The Nimble Musicians of the Air (Isaak Walton)

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Bird Therapy by Joe Harkness

Dear Readers, I am currently reading Joe Harkness’s ‘Bird Therapy’, which describes how the author found birdwatching to be a solace following a breakdown. I am finding it inspirational, because it not only tells the author’s story (which is fascinating), but is also full of lots of practical advice. Harkness has structured the book around the ‘five ways to wellbeing’ which have been endorsed by the mental health charity MInd. They are: to connect, to take notice, to give, to keep learning and to be active. The author points out that these five things are intrinsic to birdwatching, and it also felt like a helpful way for me to think about my relationship to my blog.

I have long thought that contact with nature is deeply healing: one problem with the way that most of us live these days is that we are lonely and disconnected from the world around us in a way that even our grandparents weren’t. Before I started this blog, I couldn’t have named more than half a dozen of the ‘weeds’ that grow in the garden. Trees were a mystery. The great benefit of Bugwoman the Blog is that it has been an incentive to actually go out and use my senses, and one thing that has delighted me to excess is that I have learned to identify the calls of some of the birds that surround me. There is a meditative quality to sitting in the garden and just listening that is deeply calming, and there is something exciting about hearing a bird that I haven’t heard before. I thought that, today, I would share with you a few of the experiences that have raised my spirits over the past few years. Do let me know what birdsong has meant to you!

It was a wet Easter Friday morning in 2015, and I was trudging around Coldfall Wood, my head full of worries. Already Mum and Dad were unwell, and I felt thoroughly weighed down. It took a good half an hour before I noticed the birdsong. It was a virtuoso performance, with each refrain being repeated several times, urgently. I could hear another bird answering some distance away. Finally, I managed to actually spot the bird. It was the first song thrush that I had ever noticed, and I was entranced. I stood and listened with rain pouring off my kagoule, all alone in the wood, and for a few moments everything stopped. A few years later a songthrush visited me in the garden, but it is that song in the wood that I remember – I know that I marched out of the woods with my heart lifted.

Song thrush (Turdus philomelos) visiting in the garden

The song thrush was a new bird to me, but the robin is ubiquitous. Yet, I feel as if I have spent the first fifty years of my life paying no attention what so ever to the bird’s song. In Coldfall Wood, in spring, you pass from one songster’s territory to another, without ever being out of earshot of that tumble of melody. Furthermore, robins sing with such gusto and confidence that they will carry on even while you stand underneath ‘their’ tree. Although robins sing all year, they are never so vocal as in spring. I filmed the one below in March, when the year had already turned towards the sun, although we humans might not have noticed.

A sound that I always find exciting is not really a song – it’s the soft ‘tseep’ contact call of a flock of long-tailed tits as they clamber like miniature monkeys through a shrub. If you’ve never heard it (and it’s one of those sounds that you need to ‘tune in’ to ) you can have a listen here. Once I hear it, though, I have to stop and look around. My very best experience of these birds was in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, when I unexpectedly came upon this little group. Newly fledged ‘bumbarrels’! If there is a more adorable bird in the UK I have yet to meet it.

And finally, there is the song that tells me that, for many birds, the hard work of the year is almost over. Every May, there is a morning when I am woken up by the feeding calls of dozens of fledged starlings, all waiting for their poor patient parents to feed them. The first time I heard it, I had to rush to the window to see what on earth was going on, what with all the wheezing and squealing. I love the way that the birds come every year, and I wonder if the local starlings remember that there is always food here. That sense of continuity, of the wheel of the seasons still turning, is reassuring, especially in these tumultuous times.

But I couldn’t leave this subject without mentioning the healing effects of birdsong, even when the birds are not present. Long-time readers of this blog might remember that my mother was hospitalised at Christmas when she came to visit me in London back in 2016. The Whittington Hospital in North London saved her life, and she lived for another two years, during which time she celebrated her sixtieth wedding anniversary to my dad. Here is what I wrote about it at the time.

‘It used to be that hospital wards were full of flowers, the stink of lilies and gently decomposing chrysanthemums rising above the smell of antiseptic and hospital cooking. But now, all plants are banned ‘for hygiene reasons’. Probably the nurses are so overworked that they don’t have time to cope with browning foliage and wilting poinsettias. But I can’t help thinking that something alive and beautiful is as important for healing as drips and antibiotics. Mum’s bunker looked completely sterile. But I had underestimated her.

At Christmas dinner, I had handed out some crackers that I’d bought from a wildlife charity. Each one contained a card that, when opened, released a snippet of bird song. The game was to guess which bird was singing – nightingale, blue tit, wren? Mum had put the cards in her bag. When the very important Consultant and his two trainees came along to see how she was doing, she produced one of the cards and pushed it into the Big Man’s hand.

‘Open that’, she said.

He looked at her askance, and opened the card. The sound of a song thrush in full-throat filled the bare room, flooding the place with the sound of woodland wildness.

The consultant’s face changed. He closed the card and opened it again. He turned to the two trainees.

‘I know you want to go home’, he said to them, ‘But listen to this!’

And he ‘played’ the song again, before closing the card and handing it back to Mum with a bow’

Wednesday Weed – Cardoon

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Cardoon (Cynar cardunculus var altilis)

Dear Readers, there can’t be many late-summer plants that attract as many insects as the cardoon, a massive Mediterranean thistle that is suddenly very popular in bee-friendly flowerbeds. You might know it as the globe artichoke, and you would be right: the cultivated variety of the plant, Cynar cardunculus var scolymus, has been systematically bred for larger, juicier flowerbuds, while the cardoon was grown more for its edible stems. There are now many decorative varieties of the plant , and with its architectural grey foliage and fist-sized flowers there are few more imposing things to stick at the back of the border.

The cardoon has a long and illustrious history as an edible plant. It was mentioned by the Greek writer Theophrastus who lived during the fourth century BCE. It was also popular with the Romans and the Persians, and was eaten in many places in medieval and early modern Europe. It was taken to North America by settlers during the colonial era, and can also be found in Argentina and Australia (it is considered an invasive weed in both countries). However, it fell out of favour throughout most of its range and by the twentieth century it had become rare, except in a few regions.

In North Africa the leaves and stems are often added to couscous, but it really comes into its own in Lyonnaise cuisine, and in the recipes of Navarre and Aragon in Spain. Only the tenderest, innermost leaves are considered edible, and these are traditionally blanched by being surrounded by earth to keep the light out. This reminds me somewhat of the ‘forced rhubarb’ of Yorkshire, though here the plants are grown in sheds in the dark to achieve the same ends. Sadly, the blanching is now more often achieved by wrapping the plant in black plastic.

Some people do eat the buds, in the same way that you might eat baby globe artichokes, but when I look at the wild plant this seems like a daunting prospect. The stems of the cardoon are also covered in small painful spikes, which need to be removed, although some commercial varieties have been bred without them.

Photo One by By Lusitana - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2160162

The wild cardoon (Photo One)

The buds can, however, be used for cheesemaking, as can the pistils of the flower: they contain a kind of vegetable rennet which helps to coagulate the milk. Both Spanish and Portuguese cheesemakers use cardoon for this purpose.

Photo Two by By MollySVH - Torta de Casar cheeseUploaded by Diádoco, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9917414

The Torta del Casar cheese of Spain, made with cardoon rennet (Photo Two)

Photo Three by By Adriao - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6635351

Queijo Serra da Estrella cheese from Portugal (Photo Three)

The cardoon is also an ingredient of the Spanish national dish Cocido madrileño, a substantial dish made with chickpeas, meat (usually pork) and vegetables. Traditionally, this is eaten in three parts: first the stock, with some noodles added, then the vegetables and pulses, and then the meat. The dish was originally called adafina, and was a staple of the  Sephardic Jewish community, without the pork but with eggs. It was valuable because it was cooked very slowly, and therefore didn’t need to be attended to during Shabbat. Sadly, the growth in anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jewish population during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries led to the dish incorporating pork, as a way for Christians and converted Jews to prove that they weren’t Jewish. The history of cuisine is so often a history of the peoples who originated it.

Photo Four by By Tnarik - Flicr [1], CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2547841

Cocido Madrileño (Photo Four)

In New Orleans, the stems are traditionally served battered and fried on the altars on the Feast of St Joseph (19th March).

Photo Five by Christopher Scafidi.Original uploader was ChrisQuint at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia(Original text : Christopher Scafidi), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8916438

St Joseph’s Day Altar with fried cardoons (Photo Five)

Of course, I couldn’t leave the subject of the culinary uses of cardoon without mentioning the alcoholic beverages that it is associated with. The Italian liqueur Amaro uses cardoon as a principle ingredient, but if you really want an artichoke hit, there is a drink that I saw being quaffed in Venice: cynar spritz. The cynar is made with globe artichoke rather than cardoon, but it seems to appeal to the Venetians, who have a taste for the bitter rather than the sweet. Maybe it’s all those blessed tourists and cruise ships that tend them towards the darker side of life. At any rate, on any sunny evening you will see Venetian matriarchs of all ages knocking this back (along with bright orange Aperol spritz, which always reminds me of Lucozade, at least in colour) and discussing the abominations of the age, and who can blame them?

Photo Six by Trekkiedane - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57028294

Cynar liqueur. Imbibe at your own risk (Photo Six)

Cardoon has also come to the attention of the biofuel industry, and in Sardinia, the site of an old petrochemical factory is being turned into a biorefinery which  which will take the oil from the thistle seeds and turn it into bioplastics. It is planned to use the rest of the plant too: the biomass can be turned into high-protein flour and animal feed, and during the flowering season it’s hoped to create cardoon honey. As you can see from the photos, there is no shortage of bees waiting to take advantage of those enormous flowerheads.

In my ever-helpful ‘Gardening for Wildlife’ book by Adrian Thomas, Cynara species are described as some of the most useful plants for the August to November season, just when the queen bumblebees are fattening up and the honeybees are gathering in their stores for the winter. However, he does mention that, as it can grow to 2.5 metres tall and have a spread of the same dimensions, it probably needs a large garden. Like most Mediterranean plants, it loves full sun and a well-drained soil. I fear that I am going to have to admire it in other people’s gardens for the time being. I have tried to grow it in mine, but it languished droopily and finally succumbed.

So, what impact has the cardoon had on the arts? I was delighted to find this still life by Spanish painter Felipe Ramirez from 1628, which is currently in the Prado in Madrid. Note the blanched stems of the cardoon, looking for all the world like celery after it has been in the fridge for a little too long. The francolin is a kind of quail. We know absolutely nothing else about Snr Ramirez, but this painting lives on. I  love the way that he has captured the bloom on the grapes, and the blemishes on the cardoon.

Still Life with Cardoon, Francolin, Grapes and Irises by Felipe Ramirez (1628) (Public Domain)

There is, however, speculation that Ramirez was a student of the master of Spanish still life painting (known as ‘bodegones’, meaning, ‘from the bodega (a storeroom or tavern), Juan Sánchez Cotán. He was working in Toledo in the seventeenth century, and raised ordinary everyday things, such as fruit and vegetables, to the status of objects to be artistically appreciated. This appeals to my own sensibility – everything is worth paying attention to, and I know that when I was taking a drawing class, I fell in love with everything that I turned my charcoal to, particularly the imperfections that made a carrot or an apple or a bottle individual and unique.

Still Life with Fruit and Vegetables by Juan Sanchez Cotan (circa 1602) (Public Domain)

And finally, a poem. I have been so busy thinking about bees that I forgot that goldfinches love thistle seeds of all kinds, and the cardoon must provide a bumper crop. Here is a poem from the London Magazine by Peter Anderson. I love the sense of the morning after the night before amidst the ruins of Rome.

The Goldfinches of Rome by Peter Anderson

Dawn on the Palatine:
planets bow out, stars pick their way
through rat-traps and incident tape.
The morning after the party of all time.

The sun loves me like a cat
wanting my sleep. I am trying to sleep
in the lee of a wall in the wilderness
backyard of an emperor.

There is a lyric of ruins. It is a song
sung in that dream of eating your own teeth.
Red brick turns its flank to the sun.
BAX BUNNY tattooed there.

Scudding across tufa and tramlines
glittering like straights
goes just the one scooter.
Ciao, bella.

This letter comes by goldfinch,
the first I ever saw,
blooding its face on the Palatine
at dawn, terrible

as a princeps, pontifex, come
down into gardens of citrus and cypress
in the first heat of the day.
A blood god busy in the cardoons.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Lusitana – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2160162

Photo Two by By MollySVH – Torta de Casar cheeseUploaded by Diádoco, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9917414

Photo Three by By Adriao – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6635351

Photo Four by By Tnarik – Flicr [1], CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2547841

Photo Five by Christopher Scafidi.Original uploader was ChrisQuint at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia(Original text : Christopher Scafidi), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8916438

Photo Six by Trekkiedane – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57028294

The Shell of the Snail

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Garden snail (Cornus aspersum)

Dear Readers, I was planning to do the Big Butterfly Count this morning, but when I stepped out of the front door it became apparent that any self-respecting butterfly would be hiding under a substantial leaf to keep dry. However, half a dozen garden snails (Cornus aspersum) were gently gliding around on the wet stones, and so I sat down on the front step to watch them. I was much taken by the delicate tracery of burgundy-brown and caramel on the shell of each individual, the colours enhanced by the drizzle.  What, I wondered, were the advantages and disadvantages of having a shell (after all, slugs manage without one)? Why did the shells seem to curl in the same direction on every snail in the garden? And does the shell tell us anything about the life of the individual snail? I reach for my New Naturalist ‘Slugs and Snails’ by Robert Cameron to see if he has any answers, and several hours later, I emerge, amazed.

The shell of snail performs two main functions: it protects its owner against predation and it acts as a shield against drying out. On the downside, however, a shell requires energy to build, and energy to transport. Slugs and snails are the only molluscs who don’t live in water: a water snail doesn’t have to contend with gravity in the way that a land snail does, because the liquid helps to support it. So, we have to assume that the costs of having a shell are offset by the value of not being eaten quite so regularly, and the value of not drying to a frazzle every time there’s a heatwave.

The garden snail comes originally from the Mediterranean, and there is little doubt that it was brought to the UK (and lots of other places) by the Romans, who enjoyed eating them. The climate of the snail’s native range would historically have been much hotter and drier than Northern Europe (though all bets are off with climate change), which may explain the robust shell, especially when compared to our smaller and more delicate native snails. Traditionally, the garden snail was a creature of the warmer parts of the UK because it couldn’t survive the harsher winters ‘oop north’. Watch this space, however.

The vast majority of garden snails have what is known as ‘dextral chirality’. This means that the mouth of the shell is on the right when viewed from above, and the ‘coil’ of the shell runs clockwise if viewed from the centre. The most important organs of the snail are within the shell, and they are in torsion: if the shell is ‘dextral’, the lung, stomach etc will be twisted in the opposite direction. Chirality is inherited from the mother snail, and in most species, including the garden snail, any individual unfortunate to be born with the opposite ‘twist’ will be unable to mate, owing to the way that these hermaphrodite creatures need to ‘line up’ in order to shoot one another with their ‘love darts’. The sex life of the garden snail probably needs a blogpost all to itself.

Incidentally, snails can do something directly that most animals have to rely upon microorganisms to achieve: they seem to manufacture the enzyme cellulase, which digests the fibrous cellulose that makes up the structure of plant cells. And, while we’re on the subject of eating, the garden snail is one of the few mollusc species in the UK that eats some live plant material (most of the others are detritivores and munch up dead and rotting leaves). Young snails appear to have a particular taste for new growth. However, Robert Cameron does point out that the damage done by garden snails is a tiny proportion of the damage done by the field slug (Deroceras reticulatum) so we can probably cut them a little slack.

The shell of a snail starts with a layer called the periostracum. This is the shiny, tortoiseshell-like ‘stuff’ that I was admiring earlier. It is made of proteins which resemble those that make our fingernails. It is, however, relatively delicate, and all that creeping under stones and rubbing up against flowerpots will soon remove it. Elderly snails can look rather bleached and dull, unlike those polished youngsters that are hanging about under my buddleia. Apparently garden snails who live on sand dunes are literally ‘sand blasted’.

The strength of the shell, however, comes from the lamellar layer, which is formed from several layers of calcium carbonate, laid in opposite directions much like the alignment of the layers in plywood. Calcium carbonate is not as ‘expensive’ for the animal to deposit as protein: Cameron points out that if 5% of the shell is made of protein, that has taken about 50% of the energy to make the whole shell. Unfortunately for the snail, calcium can be difficult to find:the snail eats soil in order to get the materials that it needs, and snails living on limestone have thicker shells than those living on acid soils. Snails might also been seen eating rocks, bones or even the shells of other snails in order to top up their calcium – I distinctly remember that I once saw the skeleton of a dead sheep that was absolutely covered in snails, and now I know why. There may be no snails at all in the most acidic environments, such as heather moors or sphagnum moss, but of course there will be plenty of slugs who don’t have to worry about such things.

Once the snail has reached adulthood, it may use the calcium carbonate from its shell for other things, such as the shells of its eggs, which can be relatively hard in some species. 

One of the saddest sounds of a wet day is the muted crunchy ‘pop’ of a snail that’s been accidentally trodden upon. It’s clear that snails are not impregnable in spite of all that effort, but I was cheered to hear that, in the presence of sufficient materials, a snail can regenerate its shell, provided the damage is not too great. Indeed, you can sometimes spot a snail bearing a tatty, misshapen shell which looks as if it was stuck together with a glue stick. Ladies and gentlemen, what you see before you is a battered molluscan warrior, so respect is due. But wait! I just discovered this article which tells the worried pet owner how to repair the shells of any injured domesticated snails. Truly, the internet is an endless cornucopia of wonders.

The main advantage of a snail shell, however, seems to me to be the protection that it provides against drying out. It’s been estimated that a garden snail loses 8% of its body weight per hour while crawling around, which explains the huge number of snails that I find hiding in the overhanging lips of my garden containers when the weather gets hot. Snail shells are pretty much impermeable, and many snails can seal themselves up completely to wait for happier, damper times.

Incidentally, research across Europe has shown a clear correlation between the proportion of slugs to snails and the dampness of the climate: in Cyprus only 9% of land molluscs are slugs, whereas in lucky old Ireland it’s 31% (thanks again to Robert Cameron Fig 62 page 99). The benefit of having a shell, especially in hot dry climates,  appears to be largely about keeping the fluid levels up so that the creature can survive, rather than protection against predators. When the climate is coolish and dampish, slug diversity and numbers increase.

Garden snail (Cornus aspersa)

I have always had a soft spot for snails.  I love the way that their eye-stalks extend and contract independently, and I love the way that they ooze gracefully across the patio. I know that they can be a pest in the garden, but I suspect that they also do a fair bit of cleaning up. And on a wet night I will sometimes look up from my book to see a snail climbing up the window, silhouetted by the street light and looking for all the world like some kind of molluscan angel, ascending to heaven. The author and poet Munia Khan wrote

“The intriguing placidity from the slothful pace of a snail is truly very peaceful. Our world is in need of this calmness to pacify itself”

I couldn’t agree more.

 

 

 

 

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Wednesday Weed – Coleus

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Coleus in Regent’s Park

Dear Readers, when I rented my very first flat, I had no garden. Instead, I became obsessed with house plants. I bought a packet of mixed coleus seeds, and soon there was no corner of the living room or kitchen that didn’t have a gaudily-leaved plant sitting on it. Friends, neighbours, even the postwoman were not safe from having a plastic pot thrust into their hands. What with all the pinching out of the top shoots and the constant watering, it was a busy summer. Sadly, my coleus soon grew leggy in spite of all my ministrations, and they showed a determination to produce their pale-lavender flower spikes (which marked the end of their lives) that was too much for my hard-working, hard-partying ways. Suffice to say that the following year I grew spider plants instead.

But today, as I walked through Regent’s Park, I grew nostalgic. For a sudden splash of colour in a bedding scheme, it’s hard to beat the sheer variety of the coleus, and I suspect that they are good value for money too. Although they are not beloved by pollinators, like other plants, they are also remarkably pest free. Plus, the variety is astonishing. Here are just some of the coleuses (coleii??) that I spotted yesterday:

Lime green with red veins

Burgundy with a yellow edge

Autumnal red

But then I realised that I had no idea whatsoever what a coleus actually was, and there is still some scientific confusion about the plant. It is agreed that the most commonly cultivated variety, previously known as Coleus blumeii, is now known as Plectanthrus scutellarioides. It is a member of the Lamiaceae or deadnettle family, and one common name is ‘painted nettle’. In the ‘wild’, this species is native to a swathe of countries from India in the west to Australia in the south and east. It is a woodland plant which even when not cultivated displays a wide variety of leaf colours and shapes. Here is the ‘original’ plant (here naturalised in Puerto Rico). The small purple-blue flowers look very familiar.

Photo One by By Bjoertvedt - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48784530

‘Wild’ coleus (Photo One)

Coleus arrived in Europe in 1851, and the US by 1877, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that breeders realised the plant’s colourful potential. By the 1980s the plant was the tenth most important bedding crop in the US. It is a great, cheap, low-maintenance choice for municipal beds, and as anyone who has ever grown them will know they are very easy to propagate by cuttings. Although the plants like high temperatures, their colours are brightest in shade, which is the opposite of my experience with most variegated plants, who need sunshine to keep their colour. Apparently it can be grown as a perennial in colder climates where it shows less tendency to bolt, but in the UK most coleus are used as annual bedding and, as this chromolithograph from the turn of the last century illustrates, it has been this way for a long time.

PhotoTwo by Raw PIxel from https://www.flickr.com/photos/vintage_illustration/43332091102

A chromolithograph of a botanical carpet bedding with a colorful butterfly by Federick William Burbridge (1847-1905). Digitally enhanced from our own original plate. (Photo Two)

Apparently the plant has psychotropic effects, and is used as a hallucinogen by the Mazatec Indians of southern Mexico (their shamans also use psilocybin and Salvia divinorum to conjure visions and enable psychic journeying). I am somewhat surprised as the plant is not native, but it has been very widely naturalised in the Caribbean and Central/South America.

I was fascinated to find that people who grow the ‘wasabi coleus‘ (which has plain acid-green leaves) and the ‘chocolate mint’ coleus (as you might have guessed, brown leaves with green edges) wondered if the plant might taste like their names. The answer, of course, is ‘no’, though it’s a nice idea. There are, however, some species of coleus that are edible, and I’m indebted to the Dave’s Garden website for pointing this out.

One is the ‘country potato’, a group of three coleus species (with Plectranthus rotundifolius being the most important) that are native to Africa but have more recently been grown in southern Asia as well. Their food value comes from their tubers – these are said to be blander than a ‘real’ potato and they are normally used as a subsistence crop, though in Burkina Faso they are milled to produce flour.

Photo Three by By Manojk - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17497669

Country potato tubers (Plectranthus rotundifolius) (Photo Three )

The other coleus species, Indian coleus( Plectranthus barbatus) is grown, as the name suggests, in India, partially because the root is edible and can be used in pickles, but mainly because the plant contains a chemical compound called forskolin. This has long been used in Ayurvedic medicine, and is sometimes marketed as as a diet aid, because it is believed to burn fat. There is currently no scientific evidence to support this idea, although there are several studies that are looking into the possible medical uses of this plant and several other Asian coleus (you can find extensive information here).

Photo Four by By mauroguanandi - https://www.flickr.com/photos/mauroguanandi/3197358136/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11878867

The flowers of Indian coleus (Plectranthus barbatus) (Photo Four)

Now, as you know I am fascinated by the superstitions that grow up around plants. For the coleus, I have had to turn east to the plant’s home range, and here it appears that to have a plant in the house may a) attract bankruptcy, b) attract fire (probably because of the plant’s flame-coloured leaves or c) attract poverty if it starts to bloom in the winter. Coleus is also believed to take revenge on its owner if it isn’t looked after properly. All in all I seem to have had a flat full of trouble, which I then visited on all my friends and relatives. Goodness! Maybe it’s best kept as a bedding plant after all, though to be fair the article that also points out that the coleus has ‘a powerful positive energy and can bring success in business’. I find it difficult to believe that such a bright and cheerful-looking plant can bring many disasters.

And here is a rather fine poem by Richard Swanson, who lives in Wisconsin. Who among us hasn’t tried to protect our garden from the inevitable onset of winter? Some of us (ahem) have been known to sneak out in the soon-to-be-frozen garden with buckets to protect the frogspawn from the promised frost, regardless of what the neighbours think….

First Frost Night
by
Richard Swanson
We’re frantic, trying to save them,
our summer’s offspring, our garden children.We’re cloaking the roses with deer hunter ponchos,
spreading old denim shirts on pumpkins,
capping Swiss chard with grocery store bags.
Maybe — can’t go there but we will — we’ll sneak out
Heather’s prom dress to shield a squash vine.The neighbors recoil at our refugee draping.
Who cares! We’ll pretend we’re rich eccentrics,
beyond the rules of normal behavior.

We’re hauling in pots, that begonia, this foxglove,
a coleus now in an armchair.

The cats, displaced, are spooked.
We’re their mewling hiss, not their meow.

Begging forgiveness, out the door we go,
on one more rescue mission.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Bjoertvedt – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48784530

PhotoTwo by Raw PIxel from https://www.flickr.com/photos/vintage_illustration/43332091102

Photo Three by By Manojk – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17497669

Photo Four by By mauroguanandi – https://www.flickr.com/photos/mauroguanandi/3197358136/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11878867

Bugwoman on Location – A Trip to Smithfield

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Animal trough in West Smithfield

Dear Readers, I used to work in the Smithfield area but hadn’t been back for ages, so I decided that the area was ripe for a re-visit. As I stepped off the number 17 bus, the smell of the place drifted back to me; Smithfield is London’s wholesale meat market, and I remember the distinctive smell of blood from the carcasses that are processed here.  Smithfield Meat Market was the site of slaughter of over 74,000 cattle and a million and a half sheep per year , right up to the 1850’s. Animals were driven via Highgate and Islington from all over the country: animals too weak to walk the past few miles were often killed in Highgate, which used to have a preponderance of butcher’s shops (and pubs for the drovers to ‘wet their whistle’).The raised pavements in these areas were to prevent the smart ladies and gentlemen from getting their clothing soiled by all the dung from these benighted creatures.

Smithfield was second only to Tyburn as  the site of many executions, including the Peasant’s Revolt leader Wat Tyler and the Scottish knight Sir William Wallace, of Braveheart fame. Swindlers and forgers were boiled to death in oil here in the 15th Century. In short, the amount of human and animal misery that these stones have witnessed should surely have left their mark. Peter Ackroyd, that august chronicler of the Capital, believes that certain places in the city retain their character in spite of attempts at modernisation. It will be interesting to see if this plays out in the Smithfield area.

There is an extraordinary amount of building going on. I spend a lot of time trying to get my bearings, and on every corner there seems to be a chap in a high-vis jacket and a hard hat, shouting about deliveries into a mobile phone.  Many of the old buildings remain, after a fight to retain them, and the Museum of London is due to be relocated here at 2021. There is lots of modernisation but I also read recently that it is planned that the meat market, along with Billingsgate fish market (currently in Poplar) and Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market (in Leyton) will all be relocated to Barking. What will happen to the remaining Smithfield buildings remains to be seen.

The entrance to the Grand Avenue at Smithfield

A Smithfield Dragon – symbol of The City of London

However, this is all very well, but I am really here to investigate an interesting new project in the little park in West Smithfield. Wayward Plants is an organisation that, among other things, has been organising the ‘adoption’ of unwanted house plants from events such as the Hampton Court Flower Show, which can only be a good thing. In Smithfield, they have put up a ‘greenhouse’ called ‘The House of Wayward Plants’. This is a pun on the ‘Wardian Case’, which was very popular as a way of displaying and growing ferns during the Victorian era: you might remember that I have written about ‘fern mania’ or ‘pteridomania’ during this time, when whole areas were denuded of (sometimes rare) ferns by eager collectors. My first sight of the ‘House’ was from behind a human drinking fountain,

And when I got a proper view of it, I realised that two chaps were sitting on the table inside having their lunch. They agreed that it was a most excellent spot for sandwich munching, especially when it was raining.

As you might expect, the planters are full of ferns – maidenhair and male fern and our old friend hart’s tongue fern.

There is a programme of events being held in the House of Wayward Plants, including botanical drawing, gardening and music. I suspect that our diners may sometimes have to find an alternative spot for their sarnies.

The Smithfield gardens hold another surprise, however. They are very proud of their Caucasian Wingnut trees, who are in full flower at the moment. In spite of sounding like something that the Monty Python team would invent, these are magnificent trees, competing very well with the huge London plane trees that would normally dominate the space. I would have said that I had never seen one before, but in ‘Street Trees of London’, Paul Wood points out that there is a heavily pruned example in Islington, where I lived for eight years. It all goes to show how easy it is to just walk past things rather than paying them any attention.

Flowers of the Caucasian Wingnut (Pterocarya fraxinifolia)

The tree comes originally from the Black Sea, and is native to the Caucasus (as you might expect) – the notice on the railings says that they come from Iran. The notice also mentions that you shouldn’t try to grow a Caucasian Wingnut in your garden, because it can grow to over 30 metres tall and has a dense, spreading canopy. I also rather like the fissured bark.

Onwards! I decide to have a wander through the grounds of St Bartholemew’s Hospital. Looking down the road, I can see the figure of Justice from the roof of the Old Bailey.

There is also a truly awful example of what The Gentle Author has dubbed ‘ghastly Facadism’ – developers seem to think that they’re doing their duty by preserving the front wall of a building whilst knocking up a dreadful generic glass office block (or some ‘luxury flats’) behind it. I have no idea what was here before, but I suspect that what replaces it will not be as interesting as what was there originally. It sometimes feels as if we are losing this part of London faster than we can fight the applications.

There is a restful courtyard in the middle of the hospital complex, with some sympathetic pollinator plantings and a fine fountain.

This is one of the oldest parts of London, still full of winding medieval streets. There are two churches which are associated with the hospital and the parish, St Bartholemew the Less (which is actually in the church grounds) and dates back to the 12th century, and St Bartholemew the Great, which was founded as an Augustinian friary in 1123.

St Bartholemew the Great

This hasn’t stopped the building of one or two strangely unsympathetic buildings, however.

And as I wend my way through, I can’t resist finishing my walk with a visit to the planting at the Barbican, just to see how it’s settling in. As usual, I’m  not disappointed. I’m especially pleased with how the waterside planting is going, Even on this dull day, there are plenty of bees and hoverflies about.

And so, it’s time for my sandwich and a flat white. I am a little underwhelmed by the Wayward Plants greenhouse (though the idea is fascinating, and I am pleased with the ‘recycled plants’ idea). However, I have seen my first Caucasian wingnuts, and am pleased to have reminded myself of the byways of Smithfield. London is endlessly fascinating, and you can find interesting plants in the most unlikely places.

 

 

 

Wednesday Weed – Hollyhock

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Hollyhock (Alcea rosea)

Dear Readers, if there is any plant that shouts ‘English Country Garden’ louder than the hollyhock, I have yet to find it. This stand of plants in Dorchester, close to Dad’s nursing home, was abuzz with bumblebees, who were rolling about in the pollen like puppies. At first glance the flowers remind me very much of those of the mallow, which is not surprising because hollyhocks belong to the same family, the Malvaceae.

The most commonly domesticated hollyhock, Alcea rosea, came originally from south-western China, and has been grown in the UK since at least the 15th Century. It is thought that it was given its name by the herbalist William Turner, who called it the holyoke. The name comes from the Middle English ‘holy‘ (meaning ‘blessed’) and the Anglo Saxon word ‘hoc‘ meaning ‘mallow’. It is unclear whether the plant was brought to England as an ornamental, or because of its medicinal properties – the genus name ‘Alcea‘ comes from the Greek word Alceos, meaning ‘to cure’. Like many members of the mallow family, the hollyhock was believed to have emollient qualities and was used for everything from sore throats and bladder inflammation to soothing the chapped and cracked hooves of horses.

One subspecies that may have been imported specifically for its decorative properties, however, was the ‘black’ hollyhock, Alcea rose nigra. Plants with flowers this dark were rare, and I imagine that a specimen would have been quite a talking point. The earliest record of this plant is from 1629, and hollyhocks in general were very popular right up until the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Photo One by By Øystein Hellesøe Brekke - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15171329

Black hollyhock (Alcea rosea nigra) (Photo One)

Sadly, a rust fungus that affects hollyhocks spread from South America to affect the plants worldwide, and the plant more or less ceased to exist in English gardens until the 1930’s, when it became popular again. Now it is a favourite in many gardens, both in Dorset (where I was positively tripping over them) but also in East Finchley and roundabouts. It is rather splendid, but am I alone in also finding it an untidy plant? It often seems to have crispy, browning leaves and is more often lopsided than not. Still, I can forgive it anything because of the enthusiasm with which it is approached by the aforementioned bumblebees, who seem to go into a kind of ecstasy in the flowers. My ‘Gardening for Wildlife‘ book advises staking the plant and growing it in moist but well-drained soil (always a tricky combination to pull off).

A pollen-covered bumblebee

As usual, my book recommends avoiding any double-flowered hollyhocks, amusing as they look with their puffball flowers. One double variety, ‘Chater’s Double’, was developed by the eponymous Chater in Essex in the 1880’s ( and I am very indebted to the ‘Harvesting History‘ website for all this fascinating information). Amazingly, this variety is still available and a packet of seeds from Marshalls will put you back only £1.99. However, do grow some more ‘straightforward’ hollyhocks as well. The bees will thank you.

Photo Two from https://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/hollyhock-flower-seeds-chaters-double-mix-pid8569.html?fo_c=2639&fo_k=a4bf2782bb18ff50aee40798f2732dfc&fo_s=gplauk&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrcHFzs_X4wIVC7DtCh059gY7EAQYBCABEgKFy_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Chater’s Double Hollyhock (Photo Two)

In the West Country, your hollyhock leaves may be munched upon by the caterpillar of the mallow moth (Larentia clavaria), a rather understated but nonetheless elegant moth. Like many British moths, this species needs to be looked at closely to appreciate how beautiful the different bands of colour are, and how they help the moth to camouflage itself.

Photo Three by By Donald Hobern - originally posted to Flickr as Larentia clavaria, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5160420

Mallow moth (Larentia clavaria) (Photo Three)

The caterpillar is one of the usual little green critters, but I’m sure it would be worth a look next year if you have hollyhocks in the garden. The adult moth flies from August right through to November if the weather is mild enough.

Photo Four by By J. Pohjoismäki - http://wibe.ath.cx/hyonteiset/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16788, Copyrighted free use, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9568572

Mallow moth caterpillar (Photo Four)

Incidentally, there are about 60 species of hollyhocks belonging to the genus Alcea, all of them from Europe or Asia. There is a single hollyhock species in North America known as the streambank wild hollyhock (Iliamna rivularis), and very pretty it is too.

Photo Five by By Unknown - http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/slidefile/plants/mallowfamily/Page.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4028334

Streambank wild hollyhock (Ilimana rivularis) (Photo Five)

‘Our’ hollyhock was, and is, a popular garden plant in North America, however. The Living History Farms website tells me that hollyhocks were often grown near the outhouse in Victorian times, so that ladies wouldn’t have to ask for the toilet but could simply look for the hollyhocks. The same source tells me that Thomas Jefferson was very partial to hollyhocks, and grew some in his garden at Monticello (or rather, his gardeners did).

In Japan, a hollyhock flower was incorporated into the seal of the Tokugawa shogunate, who ruled the country from 1603 to 1867. The plant still has resonance as a cultural symbol today.  There is a football team known as the Mito Hollyhock, whose seal shows three stylised ‘hollyhocks’ surrounded by a dragon. There is some discussion over whether the plant shown is actually a hollyhock, and I must admit that I am struggling to see the resemblance to the flowers, though maybe what is being portrayed is the leaves.

Photo Six by By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15020160

Logo of the Mito Hollyhock football team (Photo Six)

There is, however, a hollyhock festival (Aoi Matsuri) which is held in Kyoto every year. It dates back to the sixth century BCE, and is thought to have originated as a response to a series of natural disasters and epidemics. A lavish procession, decorated with hollyhock leaves (thought to ward off natural disasters) wends its way through the city to two shrines, where respects are paid to the deities. The event also features horse archery, which drew such huge crowds in the seventh century that the display was banned for a time. There are also some very impressive floats covered in hollyhock flowers.

Photo Seven by By Japanexperterna, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33739999

Man carrying what looks like a very heavy float featuring hollyhock flowers at the Aoi Matsuri festival in Kyoto (Photo Seven)

Hollyhock petals, especially those of the darker varieties, are said to be useful as dyes, so for this I turn to the Wooltribulations website, which has been a source of fascinating information before. The author certainly has a lot of fun with the flowers, both from her own plants (which are not as cooperative as they might be) and with some donated by a friend. She mentions that an Indian article on dyeing with hollyhock used ultrasound rather than heat to get the colour to ‘take’, which is a fascinating idea. Suffice to say that a whole range of hues were produced, including this absolutely lovely lavender-blue. If anyone is going to tempt me to plant hollyhocks, or to try dyeing, it would be this lady.

Photo Eight from http://wooltribulations.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-trial-of-hollyhock-petal-dye.html

Wool dyed with hollyhock petals (Photo Eight)

As you might expect, hollyhocks were a favourite with Victorian era painters. Here is a delightful portrait by Charles Courtney Curran, from 1902. This looked so English that I was startled to find that Curran was actually an American. That’ll teach me to make assumptions.

Hollyhocks and Sunlight (Charles Courtney Curran, 1902) (Public Domain)

And here is another painting, this time by Frederick Carl Frieseke, an American Impressionist painter who spent most of his time in France. He lived for many years in Giverny, though he was not a friend of Monet, and said that if he was influenced by anyone, it was Renoir. The woman with the Japanese parasol is probably modelled upon his wife.

Hollyhocks (Carl Frederick Frieseke, 1912-1913) (Public Domain)

But I think that I actually like this painting, by Danish painter Anthonore Christensen (1849 – 1926), is probably my favourite. The artist has made the flowers the stars of the show, and she has a delicate style which made her one of the leading floral ‘portrait painters’ of her time. The best botanical painters not only observe closely, but also seem to bring out the ‘personality’ of the plants that she depicts. I feel as if I know these hollyhocks, with their buds bursting and their leaves starting to turn brown.

Anthore Christensen, Hollyhocks (1894) (Public Domain)

And now, lovely readers, for a poem. How much do I love this? Really a lot. I remember hearing a tale from a birdwatcher friend of mine, who told me that if you put on red lipstick, and filled your mouth with sugar water, hummingbirds would come and kiss you (not in the UK obviously, where you’d be waiting for a very long time). It always sounds rather unhygienic, particularly for the poor hummingbirds, but this work, by Galway Kinnell, reminded me of the scenario. I hope you enjoy it, and forgive the fact that its relationship to hollyhocks is strictly tangential.

Telephoning In Mexican Sunlight

 Talking with my beloved in New York
I stood at the outdoor public telephone
in Mexican sunlight, in my purple shirt.

Someone had called it a man/woman
shirt.
 The phrase irked me.
 But then
I remembered that Rainer Maria
Rilke, who until he was seven wore
dresses and had long yellow hair,
wrote that the girl he almost was
"made her bed in his ear" and "slept him the world.
"
I thought, OK this shirt will clothe the other in me.

As we fell into long-distance love talk
a squeaky chittering started up all around,
and every few seconds came a sudden loud 
buzzing.
 I half expected to find
the insulation on the telephone line
laid open under the pressure of our talk
leaking low-frequency noises.

But a few yards away a dozen hummingbirds,
gorgets going drab or blazing
according as the sun struck them,
stood on their tail rudders in a circle 
around my head, transfixed
by the flower-likeness of the shirt.

And perhaps also by a flush rising into my face,
for a word -- one with a thick sound,
as if a porous vowel had sat soaking up
saliva while waiting to get spoken,
possibly the name of some flower
that hummingbirds love, perhaps
"honeysuckle" or "hollyhock"
or "phlox" -- just then shocked me
with its suddenness, and this time
apparently did burst the insulation,
letting the word sound in the open
where all could hear, for these tiny, irascible,
nectar-addicted puritans jumped back
all at once, as if the air gasped.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Øystein Hellesøe Brekke – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15171329

Photo Two from https://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/hollyhock-flower-seeds-chaters-double-mix-pid8569.html

Photo Three by By Donald Hobern – originally posted to Flickr as Larentia clavaria, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5160420

Photo Four by J. Pohjoismäki – http://wibe.ath.cx/hyonteiset/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16788, Copyrighted free use, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9568572

Photo Five By Unknown – http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/slidefile/plants/mallowfamily/Page.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4028334

Photo Six by By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15020160

Photo Seven by By Japanexperterna, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33739999

Photo Eight from http://wooltribulations.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-trial-of-hollyhock-petal-dye.html

 

Bugwoman on Location – A Bittersweet Visit

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Some splendid hollyhocks near my Dad’s nursing home in Dorchester

Dear Readers, as you might remember, my Dad is in a nursing home in Dorchester. He has vascular dementia, and so when I go to see him it’s impossible to guess in advance how he’s going to be. Last time, he decided he really wanted to come home with me on the train, and I had to trick him to make sure that he didn’t follow me to the station. But this time, he was waiting for me when the lift doors opened.

‘I saw you coming up the road, so I thought I’d bring your Dad over to the lift’, said the carer. ‘And then I thought, maybe you weren’t coming straight here!’

But I was, and there was Dad. He looks so suave these days, and actually much smarter than he was when during his last few years at home, when his beard and hair ran rather out of control.

I delivered the coffee and custard tart that I always bring, and Dad brought me up to speed.

‘We had some music across the road’, he said, ‘it went on for 24 hours!’

I’d noticed the marquees on the way in.

‘Was it good? ‘ I asked.

‘Marvellous’, said Dad. ‘There were seventy thousand people there’.

And I have to smile at this point. Had the carers taken a minibus full of folk to Glastonbury? But actually, Dad was always an exaggerator. His tales of his travels abroad – the anaconda that he saw in Venezuela that were 50 feet long, the steaks that were the size of a dining room table – used to keep my brother and I amused for hours when we were callow teenagers. But now, I love him for his desire to still tell an impressive story, to keep his audience enthralled. And unlike some people, who tell these tall tales in order to trick people, I’m convinced that Dad has always believed what he’s saying. I wish that he had realised that he was quite remarkable enough, this man who left school with no qualifications at 14 but who was soon travelling the world making gin for United Distillers, speaking Spanish and mixing with all manner of people. People ‘like us’ didn’t do those things, but Dad did.

At Mum and Dad’s 60th Wedding Anniversary ‘Do’, I was talking to one of my cousins, who was a little boy when Dad started travelling abroad.

‘I always thought of him as being a bit like James Bond’, he said, ‘Jetting off with his suitcase to places I’d never heard of. I was always so proud to have such an exciting uncle’.

I don’t think Dad ever understood the impression that he made, not just on my cousin, but on all of us. For me, he made foreign travel seem possible, something desirable and something achievable. He was always so curious, and touchingly innocent. Once, at a hotel in Venezuela, a woman with a small child approached him. Dad chatted away to her, but was surprised when the waiter he had befriended called him over for a phone call. When Dad got up, the waiter gently told him that the woman was a prostitute. I remember how Dad kept shaking his head when he told us the story.

‘But she had a little boy with her’, he kept saying. ‘I thought she just wanted someone to talk to’.

Holm Oaks outside the nursing home

When I went back to the nursing home on the following day, Dad was a bit more agitated.

‘All the presents are gone!’ he said.

He’d given me a list of things to buy – a clock, some chocolate, polo mints, a razor, a hair brush. Things do go for a walk in home sometimes: usually Dad just puts things down and forgets them, whereupon some of the other residents pick them up. One lady has an eye for any neglected cups of coffee, which she swoops upon with the skill of a Dickensian urchin.

I showed Dad the many things I’d bought, and he was distracted for a minute, but still worried about the ‘presents’. I had noticed that his room was a bit bare. Then, he stood up to go to the toilet, and grabbed one of the red-framed walkers that was ‘parked’ nearby.

‘Don’t fall over!’ said M. She is one of the residents, and is constantly worried about other people tripping or needing something.

‘I’ll look after him, M’, I said, as I steadied Dad for the short trot to the toilet.

‘My husband died’, she said. ‘Good man. Worked hard’.

‘I’m sorry’, I said, as I always do. M and I usually have a chat about her husband while I’m in. But then she tells me something that I hadn’t heard.

‘We were in the Salvation Army’, she says. ‘In Bridport. We all sang. My brother played the trumpet’.

And then M gives the sweetest smile in the world, and for a second she reminds me of my Mum.

And then Dad is back, and he’s delighted.

‘I found the presents!’ he says.

And there, under the seat of the walker, are all Dad’s treasures: a couple of photos, a hair brush, a clock, my postcard from Obergurgl.

So I ask him if he wants me to put them back in his room, and he does. At least he’ll have multiple iterations of the things he needs, which should last him till I visit again.

I  pop back in the morning for one last visit before I head home. Dad had a bad night – one of the new residents had wandered into his room in the middle of the night (ironic since this is what Dad was doing for months). He was semi-clothed and groggy when I came in, and didn’t even look at me. One of the carers was ‘sorting him out’, and so I sat and drank my coffee while I waited for Dad to come back. When he appeared, he looked much more spruce, but didn’t seem to recognise me – he walked straight past, to the consternation of the staff nurse.

‘Tom, there’s your daughter there!’ she said, steering him back towards me.

He stops, and looks at me as if he knows that I’m someone he knows, but can’t remember who. And then he brightens.

‘You’re beautiful!’ he says.

‘So are you, Dad’, I say.

And I know that this is one of those moments that I’ll remember when things get tough. It feels like a gift, just as Mum telling me she loved me before she died was a gift. I am trying to get past my fear of what is happening to Dad, so that I can appreciate and respond to the person who is  still here. My fear makes me rush around to sort things out, when it would be better if I just sat and listened and became calm, so that that calmness could permeate Dad too. Sitting can be the hardest thing of all, and yet I believe that it often does the most good. Presence and attention can be the best gifts of all.

 

Wednesday Weed – Agapanthus

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Agapanthus in full flower on the County Roads in East Finchley

Dear Readers, there appear to be fashions in plants, just as there are in most other things, and in the south-facing gardens of Bedford Road in East Finchley there is pot after pot of Agapanthus. Some of the pots are elegant in Majorelle blue, which nicely highlights the sky blue of the flowers. There are lots of bees about too, which always makes me happy. My  book ‘Gardening for Wildlife’ says that only a few cultivars are actually liked by pollinators, however, so if you’re thinking of getting some I would apply the Garden Centre test – watch to see which ones the bees visit, and go for one of those. In my experience, plants which are closest to the original wild plant always work better than those which have been ‘messed about with’, so I’d go for a blue one, rather than the pink and white ones that seem to be popping up. There is a Dutch grower who specialises in Agapanthus if you want to have a look at some of the varieties that are available. And do let me know your experience! I always think of this blog as a communal effort.

Also known as ‘blue lily’, ‘African lily’ or even ‘Lily of the Nile’ (although the plant isn’t actually a lily at all),  Agapanthus plants in the UK are normally of the Agapanthus praecox species, which comes originally from Natal and the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. The very name ‘Agapanthus’ comes from the Greek for ‘love flower’, and there is a lot to love about the plant: it can live for up to 75 years, can withstand drought, wind and frost down to -15 once established, and flowers for a long time. The young shoots need to be protected from slugs and snails but once an agapanthus is ‘up and running’ you’re in business. I really like these plants en masse in a border – they echo the colour of the spring bluebells. The plants grow from a rhizome, which resembles a piece of ginger, and which helps to store water when there isn’t much about.

I didn’t expect to find that Agapanthus was a naturalised species, but as usual I find myself surprised. In the Isles of Scilly, the Agapanthus has taken to the local sand dunes with great gusto – maybe the light soil and sunny conditions remind the plant of its home, and as it spreads via rhizomes it can quickly establish itself. It also appears to have be naturalised in Australia and New Zealand – in the former, it was widely planted in municipal beds because it was drought-tolerant, but this now seems to have been discontinued, although it is apparently a popular cemetery plant in the Antipodes, probably because it is relatively low maintenance.

In its native South Africa, the Xhosa people believe that the Agapanthus helps to enhance the well-being of pregnant women, who drink a tea made from the plant during their third trimester, and wear a necklace of dried Agapanthus root during pregnancy to protect the baby. When the baby is born, it is bathed in a solution of Agapanthus, which is believed to make the infant strong and healthy. For the Zulu people, the plant is used to cure a whole variety of ailments, including heart conditions, paralysis, colds and flu. The leaves are plaited into bandages for tired feet. However, the Agapanthus root is thought to be purgative if ingested, according to an interesting study of poisonous plants in New Zealand, though eating a few flowers or leaves was not thought to do much harm. There is also some thought that the sap may cause skin irritation in susceptible people.

Agapanthus is also traditionally used to ward off thunder, though there is plenty about in East Finchley today. I think the plant should pull its socks up.

It will probably come as no surprise that a plant as beautiful as the Agapanthus has inspired artists – Claude Monet painted the plant in his garden at Giverny many times. Monet spent the last years of his life here, following the death of his second wife and his son. In 1926, Monet himself died of lung cancer and at his funeral his long-time friend, George Clemanceau, removed the black cloth that had been draped over his coffin and, saying ‘no black for Monet!’ replaced it with a floral one.

Agapanthus (Claude Monet 1914 – 26) (Public Domain)

Waterlilies and Agapanthus (Claude Monet 1917) (Public Domain)

Agapanthus (unfinished) (Claude Monet 1917) (Public Domain)

And just to end on a classy note, here is a poem by Pam Ayres. She was such a feature of my childhood, with her works including ‘I wish I’d looked after me teeth‘ ( to get the full effect, you should hear her reading it herself here). Ayres lives with her husband in the Cotswold and has a small holding with rare breeds of farm animal. She is also patron of several animal welfare organisations and sanctuaries, and her love for creatures is very clear in her poems.

Dog Gardening Poem

I  love to do the gardening,

I roll on the acanthus,

Do flops across the echinops,

And trash the agapanthus.

Ah yes, this reminds me of trying to do any serious gardening with our family dog Spock when I was growing up.

But Ayres also has a serious side. I really love this poem. See what you think.

WOODLAND BURIAL by Pam Ayres.

Don’t lay me down in some gloomy churchyard shaded by a wall

Where the dust of ancient bones has spread dryness over all.

Lay me in some leafy loam where, sheltered from the cold

Little seeds investigate and tender leaves unfold.

There kindly and affectionately plant a native tree

To grow resplendent before God and hold some part of me.

The roots will not disturb me as they wend their peaceful way

To build the fine and bountiful, from closure and decay.

To seek their small requirements so that when their work is done

I’ll be tall and standing strongly in the beauty of the Sun.

A Patch of ‘Water Weeds’

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Where has the pond gone?

Dear Readers, during my sojourn in Austria the water plants have grown up with much enthusiasm.  Alongside the meadowsweet that I wrote about last week, there is hemp agrimony, purple loosestrife, and a patch of greater willowherb. The whole area is literally buzzing: it’s in one of the few constantly sunny areas in my north-facing garden, and, inspired by a wonderful Country Diary by Mark Cocker in the Guardian this week, I decided to ‘hang out’ for a bit and see what I could spot.

First things first. Most of the butterflies in this year have been of the white or blue species, so a flash of orange was a delight. The hemp agrimony seems to be a favourite with all winged creatures, who sink into those raggedy flowerheads in a kind of ecstasy. I had to wait a few minutes for the butterfly to open her wings, though the underside has a subtle beauty of its own.

Waiting….

And then the sun came out, and I was rewarded.

Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus)

Once the wings are open, it reveals those double eye-spots, which tell me that this is a gatekeeper (or hedge brown). I can tell this is a female because the male has a dark band across his forewings. The photo doesn’t do justice to the caramel colour of those wings. Gatekeepers are one of the latest flying of the butterflies, with new broods taking to the air from late June to the end of August.

Photo One by By Charles J Sharp - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42061149

Male Gatekeeper (Photo One)

If you wanted a reason for not mowing the lawn, the caterpillars of this species would provide one. The female drops her eggs among grasses such as cock’s foot, timothy and common couch, and the caterpillars feed at night, pupating in the dried vegetation and emerging during the following year. Your grass could also support the caterpillars of speckled wood, ringlet, wall and meadow brown, small skipper and brown argus. I gave up my lawn to replace it with a pond, but I notice that grass is creeping back, nonetheless.

Photo Two By foxypar4 on Flickr - Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6312839

Cock’s foot grass (Dactylis glomerata) (Photo Two)

Timothy grass (Phleum pratense) (Public Domain)

The bumblebees also like the hemp agrimony, but seem to marginally prefer the purple loosestrife, and the dark red buddleia that has just come into blossom. I should point out that the latter is meant to be a dwarf variety, but is already six feet tall.

A very smart white-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum)

How to tell a white-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) from a buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)? It’s not quite as easy as it sounds, because the ‘buff-tail’ of the latter is often white. In my book ‘Garden Wildlife’ by Richard Lewington (which has the most wonderful illustrations), the white-tailed bumblebee is described as having ‘clean’ yellow banding. whilst the buff-tail is said to have ‘dirty’ yellow banding.The Bumblebee Conservation Trust have a very useful website containing identification charts for all the common British species, and you can find it here.

Both are extremely common, the queens of both species appear as early as February on a warm winter day, and both are ‘nectar-robbers’, with short tongues that make it difficult for them to access plants with longer corolla. As a result, bumblebees of both species will cut a tiny hole in the base of flowers such as penstemon and salvia, and drink the nectar without doing any pollination.

It really comes as no surprise to me that bumblebees have learned to circumvent the carefully-evolved defences of flowering plants. I always think of them as the Einsteins of the insect world, and recent research has proved me right (though who knows what might be found if other insects were so closely observed). Bumblebees have solved the ‘travelling salesman’ problem, calculating the most efficient route between plants to maximise the amount of nectar collected and minimise the calories expended to get it. They’ve even been taught to ‘play golf’ in order to get food, which the researcher considers an example of tool use. All this from a creature that doesn’t have what we understand as a ‘brain’. Who knows what we might discover if we really paid attention?

There are plenty of honeybees about too. Our local allotments have a number of hives, and I suspect that the lavender in the front garden, and the bog plants at the back, are a major draw. There has been a lot written about honeybees and their potential demise just lately, but let’s not forget that the pollinator community is much greater and more diverse than just this one species, iconic and important as it is.

And then there are the hoverflies, so rarely noticed and yet so omnipresent. This one is a marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus), our commonest hoverfly, yet I had never noticed the metallic shine on its thorax, which looks almost like liquid copper. For all you hoverfly enthusiasts out there, I can recommend ‘Britain’s Hoverflies’ by Stuart Ball and Roger Morris, an absolute labour of love.

Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus)

The colour of the marmalade hoverfly is very variable, and seems to depend on the temperature when the larvae are maturing – in hot temperatures, the adult will be predominantly orange, but if it’s cold, they can be almost black. The larvae themselves are voracious eaters of aphids, especially those found on cereal crops and cabbages. They might not be as elegant as lacewings or ladybirds, but they are possibly even more important.

Sometimes swarms of marmalade hoverflies arrive from southern Europe, and the media is fond of filling the summer doldrums with reports of ‘wasps’ terrorising the gardens of England. The reporting of all things insect-related in the papers, and on social media, is often enough to make me bash my head against the wall.

The final ‘spotting’ of my 15 minutes was this ‘muscular’ little hoverfly, Siritta pipiens, which has the common name of ‘thick-legged hoverfly’, for obvious reasons. With those enormous ‘thighs’ it could be a candidate for an insect body-building competition. This creature is both common and widespread, and yet I had never noticed it before. Apparently the males are very territorial and will conduct battles in which they push one another backwards and forwards much like a pair of miniature water buffalo.

Syritta pipiens, a very muscular hoverfly…..

And so, I spent a very interesting 15 minutes with the insects. There is nothing like sitting peaceably among the bees and butterflies and hoverflies to give one a sense of perspective. It brings me a sense of being part of something much larger than just my small, transient concerns, and that is very welcome at the moment, as life gently moves on, whether I want it to or not. If you are feeling out of sorts, or dissociated, or generally confused, I can recommend sitting next to some flowering plants and just noticing who turns up. You might just be surprised.

 

 

Wednesday Weed – Meadowsweet

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Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria)

Dear Readers, it was such a delight to get back from Austria on Saturday, and to find the meadowsweet that I planted by the pond two years ago in flower. What a splendid plant this is! It has a honeyed scent that reminds me of hay, and it attracts all manner of hoverflies. The buds are almost square, and then the seed heads remind me of those fondant sweets that you can buy in posh places like Fortnum and Masons.

Twisted seedheads plus hoverfly….

Although the garden as a whole has gone completely berserk during this past couple of years, I am very pleased with this spot, where the meadowsweet mixes with hemp agrimony, purple loosestrife and some self-seeded greater willowherb. It is a-buzz with bees and other pollinators, and they are all at head height so I can get a really good look. The fly above, for example, with his/her rather muscular ‘thighs’ reminds me of a mini weighlifter.

Anyhow, to return to meadowsweet. Although the plant likes damp places (and is often known as ‘queen-of-the-meadow’, the name might refer to ‘mead’ , as the flowers were used to flavour many kinds of drinks. It was also used as a strewing herb on floors and in mattresses. In my new favourite book, Vickery’s Folk Flora, it mentions that it was sometimes used on the floors of outside toilets, to disguise the smell.

In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey mentions that different parts of the plant have different scents: he describes the basic scent of the plant as being like marzipan, tinged with musk and honey in the flowers, but with the sharpness of pickled cucumber in the leaves. Mabey mentions that one ‘cynical namer’ believed that this was the difference between ‘courtship and matrimony’, but he was obviously married to the wrong person.

In spite of its sweet scent, Meadowsweet is yet another of those herbs that it was thought to be unlucky to bring into the house. One of these days I shall compile a list of all the wildflowers that are cause death and bad luck just by being picked and stuck in a vase. One alternative name for meadowsweet was ‘old man’s pepper’, with ‘old man’ being a name for the devil in many parts of the UK. Sniffing meadowsweet with too much enthusiasm was also thought to bring on fits.

In Wales, it is not only considered unlucky to bring it into the house (‘if a person falls asleep in a room where many of these flowers are placed, death is inevitable’), but it is also though to be dangerous to fall asleep in a field where there is an abundance of meadowsweet. However, there is also a legend in Wales that the magicians Gwydion and Math created a woman out of oak blossom, broom and meadowsweet, and called her Blodeuwedd, or ‘Flowerface’. She was created to be the wife of Lleu, who was cursed to never be able to marry a human wife, but had other ideas, and arranged for him to be murdered. This was no easy task:

‘ Blodeuwedd tricks Lleu into revealing how he may be killed, since he cannot be killed during the day or night, nor indoors or outdoors, neither riding nor walking, not clothed and not naked, nor by any weapon lawfully made. He reveals to her that he can only be killed at dusk, wrapped in a net, with one foot on a bath and one on a black goat, by a riverbank and by a spear forged for a year during the hours when everyone is at Mass. With this information she arranges his death’.

However, Lleu is nursed back to health by the magicians who created Blodeuwedd in the first place, and she is turned into an owl for her pains. It just goes to show that crime never pays.

The legend was the inspiration for Alan Garner’s 1967 young adult novel ‘The Owl Service’, which explores what it mean to be Welsh, the class divide and the eternal power of stories. Well worth a read, even if you’re way past being a ‘young adult’.

Photo One by By E. Wallcousins - 'Celtic Myth & Legend', Charles Squire,, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29984364

Blodeuwedd meeting Gronw, the man who will kill her husband (Photo One)

Here, though,  I’d like to back up a little and give some basics on the plant. Meadowsweet is native to the UK and can be found in damp spots throughout Europe and western Asia. It is also naturalised in some parts of North America. It is a member of the rose family (Rosaceae) which I would never have guessed, though the leaves do look a little rose-like.

The plant contains salicin, which is related to salicylic acid (aspirin) – in fact, the drug was named from the old botanical name for meadowsweet, Spiraea ulmaria. Having just returned from Austria, I was interested to learn that the Austrians make a tea with meadowsweet, and use it for the treatment of painful conditions such as rheumatism and gout.

The Bronze Age burial sites of three humans and one animal at Fan Foel in Carmarthenshire, Wales, have contained the remains of meadowsweet, probably used as a strewing herb, and the signature of the plant has also been found in grave goods in Scotland from the same period, probably as a result of meadowsweet being used to flavour wine that was buried alongside the dead.

Meadowsweet has a reputation as a dye plant – the roots are supposed to give a black dye when used with a copper mordant (fixative). The genus name ‘Filipendula‘ relates to the way that the root tubers hang off of the fibrous roots (the Latin word means ‘hanging thread’). To read about various experiments using different parts of meadowsweet with different mordants, have a look at the wonderful ‘Wool Tribulations’ blog here 

Photo Two from http://wooltribulations.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-trial-of-meadowsweet-plant-dye-on.html

The author of ‘Wool Tribulations’, Fran Rushworth, has created some great effects from using meadowsweet (Photo Two)

In addition to its obvious attraction for hoverflies, the leaves of meadowsweet are munched upon by no fewer than 16 species of moths, including the magnificent emperor moth (Saturnia pavonia). How excited I would be if one of these turned up!

Photo Three by By jean-pierre Hamon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=524340

Emperor moth (Saturnia pavonia) (Photo Three)

The caterpillars are pretty magnificent too.

Photo Four by By Thomas Tolkien from Scarborough, UK - Emperor Moth caterpillarUploaded by herkuleshippo, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12704087

Emperor moth caterpillar (Saturnia pavonia) (Photo Four)

The leaves of meadowsweet can also be injured by the meadowsweet rust gall, which is a fungus which chemically induces a bright orange swelling on the mid rib of the leaf. It can cause serious problems in young plants, so I shall keep an eye open. The last thing I want is for my newly established meadowsweet patch to keel over.

Photo Five by By Rosser1954 Roger Griffith - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7040901

Meadowsweet rust fungus (Triphragmium ulmariae) (Photo Five)

And, of course, a poem. For those of you who haven’t come across the Scottish poet and writer Kathleen Jamie, I can heartily recommend her books ‘Findings and  ‘Sightlines’, and her poetry collections ‘The Tree House’ and ‘The Overhaul’. I love her for many reasons, not the least of which was her piece about Robert MacFarlane’s book ‘The Wild Places’, called ‘A Lone Enraptured Male‘. If you haven’t read it, you can read it here. It made me roar with laughter and nod in agreement (and I speak as someone who loved MacFarlane’s recent book ‘The Underland’.

And here is her poem.

Meadowsweet
Tradition suggests that certain of the Gaelic women poets were buried face down.
So they buried her, and turned home,
a drab psalm
hanging about them like haar,

not knowing the liquid
trickling from her lips
would seek its way down,

and that caught in her slowly
unravelling plait of grey hair
were summer seeds:

meadowsweet, bastard balm,
tokens of honesty, already
beginning their crawl

toward light, so showing her,
when the time came,
how to dig herself out —

to surface and greet them,
mouth young, and full again
of dirt, and spit, and poetry.

© 1999, Kathleen Jamie
From: Jizzen
Publisher: Picador, London, 1999
ISBN: 0 330 36915 6
Photo Credits
Photo One by By E. Wallcousins – ‘Celtic Myth & Legend’, Charles Squire,, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29984364
Photo Three by By jean-pierre Hamon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=524340
Photo Four by By Thomas Tolkien from Scarborough, UK – Emperor Moth caterpillarUploaded by herkuleshippo, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12704087
Photo Five by By Rosser1954 Roger Griffith – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7040901