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 my way through Coldfall Wood last week, my eye was caught by a group of bright magenta flowers growing beside the stream. When I slithered across the mud to investigate, I was delighted to find a little group of honesty (Lunaria annua) in full flower.  This is another of those plants that has probably escaped, either from the local gardens or from the cemetery, but it has been recorded in the wild since at least 1597 so it is a long-term inhabitant. Its native home is the Balkans and parts of south-west Asia.

Who would have thought that this pretty plant is a member of the cabbage family (Brassicaceae)? And yet a close look at its flowers give us a clue. All members of this varied tribe have simple flowers with four petals and four sepals, and the cross-like arrangement is what gives the group its alternative name of crucifer.

Honesty is probably more familiar from its seed-pods, whose semi-transparent nature are said to give it its English name. These are very popular in autumn flower arrangements, and also give the plant many of its alternative names: in south-east Asia it’s known as ‘the money plant’ and in the US it is known as ‘silver money’ or ‘chinese money’. In Dutch-speaking countries, however, the plant is known as judaspenning (coins of Judas), an allusion to the thirty pieces of silver Judas was given for betraying Christ. It is fascinating to me how a plant may have a reputation for plain dealing in one culture, and be seen as treacherous in another. Even in the UK, the Plant Lore website reports that in Yorkshire, some people believe that the plant is very unlucky, and won’t have it in the garden or the house, while in Kent it’s known as ‘the devil’s ha’pence’. On the other hand, the Magickal Gardening website reports that keeping one of the ‘coins’ in the pocket will attract good fortune.  I suppose that a plant with such evocative seedpods was going to attract all kinds of beliefs.

In her book ‘Fifty Easy Old-Fashioned Flowers’, Anne M. Zeman tells us that honesty has been used to dress wounds, and as a cure for epilepsy. She also tells us that the roots have been used in salads since the 1500’s. Furthermore, other sources describe how the seeds can be turned into a kind of mustard if mixed with vinegar – this is not surprising when we consider that the cabbage family contains many other plants with this property, including Black and Hoary Mustard.

Honesty, and in particular its seedpods, were very popular in the Art Nouveau movement, as in the illustration by Alfonso Mucha below (part of his 1900 precious stones series).

The Precious Stones series includes Ruby (which features of all things a poinsettia), Amethyst (with some irises) and Emerald (with Tradescantia). Mucha was such a favourite in our house when I was growing up that we had his ‘Moon and Stars’ series framed in the hallway. I have always liked his graceful female figures, and the way that he included plants and other elements of the natural world, even in his posters for theatrical productions and such necessities as Moet et Chandon champagne. If you are ever in Prague, I can recommend a visit to the Mucha museum. Although his paintings are a little too fey for many people’s taste in this more cynical age, I think that there is always room for a celebration of lush beauty and the abundance of nature. In this age of austerity, it’s easy to forget how much there is to be grateful for.

Photo Credits

Photo One – By Christian Fischer, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1159063

Photo Two – Via Swallowtail Garden Seed https://www.flickr.com/photos/swallowtailgardenseeds/14985632221

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

 

 

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, this is one of those plants that is so small and inconspicuous that it often goes unnoticed. Yet, at the moment, it is coming into flower at the bottom of every other wall around here in East Finchley. It has popped up in a pot of last year’s hyacinths that I left in the garden too. But until I did a little bit of research I didn’t even know its name, and until I paid it some attention I thought it was shepherd’s purse. Silly me.

Hairy bittercress is a member of the cabbage family, or Brassiceae, and I have been told that it can be used in the same way as mustard-and-cress. Unfortunately, every plant that I have seen locally grows in the splash-zone of the neighbourhood’s numerous dogs, so I haven’t tasted it to find out. The seed pods are said to explode when touched (again, none of the ones that I’ve seen have been so obliging, but then they probably aren’t ripe yet). However, the way that the seedpods send the seeds cascading all over the place has given rise to several of the plant’s other common names, such as flickweed and shotweed. I am delighted to tell you that the technical name for this process is ‘explosive dehiscence’, which is such a wonderful phrase that I shall be seeking ways to slip it into ordinary conversation.

Hairy bittercress is a native plant, and, under its Old English name of stune, is one of the herbs used in the Anglo-Saxon Nine Herbs Charm, which was used as a treatment for poisoning and infection. However, the plant is a keen traveller (often hiding away in imported garden plants) and has made itself known in North America. Here, the flowers are an early nectar source for the spring azure butterfly (Celastrina ladon) and the falcate orange-tip (Anthrocharis midea).

I wondered a little about why the plant was called the Hairy Bittercress, when it looked remarkably glabrous to me. It is said to be hairy at the point where the leaves join the stem, but as neither of my two pairs of glasses seem to enable me to see this kind of detail, I must take my hand lens next time I’m plant hunting. If you are trying to distinguish this plant from its close relative the wavy bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa) you will need to work out whether the plant has six stamen (in which case it’s Hairy) or four, which is diagnostic for Wavy. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to get a precise identification for a plant. It’s truly one of life’s little pleasures, though flora have a way of hybridizing and otherwise being unruly which makes it much trickier than you would think. Even at the level of tiny plants subsisting in a quarter of an inch of substrate, life is anarchic and unpredictable in a most delicious way.

If you have access to a less polluted supply of hairy bittercress than I do, you can wilt it like spinach (which apparently tames the eponymous bitterness a little), use it in a salad, or turn it into pesto. The Eatweeds website has a recipe for hairy bittercress harissa, for those of us who fancy a bash at North African cooking, and for hairy bittercress and roasted beetroot salad, and I have no doubt that the wonders of the internet will reveal many more uses for this little plant. Its bitterness is said to help with liver detoxification, and in these days of ‘clean eating’ and juice fasts, you could probably do worse than to eat some of your greens in the form of this little chap. My book Flowers of the Field by the Reverend C.A. Johns, which dates to 1913, tells me that the genus name Cardamine comes from the Greek cardio, the heart, and damao, to fortify. Whether this refers to a medical or romantic property of the plant I have no idea, but it has certainly lifted my spirits.

Photo Credits

Photo One – By Walter Siegmund – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=854581

Photo Two – By Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren (Falcate Orangetip butterfly) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

 

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, my first memory of bluebells involves a family outing to Epping Forest when I was six years old. We travelled in our Ford Popular (named Thunderball), an eccentric vehicle that had problems with hills and would grind its way to the top of an incline accompanied by shouts of ‘come on Thunderball!’ from my brother and I in the back.

When we arrived, we stepped into a wonderland – the bluebells were at their peak and the whole of the forest floor shimmered with a blue so deep it was almost ultra-violet. I seem to remember that my Mum had brought a shopping bag, and we dug up a single clump (a transgression that was not illegal in 1966). When we got home, Mum split them up and planted them in our pocket-handkerchief-sized garden, where they flourished to such an extent that they positively took over. Who could have guessed that, only forty-five years later, bluebell woods would have vanished in many places, victims of development and climate change, and have been ‘corrupted’ by hybridization in others.

At the weekend, I had a chance to compare two distinct bluebell populations. One is in Somerset, in an isolated patch of woodland between fields, where the bluebells are all unashamedly of the native species. The second is in our local North London wood and cemetery, where there is a much greater diversity of plants.

The classic way of telling the difference between native bluebells, Spanish ones and hybrids is to turn the little bell of the flower until you can see the pollen. In native plants, the pollen is snowy-white. In Spanish bluebells and hybrids, there is a hint of greenish-blue to the pollen. There are other differences, however. British  bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) are typically a darker blue than their Spanish counterparts (Hyacinthoides hispanica). The flowers of our native bluebell nod, and grow along one side of the stem, while the Spanish flowers are much more upright, and grow on all sides of the stem. Furthermore, the petals of the British bluebell are strongly curved back (recurved) at the end of the ‘bell’. The British bluebell also has a much stronger, sweeter smell than its Spanish relative.  So, telling the difference between a pure British bluebell and a pure Spanish one is relatively simple. The problem comes with hybrids (Hyacinthoides x massartiana) , which form a whole spectrum of variation between the two parent species. And this may not be such a bad thing. When I was on a Spring Flower walk at the Natural History Museum, the guide told us that the Spanish bluebell is much more resistant to drought than the British variety so it may be that, as the climate changes, the native bluebell will move north, and the Spanish/hybrid varieties will thrive in drier areas. As he put it ‘Spanish bluebells are better than no bluebells, surely’.

Bluebells have very special bulbs – they have contractile roots, which, as they contract, draw the bulb into deeper, moister soil. This may be why bluebells don’t flourish on the thin chalkland soils of some parts of the south of England. It may also explain why the bulbs often do badly in gardens, as many people who have tried this method of propagation will tell you. As my mother instinctively knew, bluebells really need to be planted ‘in the green’.  I wonder if a tiny relict population of Epping Forest bluebells is still growing in a back yard in Stratford, East London? It would be lovely to think that this is a possibility, though I fear that they vanished under a patio long ago.

Probably half of all the bluebells in the world grow in the British Isles, where they are typically a plant of damp, humus-rich woodland and are an indicator species of ancient woodland. They can also thrive in hedge-bank and pasture,  although large numbers of the plant may indicate that a wood used to stand there that has long been cut down. They cannot live in the acid soil of conifer plantations. Bluebells are largely pollinated by bumblebees, who are often on the wing early, when the plant is flowering. A bluebell wood is a wonder to behold, and, since 1981, the plant has been protected from marauders like my mum by the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which can impose a fine of up to £5000 a bulb if someone tries to trade in the plant.However, Richard Mabey believes that such is the value of bluebells for folk (like me) who are trying to establish ‘wild’ gardens that whole woods may be stripped. Ironically, ‘bluebell rustling’ is apparently most common in East Anglia, where the plant is rarest.

The bluebell is such a popular flower that, when the charity Plantlife was looking for ‘Britain’s Favourite Flower’ the bluebell was left off the list because it had already won a previous poll.

Why, I wondered, was the bluebell known as Hyacinthoides ‘non-scripta’? Richard Mabey comes to the rescue in Flora Britannica, as usual. Non-scripta, meaning ‘unlettered’, is to distinguish the bluebell from the hyacinth, which is said to have the letters ‘AIAI’ inscribed upon its leaves. AIAI means ‘alas’, and was said to have been caused by Apollo lamenting the death of prince Hyacinthus, for whom the hyacinth is named. Now, I just have to check out a wild hyacinth to see if it is ‘lettered’.

The sap from bluebells was used as a kind of glue to secure arrow feathers in the middle ages, and was also used to starch the ruffs of Elizabethan gentlemen, and as a bookbinders’ glue. It was once believed that a distillation of bluebells would prevent the voices of choirboys from breaking. In Plant Lives, Sue Eland recounts several ominous legends about bluebells. A child who goes into the woods to pick bluebells is likely to disappear, whereas an adult will merely suffer the indignity of being led about by a pixie until rescued.

The plant is said to be efficacious against snake-bite (at least, according to Tennyson), and its one major medicinal use is to combat leucorrheoa (which I had to look up, only to discover that it’s vaginal discharge. You’re welcome.)

As beautiful as a bluebell wood is, I didn’t manage to get a photograph that truly reflects the colour of the one in Somerset, or its shimmering, water-like quality. The photo below captures some of this, but maybe Gerard Manley Hopkins summed it up best in his lines in ‘May Magnificat’, where he calls the bluebell the ‘greybell:

And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes

There is something about bluebells that makes me nostalgic. I remember the heady days of childhood, and the overwhelming sense of the abundance of the natural world from those expeditions to the woods. I hope that there will still be bluebell woods for our children to enjoy, and much of that depends on the woods themselves being protected.  I would draw your attention to the 63 Ancient Woodlands that are threatened by the HS2 rail line, for example. It seems that we need to be ever vigilant to protect our local habitats, be they bogs or beaches, sand dunes or heathlands. Once they are gone, it will take generations for them to achieve the same biodiversity that they currently have, and whatever ‘reparation’ is offered cannot replace what we have now. Local opposition does make a difference, so let’s keep our eyes and ears open to what’s being planned for our beloved places. You will be surprised how many other people care about them, and how powerful we can be if we work together.

Photo Credits

Photo One – By Marion Phillips, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13376247

Photo Two – By Charles01 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7338999

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

 

 

 

 

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, I confess that I found this little plant outside of my half-mile territory – it was growing on a mossy wall at the edge of Hampstead Heath – but I was so intrigued by it that I thought I’d share it with you. I was very puzzled when I found it: it was clearly some kind of strawberry, but the flower was bright yellow, and it wasn’t in any of my plant guides. So, off I went to my friends at the UK Wildflower Facebook group, who recognised it as mock strawberry within about thirty seconds.

Mock strawberry is not the same as barren strawberry (Potentilla sterilis) or wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca).

As you can see, although the leaves are very similar the flowers of both our native strawberries are white, with a much larger gap between the petals in barren strawberry. Mock strawberry is native to Asia (hence one alternative name of Indian Strawberry), and so it is another garden plant that has ‘escaped’. According to the Plant Lives website, it was introduced to the UK in 1804, and there was a craze for using it in hanging baskets during the Regency period of 1810 to 1820. I can well imagine how pretty it would have looked, and how enthusiastically it would have fallen from its lofty perch and headed off into the undergrowth.

Mock strawberry does have ‘strawberries’, although these are said to taste like a rather insipid watermelon. However, on the ever-interesting Eat the Greens website, Green Deane considers that maybe the fruits are suffering from ‘negative exaggeration’ – they look so palatable that it is a disappointment when they taste a little bland. Deane describes how the leaves can be used as a pot herb, or as a pleasant tea when dried. The berries can be used to make a jelly or jam, and to stretch other berries when making preserves. Plus, it can be a useful ground cover plant in the garden (though here I might incline more to using wild strawberry, because I have a passion for the intensely flavoured berries).

The mock strawberry is listed as a noxious weed in many parts of North America and Europe, and also on vulnerable islands such as Reunion. This is in part due to its modes of reproduction. The plants have both male and female flowers, and so are ‘perfect’ – capable of self-pollination if there are no pollinators around to encourage genetic diversity. However, like other members of the strawberry family, it can extend its reach by ‘runners’, which erupt as baby plants a good distance from the ‘parent’. So, when times are hard the mock strawberry can go in search of nutrients without the original plant moving an inch.

All parts of the plant have been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, where it is known as she mei – snake strawberry – because snakes make their nests amongst the leaves. It has been used to treat tumours, inflammation, diarrhoea and vaginal bleeding.  Western studies have been investigating the uses of the plant too, and a recent study showed that the plant has anti-inflammatory properties, whilst another looked at its potential as an immunostimulant in the treatment of cancer  

Another human use for mock strawberry is as a pesticide – it has a long history in Asia of being used not only to cure malaria, but also to kill mosquitoes who might carry the disease (though I’ve yet to discover what part was used, and how). What a useful plant this is, even though its fruits might not be altogether to human taste.

Nearly all of the websites that I’ve visited to research this plant state that it was used in India as an offering to the gods. However, as exactly the same sentence seems to be replicated in each one, it may be that it’s one of these factoids that chases round and round the internet without my ever being able to get to the bottom of the story, which I find rather frustrating. I would love to be able to share the details of where, how and why it featured in such ceremonies, if indeed it ever did, and if any of my readers can enlighten me (and the rest of us) I would be delighted to hear from you!

Photo Credits

Photo One – Walter Isack / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two – By H. Zell (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

Photo Three – By Kurt Stüber [1] – caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/mavica/index.html part of www.biolib.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3975

Photo Four – By H. Zell – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10936678

Photo Five – By Botanical Register, vol. 1: t. 61 (1815) [S. Edwards] – http://plantillustrations.org/illustration.php?id_illustration=96851&language=English, Domena publiczna, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22035704

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

 

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, what a pleasure it is to see the blackthorn in full flower. The English name of the plant describes it well for anyone uncertain what it looks like – the twigs and branches are black or dark grey, and the plant has thorny side shoots. Each of the flowers has many long, elegant stamens which give the blossom a speckled appearance. Such a mass of flowers is a boon for early insects of all kinds, from hoverflies to honeybees. In some traditions, the signal for the start of Imbolc, the time of Celtic  spring rituals, was the blooming of the blackthorn.

I must confess to a personal attachment to this plant. In its other incarnation as the sloe, blackthorn forms the basis of one of my favourite tipples, sloe gin. My father worked for many years as a distiller for Gordon’s Gin. In those days, the recipe for the gin was a closely guarded secret (the details were held in a locked safe), and only a few people knew how to make up the concentrated flavour that would be used to create the spirit. As a result my father, who left school at fourteen, ended up flying all over the world, working in distilleries in Spain, Jamaica, and in the middle of a jungle in Venezuela. He had many adventures, including being confined to quarters during a State of Emergency in Jamaica, being knocked over by an earthquake in Venezuela, and flying first class with Peter Wyngarde, the diminutive mahogany-toned star of the TV show Jason King. I credit my dad with imbuing me with a love of travel, and the belief that it was possible to  have an interesting and fulfilling life regardless of where you start.

And what has all this to do with blackthorn, I hear you plead? Well, Gordons made a limited number of bottles of sloe gin, which, heavily diluted with lemonade, was one of my first introductions to the delights of alcohol. I still love a glass at Christmas today (though minus the lemonade). It is possible to make the drink at home, though the process involves gathering basketfuls of the astringent purple-blue fruits, and individually pricking every one to allow the juices to colour and flavour the gin that you pour all over them. At Gordon’s, they had a special machine for pricking the sloes, which I believe were harvested in Scotland. And a very fine drink it was too.

The juice from the berries has also been used as a dye – apparently it initially turns cloth a reddish colour, but after several washings this turns to a permanent pale blue.

Humans are not the only creatures with a taste for blackthorn, however. It is a recommended source of food for the caterpillars of the rare Black and Brown Hairstreak butterflies, as well as numerous moths.

The eggs of the brown hairstreak are laid directly onto the stems of the blackthorn, and it’s well worth having a look to see if you can see any next time you are passing by a bush. They are quite distinctive, though at a distance you might mistake them for lichen, or bird droppings. Once the caterpillars emerge, they are extremely well camouflaged and feed only at night.

And for your delectation, here are some of the other insects whose larvae may be found feeding on blackthorn:

As so many creatures depend upon it, it is a good thing that blackthorn has been used as a cattle-proof hedge since at least medieval times. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey describes how crossing the blackthorn with the cultivated plum tree can produce ‘thorns more than two inches long and tough enough to penetrate a tractor tyre’, so I can well see how even the most ambitious cow would admit defeat.

The wood is described by Cobbett as being ‘precisely the colour of the Horse Chestnut fruit and, as smooth and bright, needs no polish’. Blackthorn wood has been used as a material for walking sticks, and was traditionally the wood used for Irish shillelaghs (clubs), because it was less prone to cracking than other materials. The wood was seasoned with lard and put up a chimney to season, which gave it its black colour. The normal weight of the stick was about two pounds, but a ‘seasoned club’ had the hitting end filled with molten lead. You would not want to attempt to mug someone carrying one of these sticks, for sure.

Although it was a rather mild day when I spotted the blackthorn in blossom at the weekend, it is said that the plant may come into flower during a period of bitter winds following a ‘false spring’ – a ‘blackthorn winter’. As with many plants that bear berries, plentiful fruit was also believed to be indicative of a harsh winter to come:

‘many sloes, many cold toes’

The bark has been used as an intestinal tonic, and also for tanning – it turns leather a reddish-brown colour. It seems that this plant, which shares such a long history with us, has been useful to us at every turn.

I like to try to find some artistic or poetic reference to my Wednesday Weed, and this week I have found this portrait by the Pre-Raphaelite Marie Spartali Stillman, arguably the greatest woman artist of the movement. The painting shows the Madonna Pietra degli Scrovigni, a character from Dante’s poetry, and she is described as ‘a heartless lady dressed in green’. She is holding a branch of blackthorn, and I wonder what it symbolises: her wintery coldness, her thorny nature, or even her purity? Her enigmatic gaze is giving nothing away. I love that the painting features not only the blackthorn, but that the flowers in the Madonna’s hair are hellebores, and that ivy twines amongst the dried oak leaves above her head.

Spartali Stillman lived in England for her whole life, first in Clapham and then on the Isle of Wight. She studied under Ford Madox Brown (who is buried in ‘my’ cemetery) and was a model for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron and Burne-Jones, amongst others. She also had an extensive sixty year career of her own, which included major exhibitions in both the UK and the US. Yet I had never heard of her. It seems that, as so often, a woman’s work is buried in obscurity while her male compatriots are famous names. I am  fortunate to live in an age where such works can be discovered with a simple internet search, uncovering a whole world of beauty that I can share here. It is easy to criticise the web, and yet it enables us to make connections that I cannot imagine would have been so easily made any other way. Who knew that a post on blackthorn would take me so far?

Credits

Richard Mabey’s ‘Flora Britannica’ and Sue Eland’s ‘Plant Lives‘ website are my constant companions for the Wednesday Weed.

Photo One – By Allan warren – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9982286

Photo Two – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=337699

Photo Three – CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.

Photo Four – By Hectonichus – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12471724

Photo Five – By Gilles San Martin – Flickr: Thecla betulae egg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15753504

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

Photo Seven – By ©entomart, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=294708

Photo Eight – By Donald Hobern – originally posted to Flickr as Esperia oliviella, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5715537

Photo Nine – By Samuraiantiqueworld – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12311379

Photo Ten – By Marie Spartali Stillman – Source 2nd upload: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/484137028666579864/Source 1st upload: http://bertc.com/subone/g94/stillman.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=607536

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer