizes makes the flowers taste rather like crisps? If you’ve ever munched on any, do let me know.

The American Impressionist Guy Rose(1867 – 1925) seems to have been fascinated by the tamarisk trees that he saw while he had a scholarship in France for two years, and haunting, enigmatic images they are too.

Photo Five from https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/guy-rose-1867-1925-tamarisk-trees-southern-5561262-details.aspx

Tamarisk Trees in Southern France (Guy Rose 1904-1912) (Photo Five)

And, of course, a poem. This is by the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. We could all do with some hope at the moment, I’m sure.

Ein Yahav

 A night drive to Ein Yahav in the Arava Desert,
a drive in the rain.
 Yes, in the rain.

There I met people who grow date palms,
there I saw tamarisk trees and risk trees,
there I saw hope barbed as barbed wire.

And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be
like barbed wire to keep out despair,
hope must be a mine field.

Photo Credits

Photo One – no attribution CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=293521

Photo Two by Keith Tailby taken from https://www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/agdistis-tamaricis

Photo Three from http://www.atarn.org/chinese/Yanghai/Scythian_bow_ATARN.pdf

Photo Four by Gary Todd from https://www.flickr.com/photos/101561334@N08/28424255305

Photo Five from https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/guy-rose-1867-1925-tamarisk-trees-southern-5561262-details.aspx

Empty and Full

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The living room before

Dear Readers, this week I have been in Dorset, sorting through the remnants of Mum and Dad’s life in Dorset. There are boxes of photographs, most of them unlabelled but many of them lovingly put into albums. There are bank statements back to the 1990’s (Mum was always meticulous about finances). There are more light bulbs than you’d need to light up the Eiffel Tower, and a pile of canvases that Mum bought but wasn’t well enough to paint on. And then there is the wardrobe full of clothes, the ornaments, the pictures on the walls. If it hadn’t been for Mum and Dad’s lovely neighbours who have done a lot of the leg work on the non-personal stuff I swear I would just have sat in the middle of it all and cried. But instead, I discovered that I was a woman on a mission. To start with I lovingly considered every item, but gradually I became more ruthless, and more able to make snap decisions. Once the bungalow is sold we will be well on the way to having the finances to look after Dad without having to worry, so this was a great incentive. In two days we were ready to get the house clearance firm from Julia’s House, the local children’s hospice, in to take away the things that we couldn’t use or give away. The end result was this.

The living room after!

And as I sat in Mum’s reclining chair, waiting for the mobility aids to be collected, I could feel the personality of the place ebbing away and emptying out. Every time that I’ve walked into the living room I’ve had a strong sense of Mum and Dad’s presence, but now the house is starting to feel like a shell, just waiting for someone else to come along and love it. All that’s left now is Mum’s somewhat unusual choice of wall colour (turquoise in the main bedroom, sky blue in the small bedroom and pink in the living room, as you can see). And on Monday, the decorator comes in to give everything a coat of magnolia, so even that will be gone.

It all makes me very philosophical. A lot of Mum’s precious things have gone to people who will appreciate them. Her quilting material has gone to E, the lady who made Mum and Dad’s cake for their sixtieth wedding anniversary party. The neighbours have been given some of the furniture and ornaments. But even so, a lot of the things that Mum loved will be going to strangers via the hospice charity shop and, despite our best intentions, I’m sure some things will end up in landfill. And it will most likely be the same for me. Many of the objects that we love will fall into the hands of people who won’t know what they meant to us, and who won’t care for them as we did. That is, I fear, the fate of objects, so let us  enjoy them while we can. In Mum’s wardrobe there were pretty things that she’d put away for a special occasion that never came. Let’s make our ‘ordinary’ days a special occasion.

Strangely enough, when I went to sit on the seat outside the bungalow I had a very strong sense of Mum and Dad. They would sit there when they felt well enough and watch the neighbours going by and the children going to and from school. The spot is a real sun trap and so they didn’t sit there for long. But it did get me to thinking about those other things that they own and that won’t be ending up on landfill, their plants. The garden has become a symphony in blue, what with the cerinthe and the bluebells and the forget-me-nots and the perennial cornflowers.

The cotoneaster is abuzz with bees.

The ceanothus is just about to burst into bloom.

And when the man came to mow the lawn, Mum would tell him to go round the daisies rather than cut their heads off, and, bless him, he always did.

And so, I wonder what to take, and here I could do with some advice. How can I take a cutting from the cotoneaster and the ceanothus? Is such a thing even possible? I’m thinking it will be easy enough to take a couple of the cerinthes and plant them before they set seed, but I don’t know how to start with the other two plants. I have been noticing how both the cotoneaster and the ceanothus attract a multitude of bees, and it would be great to have them in the sunny front garden, plus every time I looked at them I’d think of Mum and Dad, and of Milborne St Andrew. Plants are something that do live on, and they have a meaning and existence of their own.

While I was in Dorset I had the chance to spend some time with Dad. He seems very calm and collected these days.

‘This isn’t a bad cruise ship at all’, he said when I popped in. ‘We’ve been to France and Germany. I never know where we’re going to next’.

Dad gestures to one of the carers who happens to have a beard.

‘This is the captain’, says Dad. ‘I’d like to introduce you’.

He tells Adrian, who is one of the carers and happens to have a very nautical beard, that I am his daughter, and I am chuffed that he actually remembers who I am. When my brother popped in, Dad told him that his sister June had been in three times, so I didn’t get any credit for my last visit. Not that I’m bothered (much), but still, it’s nice to be recognised, even if only briefly.

Adrian and I shake hands, and I go to get Dad some cake. There is always cake in the care home, and I do believe that Dad is starting to put on a little weight – he lost nearly three stone during the past eighteen months and was looking most unlike himself. He tucks into the cake with some difficulty, what with his fractured wrist from a fall a month ago and his problems with his shoulder, but he enjoys it hugely. Then he falls asleep, and so I slip out and head to my bed and breakfast.

Things have been moving so fast that I’m not sure that my emotions have caught up yet. I do know, though, that the night after the house was cleared, I slept through the night for the first time in almost nine months. It feels as if things are constantly shifting, and tomorrow I might be distraught again, but at the moment I feel as if I’m adapting to this ‘new normal’ state of affairs, both in terms of selling the bungalow, and coming to terms with Dad’s dementia. I no longer expect him to be the Dad that I remember, but in many ways he is more like himself than he’s been for ages – all the anxiety of the past few years seems to have dropped away and he’s back to the placid, stoical man that he was previously. I am starting to become less anxious myself, and to be able to sit with him and just go with the flow. There is still possibility here, still a sense of things to be enjoyed and company to be kept. I find myself becoming more accepting, and full of gratitude that he is still here.

Dad quality checking the gin in the Gordon’s distillery in 1985 (aged 50)