Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, on a wet and windy Sunday afternoon in January it was hard to find any wild plants to write about for the Wednesday Weed. I was half-tempted to feature the Amaryllis which is doing splendidly in a pot in my writing room, but I can hardly say that I didn’t plant it deliberately. And so I wandered out to the recycle bin and spotted this sad little specimen of male fern, doing its best against the slugs and the darkness and the damp. It has popped up beside a doormat that I keep meaning to throw out, and it provided a welcome hint of fresh green.

Ferns have an otherworldly, alien quality to them. They propagate by spores, rather than by flowers and seeds. At one point in earth’s evolution they were the dominant plants, first appearing during the Carboniferous about 360 million years ago. Dragonflies with 30 inch wingspans flitted among their fronds, and two-foot long scorpions hid in their shade. In short, walking through a fern-forest during this period would have been a rather alarming experience.

The names of the parts of the fern leaf are enigmatic. The stalk is the stipe. The mid-rib is the rachis, as it is in a bird’s feather. Most elegantly of all, an emerging fern, curled up like a caterpillar, is named ‘crozier’ after the bishop’s staff.

You may be wondering why this plant is called ‘male fern’. It appears that when it was named, it was felt to be the partner of a different species, the ‘lady fern’ (pictured above). The male fern was ‘robust in appearance and vigorous in growth’, while the lady fern was altogether more demure. You might argue that it’s this kind of gender stereotyping that’s gone a long way to making a mess of the world, but then I suspect the plants were named a very long time ago.

An alternative name for male fern is ‘worm fern’, which may be a reference to those curly croziers. However, the root of the plant was also used as a remedy for worms (an antihelmintic, another great new word for my collection). Was this because it was actually efficacious (it contains a substance called flavaspidic acid) or was it because the appearance of the worm-like fronds was considered to be an indication from God of what the plant was meant to be used for? Quite probably a bit of both, I suspect. These days, in the West at least, parasitic worms are on the decrease, and there are other remedies if you do contract them.

Incidentally, there are currently some fascinating studies on the effects of infestation with parasites and positive effects on the immune system. There are some indications that asthma, IBS, arthritis and MS symptoms can all be alleviated where the patients have been deliberately infected with different kinds of worms. The Wikipedia page here is a good overview, but New Scientist has a number of interesting articles on the subject. It seems that our fondness for hygiene, while generally a good thing, might have a number of deleterious side effects.

Onwards!

If you are not infected with worms, you might still want to seek out a male fern. According to folklore, it can make you invisible, a most useful attribute when trying to avoid your boss or indulge in some shady activity. Apparently anyone carrying it will be rendered imperceptible to the naked eye. I tried it with a few fronds plucked during the deluge but was still clearly visible (and wet). And then I read some more. Apparently, it’s the fern seeds that make you invisible. Ferns, as mentioned above, don’t have seeds. Therefore, if you find some they must be invisible and will ergo make you invisible too. Just like me not to read the small print. Plus, the seed was meant to be gathered on Midsummer’s Eve, along, it appears, with the rest of the plant (see below).

The root of the plant is known as ‘St John’s Hand’, and, if harvested and dried by a bonfire on Midsummer’s Eve is said to provide a powerful protection against any kind of misfortune, from ghosts and the evil eye to illness and bad luck. It’s said that Genghis Khan carried this charm on his person at all times, and it certainly worked for him. The trick is to tie five pieces of the root together in a hand shape, with the stem of the fern as the ‘wrist’. There’s a fine picture of one here.

If this were not enough, male fern can also be used in a potion to make a man fall in love.

During Victorian times there was a positive craze for ferns, as described by author  Dr Sarah Whittingham FSA in her book ‘Fern Fever: The Story of Pteridomania’. It may well have been triggered by Wordsworth et al, who waxed lyrical about ferns in The Lyrical Ballads. Here, Wordsworth is discussing the royal fern, Osmunda regalis, which grew in the Lake District.

‘Many such there are,
Fair Ferns and Flowers, and chiefly that tall Fern
So stately, of the Queen Osmunda named;
Plant lovelier, in its own retired abode,
On Grasmere’s beach, than Naiad by the side
Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere,
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.’

I studied the Lyrical Ballads for my A-Levels back in 1978 and even that degree of immersion didn’t win me over to their charms – I still find them vaguely irritating (though I’m very happy to hear from you if you love them. I am not beyond convincing). But regardless of the cause, pteridomania led to a trend for fern patterns on wallpaper and porcelain, china and plaster. Native species were driven to the edge of extinction by Victorian collectors who were keen to imprison plants in their indoor glasshouses, called ‘Wardian Cases’. These were essential as the air pollution from coal fires would otherwise lead to the death of the plants.

These days, we have moved away from using ferns as indoor or garden plants, in spite of their great suitability for dark rooms, or those with humid atmospheres. But I am starting a one-woman drive to bring back the fern. In a north-facing garden, with two narrow, dark alleys, the ferns not only survive, but thrive. Their leaves offer a splendid green counterpoint on dark winter days. And if one day a two-foot long scorpion appears from under a frond, or a giant dragonfly flits past, I shall be delighted. I’m not called Bugwoman for nothing, y’know.

Photo Credits

Photo One (Croziers) – By Rror – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4072985

Photo Two (Male Fern) – By No machine-readable author provided. Valérie75 assumed (based on copyright claims). [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other blog content copyright Vivienne Palmer. Free to use and share non-commercially, but please attribute and link back to the blog, thank you!

 

 

 

 

 

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, in early January it is a delight to find any plant in flower, let alone one with a sweet smell and abundant waxy-white flowers. So, I was very pleased to find some Mexican Orange Blossom (Choisya ternata) in full bloom on Durham Road. The plant should not be confused with Mock Orange (Philadelphus species): Choisya is a member of the Rue family, which includes all the citrus trees, Skimmia (a stalwart of any garden centre) and of course Rue itself, much used as a medicinal. What all of these plants have in common is an abundance of essential oils which can be used in everything from perfume to cookery to the aforementioned medicines. The homeware company Diptyque sells a candle scented with Choisya if you happen to have £42 going idle just after Christmas. It is described as ‘sparkling, bitter-sweet and appealing’. I do wonder if they sell any unappealing candles: maybe ‘Cabbage’ or ‘Trainers’ or ‘Slurry’ in case you want to give a present to someone that you don’t very much like. Although the flowers are sweetly fragrant, the essential oils in the leaves are described on the Horticulture Week website as having a ‘pungent, rather unpleasant smell’, so perhaps an ‘unappealing’ candle could be made from Choisya after all.

As the name suggests, Mexican Orange Blossom comes originally from the southern states of  North America through to most of Mexico.  The plant was ‘discovered’ by Alexander von Humboldt during his South American voyages, though I imagine it was already well-known to  the indigenous peoples of the area. Humboldt named the plant Choisya after the Swiss botanist Jacques Choisy (1799 – 1859). He was a Swiss clergyman who contributed to the 17 volume ‘Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis‘ , an attempt to record all the known seed plants in the world.The plant arrived in the UK in 1825 and was initially a plant of hothouses and orangeries. These days it seems perfectly happy outside, even in mid-winter.

One puzzle about Mexican Orange Blossom is that it very seldom sets seed. The plants encountered by Humboldt are now thought to have been cultivated examples – apparently truly wild Mexican Orange Blossom is very rarely encountered, and it might be that the plant is a hybrid. Certainly, the plants for sale in garden centres in the UK are grown from woody cuttings. What a puzzle! Apart from straightforward Choisya ternata, shown in my photographs, you can also find several varieties, though none of them apparently flower as enthusiastically as the original plant, and are less likely to give a second flush.

Experiments have been made into the medicinal uses of the plant, which has been included in the Mexican Pharmocopeia for its anti-spasmodic and stimulant properties. In Mexican folk medicine, the plant is used to treat a condition called ‘nervios’, which seems close to the Western conditions of anxiety and depression.  It has been investigated by scientists for possible anti-depressant and anti-inflammatory effects, and as a painkiller, and it seems that these studies have been promising. ‘Studies in Texan Folklore’ by Thomas Meade Harwell mentions that orange-blossom tea was thought to be good for heart ailments if taken before retiring in the evening. It seems that Choisya might, like so many plants, be a mini-medicine cabinet all on its own.

I rather like Mexican Orange Blossom. Once established (as a youngster it is prone to slug and snail attacks) it provides a valuable and long-running source of nectar-rich flowers for pollinators, and a delightful scent when you brush past. The yellow-leaved varieties can give a pop of colour in the darkest of winter days. I do wonder sometimes if plants miss the warmer summers of their native countries at some cellular level, but the ones around here are doing very well. Seeing a plant with such an abundance of flowers at this time of year certainly put a spring into my step.

Photo Credits

Photo One (Choisya Aztec Pearl) – By Wouter Hagens (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two (Choisya Sundance) – Sten [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other blog content copyright Vivienne Palmer. Free to use and share non-commercially, but please attribute and link back to the blog, thank you!

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, back in the 1980’s, when I was living in Chadwell Heath on the eastern fringes of Greater London, everyone had pampas grass in their gardens, including me. It makes such a statement, with its great fluffy seed heads and its towering height – the one in my back garden was over ten feet tall. But after a few years, I decided that the plant was rather too reminiscent of Abigail’s Party and Black Forest Gateau ( I know, gentle readers, but I was young) and so I decided to replace it with something more trendy. Well. Let me tell you that the roots of a clump of pampas grass would daunt the Incredible Hulk, let alone a young woman without power tools. The blades of the grass are sharp enough to draw blood ( in fact the name Cortaderia means ‘to cut’ ). No amount of spadework or getting down to business with the secateurs would make the slightest bit of difference. And, in the end, I gave up with the job half done. Next year I swear the plant had grown to 150% of its original size. I refused to take it personally, but my battle was over. If only I had known that, according to the DEFRA website, cattle will graze on pampas grass – I could have rescued a Jersey cow, an animal that I have always admired. At any rate, I grew to love my particular plant because, during the following spring, I noticed the goldfinches tearing great clumps from the grass and flying off with it to line their nests.

There are 25 different species of pampas grass (all from southern South America, as the name suggests) and hundreds of cultivated varieties. This one, spotted in one of the front gardens on the way to Cherry Tree Wood, is rather beautiful, especially in the low sun and with a breeze shaking through those delicate brush-like seedheads. Each plant can produce over a million seeds during its lifetime, and so it is considered to be an invasive pest in some more hospitable parts of the world, such as California and Hawai’i. In New Zealand and South Africa the plant is actually banned, for fear that it would out compete some of the endemic species.Although I knew that there was a touch of anti-suburban snobbery about having pampas grass in your garden, I had no idea that, according to urban legend, if you have the plant in your front garden it means that you are a swinger. Apparently the journalist Mariella Frostrup was ‘inundated with unwanted inquiries’ after she planted some outside her Notting HIll home. According to a 2012 article in the Telegraph she is ‘desperately trying to get rid of the plants’. Well, good luck with that, Mariella.  Judging by the streets around here, either the good folk of East Finchley have never heard of such a signification, or half of the town must be having a rather more varied sex life than I ever imagined.

Pampas grass is gynodioecious: this magnificent word means that there are separate female and bisexual plants. Most of those grown are female plants, because these are the ones with the magnificent plumes, and as there are not many hermaphrodite plants about, the seeds are not fertilised. Just recently, however, according to the Non-Native Species Secretariat, seedlings have begun to appear, because imported seed contains both female and bisexual plants, and so fertilisation is possible. When one takes into account the size and vigour of a full-grown pampas grass plant, it’s no wonder that people in the UK are getting nervous. In my ‘Field Guide to Invasive Plants and Animals in Britain’ by Olaf Boor, Max Wade and Helen Roy, it mentions that  pampas grass is ‘a suitable habitat for vermin, has sharp leaves and is highly flammable’. Just as well that I didn’t take a blow torch to mine.

On the Non-Native Species Secretariat website, it also mentions that pampas grass can be used to prevent soil erosion and to act as a windbreak. I imagine that in South America there is a giant anteater lurking behind every stand of pampas grass, and a jolly good thing too.

Apparently, carrying a bag made out of the stems of pampas grass is said to bring luck in Brazil, and this presumably means that the plant was used for making many household objects. It can also be used to make a yellow paper if the leaves are soaked in water for 24 hours and then cooked with lye and beaten in a blender.

Sometimes with a plant, one meets one’s match. Your nemesis might be in a particularly vigorous climber (like bindweed), it might be in a determined scrambler (like bramble) or it might be in a non-native goliath like pampas grass. But when I come to think of it, each of these plants has features that are delightful. The white, satiny flowers of the bindweed remind me of the skirts of a ballerina as they unfurl. The flowers of the bramble are manna for bees, and the berries are manna for everyone later in the year. And when I saw the plumes of the pampas grass dancing and bowing in the wind at Christmas, the low sun illuminating every tufted seed, it made me very glad to have been on that spot at that time. It stopped me in my tracks, and filled me with wonder. And that’s a very fine thing for any plant to do.

Photo Credits

Photo One (giant anteater) by Fernando Flores https://www.flickr.com/photos/ferjflores/9864451663

All blog content copyright Vivienne Palmer. Free to use and share but please attribute and link back to the blog, thank you.

 

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, as you might have noticed this is not a wild plant (though it is widely naturalized in the UK), but it is ubiquitous enough for us to pass it by without stopping to admire its beauty, as if it were a dandelion or a daisy. But this is a stoical and generous flower. I have one in my north-facing garden that has not stopped flowering for over two years. In the spring, the solitary bees and hoverflies visit it, and on mild winter days a bumblebee might drop in for a sip of nectar. It requires not a jot of fuss, but just keeps doing its thing, until one day it flowers itself to death. I wanted to celebrate it here, because, like so many human wallflowers, it is often overlooked in spite of its sterling character.

Like all wallflowers, perennial wallflower is a member of the cabbage family. The wild ancestor of ‘Bowles Mauve’ and other cultivars comes originally from rocky places in Spain and Portugal. I have already mentioned how attractive it is to pollinators such as bees and flies, but in a University of Sussex study in 2013 it was found to be visited by more butterflies than any other plant in the garden. Take that, buddleia! I imagine that the long flowering period of the plant helps it pick up visitors throughout the whole year.

It is also the foodplant of a variety of moths and weevils, such as the Garden Carpet…

…and this rather delightful weevil, who lives inside the fruits and feeds on the developing seeds.

Furthermore, it is said to be a food plant of the Spanish Ibex. I love the thought of this most domesticated of plants being fodder for a creature as elusive as an ibex.

And here is a picture of the wild form of the plant, as found in the Asturias region of Spain. How delicate and pretty it is!

I am guessing that the name ‘wallflower’ probably arose because plants of this genus can often be found growing on rocky soil, or at the bottom of outcrops, and they will certainly seed in the crevices at the feet of walls. Human  ‘wallflowers’ probably got their name from the way that they lean against the wall at social gatherings, watching the other more extrovert creatures whilst not joining in themselves. What both kinds of wallflower share is a kind of modesty and shyness which means that they are sometimes undervalued. I have never been without a Bowles Mauve perennial wallflower in the garden since I discovered how useful they are for insects of all kinds, and how delicately pretty they are. If there is one slogan for 2017, it might be ‘plant a wallflower today, and befriend a whole gaggle of bees’.

Photo Credits

Photo One (Garden Carpet Moth) – By ©entomart, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=294880

Photo Two (Weevil) – http://www.friedbahr.de/gesamt/172/172.html

Photo Three (Ibex) – By Javier García Diz – Trabajo propio. Own Work., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1441164

Photo Four ( Wild Perennial Wallflower) – En O Caurel, Lugo, agosto de 2008, © José Luis Porto 

All other blog content free to use and share non-commercially, but please attribute and link back to the blog, thank you!

 

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, on this longest night of the year, here is some brightness. There are two yellow-flowered plants that I associate with winter. The first is mahonia, which is in full-bloom in several places in East Finchley at the moment, and which in a recent study was shown to provide early-emerging/over-wintering bumblebees with 69% of their nectar. The second is a plant much favoured here in the County Roads, the winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum).

Winter jasmine is originally from China and Tibet, where it was ‘discovered’ by the Scottish plant hunter,Robert Fortune, in 1843. Fortune worked for the Royal Horticultural Society and is best known for smuggling tea plants out of the country (which was forbidden by the Chinese government) and installing them in Darjeeling in India. He also recorded the details of the silk industry, and brought many species of plants, including azaleas, roses and chrysanthemums, to the West. Fortune often disguised himself as a Chinese merchant during these escapades, but exactly what he looked like sadly isn’t recorded. Any plant with a species name of ‘fortuneai’ is one that Mr Fortune ‘liberated’ from his host country.

Once in the UK, winter jasmine remained on China time,  flowering from November to March. It is naturalised in France and in some places in the US, and I would not be in the least surprised if it had ‘nipped over the wall’ here in the UK too. The bright yellow flowers appear on the bare stems, giving the plant its species name of nudiflorum (literally, ‘naked flower’).

Unlike many jasmines, winter-flowering jasmine has no scent. This is either a blessing or a disappointment, depending on your view: I find the scent of jasmine in a confined space rather cloying and unpleasant, like being trapped in a cellar with a marzipan giant. The plant can be turned into a hedge or used as a climber: one of my neighbours has encouraged it to do both, as it scrambles up the wall and turns into a hedge once it hits the ground.

In the language of flowers, winter jasmine is said to be a symbol of elegance and grace, It is also the flower of Epiphany, and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the Christian calendar. Because it flowers at a time when not many other plants in bloom, it does catch the eye in a way that it probably wouldn’t in the height of summer, when so many other flowers are competing for attention. I have noticed how much more attention I pay to flowering plants when the days get shorter and any glimpse of life is welcome. Winter jasmine flowers are liked potted sunshine.

In northern India, the bark of winter jasmine has been used as a burn treatment. It is also said to be a diaphoretic, which I have discovered means ‘to cause perspiration’. As someone who has endured five years of hot flushes and night sweats it’s safe to say that I won’t be needing the medicinal benefits of winter jasmine any time soon.

As you know, I like to broaden my ‘Wednesday Weeds’ into any artistic context that the plant might have had, and so I came across this image.

This is an illustration from a series of children’s books called the ‘Dumpy Books’ which were published between 1898 and 1904. Nellie Benson did the illustrations for ‘A Flower Book’ by Eden Coybee, and there are many, many pictures in the style above, including one of a child grasping a (most unlikely) yellow carnation. Depending on your tastes, you might find them charming or slightly disturbing. What is a tiny, underdressed child doing standing under a winter jasmine in December anyhow?  There is a touch of late-Victorian coyness about her expression that also worries me. But like all things, we need to take into account the tastes of the time – one has only to read Dickens to know that small, pouting girls with golden curls were all the rage.

Slightly more to my taste is Cicely Mary Barker’s Winter Jasmine Flower Fairy. Note that I said ‘slightly’. I’m more of a Caravaggio and Carpaccio fan myself, as you know. But at least the child here is adequately dressed for the season, and there is a rather fine blue tit. And the infant looks like as if he’s heralding the turn of the year, the moment when the nights start to get shorter. Winter is not yet over: in fact in the Northern Hemisphere the coldest times are yet to occur. But the world is turning its face toward spring, even now.

Photo Credits

Photo One – By User:Vmenkov (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons