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 last Wednesday before Christmas it was impossible to resist the temptation to feature a plant with a Biblical theme. And what should I find growing in the car park behind All Saints Church on Durham Road in East Finchley than a patch of Yellow Archangel (Lamiastrum galeobdolon argentatum). There are two forms of this plant: the one in the photograph with the silvery patches on its leaves is the cultivated variety, but the green-leaved variety is a native plant, and an indicator of ancient hedgerows and woods. However,  the silver-leaved garden variety is also cropping up in much wilder settings, such as the hedgerow behind my Aunt Hilary’s house in Somerset. In fact, the cultivated variety of the plant is now on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, which makes it illegal to grow it in the wild. The problem is that it spreads rapidly, and can impact on other, less robust plants. In the picture below, however, it seems to be fairly well integrated with the Goosegrass and the Wild Garlic (not that you would want to go petal to petal with either of these two bruisers).

The flowers of Yellow Archangel, as with all of the dead-nettles, are exquisite when viewed up close. They have co-evolved with the bees that pollinate them- the ‘hood’ of the plant bows down when a heavy insect lands, anointing the animal’s back with pollen, while the lower lobe acts as a landing platform. It amuses me to think how upset many Victorians were when evolution began to clarify the relationship between flowers and pollinators: previously, it was thought that the beauty of blossom was all about appealing to the human senses. In fact, as we now know, it’s all about ensuring the continuance of both plant and bee, an exquisite relationship that has developed over millenia. We are not the centre of the universe, after all.

The Latin species name for Yellow Archangel, galeobdolon, means ‘to smell like a weasel’, as apparently this is what the scent of the crushed leaves resembles. The plant also has the vernacular name of ‘Weasel Snout’.  I have never had the opportunity to catch a whiff of weasel, and I suspect that they are few and far between in my north London half mile territory. Nevertheless, here is a picture of one, because it’s Christmas, and what a gift this bright-eyed little predator is.

Yellow Archangel is closely related to both White Dead-nettle and Red Dead-nettle, but Culpeper tells us that for ulcers and sores, Yellow Archangel is more efficacious than the others.

Why Archangel, though? This name is used for many of the dead-nettle varieties, and Richard Mabey suggests that this may be because the plants have no stings. I wonder if there is also something rather angelic about the shape of the flowers, if you squint a little. I particularly love the Glaswegian name for the garden variety with its silver leaves – ‘Aluminium Archangel’. This sounds to me like a name for a piece of civic sculpture, maybe like the one below, at the N1 shopping centre in Angel, Islington.

So, dear readers, by the time I publish my next piece Christmas will be over for another year. I wish those of you who are celebrating time to rest and reflect and recharge in the midst of the maelstrom that the festive season has become, and to all of you I send my hopes for a peaceful spirit, an inspired heart and a healthy body with which to meet the year ahead.

Photo Credits

Yellow Archangel in flower – “Gele dovenetel DSCF3599” by Teun Spaans – Self made picture. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gele_dovenetel_DSCF3599.JPG#/media/File:Gele_dovenetel_DSCF3599.JPG

Wonderful Weasel – “Mustela nivalis -British Wildlife Centre-4” by Keven Law – originally posted to Flickr as On the lookout…. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mustela_nivalis_-British_Wildlife_Centre-4.jpg#/media/File:Mustela_nivalis_-British_Wildlife_Centre-4.jpg

Angel Wings Sculpture – By Chris McKenna (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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, a few years ago my husband and I went on holiday to  Jersey. The weather was glorious, and  one of my strongest memories is of the tropical coconut scent of the waist-high gorse that grew on the clifftops, and the sound of the ripe seedpods popping. So imagine my surprise at finding a small cluster of plants in flower on a rainy day in north London. Although there is a saying that ‘when the gorse is in flower, kissing’s in season’ I suspected that the plants would surely take a break in December, but no. And what a joy it is to see those butter-yellow flowers speckled with raindrops among all the mud and dying foliage of other, less enterprising plants.

Common gorse is a member of the Fabaceae or pea family, and like all members of its family helps to fix nitrogen in the soil and so to improve fertility. As a long-living, hardy, native plant, it has been used for a variety of purposes. Some relate to its prickliness – it can make a very effective hedge, spiky and long-lasting. Washing can be hung out to dry on gorse bushes, the spikes acting as pegs. Chopped gorse has been used as a mulch over germinating peas and beans to deter pigeons and mice. And the impenetrable thickets that the plant forms are great habitat for all manner of small mammals and nesting birds.

Despite its coarseness and abundance of spines , gorse has been used as food for cattle and horses, especially in north Wales where other sources of fodder may have been hard to come by. The plants are usually bruised in gorse-mills to soften them before being fed to the livestock. Humans have eaten gorse too – the pickled buds can be used like capers, and the flowers can be added to vodka or gin to flavour the spirit.

Pliny stated that branches of gorse could be placed in a stream in order to capture any particles of gold in the water, an ancient version of gold-panning.

Gorse has also had a long association with fire. It was used as firewood, particularly for baking, and was so popular that bye-laws were instituted to ensure that not too much was taken – Richard Mabey reports that under the 1820 Enclosure Act, the parishioners of Cumnor Hurst were allowed to harvest as much gorse ‘as they could carry on their backs’. In spite of its tough nature, gorse is not completely frost-hardy, and a particularly vicious winter can put paid to great tracts of the plant on open ground. It was therefore necessary to husband it as a resource, and to take only what was needed. Sustainability is not a new idea at all, but for most of the history of mankind has been seen as an obvious necessity. It’s only recently that we seem to have developed the idea that natural resources are never-ending.

Once burned, the ashes from gorse were used as an excellent fertilizer, or mixed with clay to form soap.

Gorse is normally a plant of open grassland (the very word ‘gorse’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon ‘gorst’, meaning wasteland) and as such is subject to fires caused either accidentally (by lightning strike) or by deliberately in order to clear the land of old gorse bushes. As a fire-climax plant, gorse is adapted to these occurrences, and responds by putting out new green shoots, which can be used as softer fodder. In the right conditions, a single gorse bush can live for over 30 years.

In spite of its long flowering season, gorse has always been associated with the spring, and with the return of the sun. Gorse fires were set on the hillsides in at spring equinox, and burning brands of the plant were carried around the cattle herds to ensure their good health for the following year.  In Ireland, gorse was said to protect against witches, and it was also said that if you wore a sprig of gorse you would never stumble. In Scotland, it is said that Edinburgh will fall if the gorse does not come into flower. In Dorset and Somerset, however, it was unlucky to bring a sprig of the plant indoors, as if you did so a coffin was sure to follow shortly in the opposite direction. It is the sure sign of a plant that has been our companion for a long time that such a variety of beliefs has sprung up.

For me, gorse means heat, and skylarks singing, and a lizard skittering across a sandy path. It was not something that I expected to see today, one of those Sundays when the sun barely seems to get above the horizon before it sinks down again, exhausted. But what a joy it was to see those golden buds, and to remember that summer afternoon, something that I hadn’t thought about for years. My personal history seems to be written in plants and animals, each of them a talisman of a time and place.

Resources used in this post:

Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey – the best compendium of plant lore every published in my opinion. Endlessly interesting.

The Plant Lives website by Sue Eland – a gathering together of worldwide plantlore. Especially useful where plants have become naturalised  outside the UK, and are being used by local people

The A Modern Herbal website – all manner of medicinal, culinary and other uses for British plants.

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, last week I was surprised to find a specimen of Stinking Hellebore growing next to a bus stop on Fortis Green Road in East Finchley. What was this exotic-looking plant doing in such a prosaic environment? With its palmate leaves reaching out to tug at my ankles, and its pale green shoots, it looks like a small but friendly alien. It is unlikely that this is a truly ‘wild’ plant – most likely it is a garden escape – but it is also native  to the south-east of England. Whatever its status, it is a very fine plant, and one with many interesting characteristics.

Stinking hellebore is a member of the buttercup family, which is more clearly seen when the plant is in bloom.

The flowers contain up to ten nectaries, glands which produce nectar. Yeasts live in these nectaries, and raise the temperature of the plant, which enables the perfume which attracts insects to the blooms to be more easily diffused into the surrounding air. A hellebore containing a high density of these yeasts can be up to 7 degrees centigrade warmer than a plant with no yeast. Stinking hellebore is the first plant where such a relationship has been observed – usually plants which increase their temperature, such as the Cuckoo Pint, use chemical reactions within the plant itself. As the plant is a very early bloomer (some have recently been spotted in flower already in the south of England) it is a very welcome source of sustenance for all manner of early-flying pollinators, and maybe the temperature difference between it and the surrounding frigid air acts as a kind of homing beacon.

You might expect that the flowers of this plant would smell unpleasant, but in fact the plant is named for the smell of its crushed foliage, which is variously described as ‘pungent’ ‘unpleasantly mousy’, and ‘beefy’. It has a fine array of names alluding to its unfortunate perfume, including Dungwort and Stinkwort. However, it also has the rather obscure name of Setterwort. This appears to refer to the practice of ‘Settering’ which was used when cattle had boils or abscesses, and a thread made from the root of stinking hellebore was drawn through the infected area to draw out the pus. Maybe the chemicals in the root acted as a kind of antibiotic?

Stinking hellebore is also a traditional remedy for worms although, as the 18th century naturalist Gilbert White wrote:

“Where it killed not the patient, it would certainly kill the worms; but the worst of it is, it will sometimes kill both“.

It was especially dangerous when ingested by children. If lucky, the worms would be expelled from the child, but if the poison only resulted in the parasites retreating to the child’s stomach, a second dose might be administered, with fatal results.

In the ever-fascinating Poison Garden website, John Robertson describes how hellebores contain a substance called protoanemonin, which can cause skin problems. One incident involved someone who placed some nearly ripe hellebore seedpods in their back pocket and then drove for two hours to get home. The unfortunate person had serious blisters as a result of juice from the plant seeping through two layers of clothing. Clearly, this is a plant that needs to be handled with care.

John Robertson also describes how digging up a hellebore can be dangerous for your health. According to Pliny, if an eagle spots you engaged in such a task, the bird will cause your death, unless you draw a circle around the plant, face East and offer up a prayer before continuing with your spadework. One can only speculate as to how such legends grow up, but, having never seen anything bigger than a buzzard in the skies over East Finchley, I imagine that any hellebore transplanters will be relatively safe, though you might want to offer up a prayer just in case.

As one of the ‘baneful plants’ of witchcraft, Stinking hellebore is a plant that should be taken seriously – it is even said that Alexander the Great died from hellebore poisoning. However, it also has mystical associations, and is sometimes included as one of the ingredients of the ‘Flying Ointment’ that enabled witches to fly. It is also said to confer invisibility. And there can be no doubt whatsoever that to a hungry, cold queen bumblebee, emerging from hibernation on an unnaturally mild winter day, its nectar can be a life-saver. In my cold, shady, north-facing garden I think a few thickets of Stinking hellebore might be just the ticket to give some winter wildlife interest. I will let you know how I get on!

Photo Credit

Stinking hellebore in flower – “Helleborus foetidus0” by Kurt Stüber [1] – caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/mavica/index.html part of http://www.biolib.de. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Helleborus_foetidus0.jpg#/media/File:Helleborus_foetidus0.jpg

All other content 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, as we get into wintertime it becomes rather more challenging to find plants for the Wednesday Weed, especially as I have already covered more than a hundred of the botanical wonders that can be found within half a mile of my house. But it is also a time when overlooked leaves can suddenly be seen as other foliage dies away. Thus it was that, during my time at East Finchley Station car park a few weeks ago, I first noticed the bright leaves of Ribwort Plantain.

There are five species of Plantain in the UK, but Ribwort Plantain is one of the commonest. Its leaves are a dead giveaway – my Harrap plant guide describes them as:

‘strap-shaped to long-oval, tapering gradually to the stalk, with 3-5 bold, parallel veins’.

I could find none that were still flowering, but the blooms are immediately recognisable.

The flower heads are a source of food for finches and other small birds during the winter time, and for butterflies and moths in the summer – many wildlife gardening books suggest leaving a patch of these plants to grow in the lawn as a handy waystation for these creatures. However, in his very interesting book No Nettles Required, Ken Thompson explains how, during a survey undertaken in Sheffield, it was easier to persuade people to grow a container full of stinging nettles in their gardens than to sacrifice a corner of the lawn and leave it unmown. Lawn aficionados , in my experience, love to have an expanse of smooth green sward, however much hard work it might be to create and maintain this effect. However, a little corner of Ribwort Plantain and longer grass provides a much enriched habitat for all kinds of animals.

The flowers have also been used as a replacement for conkers: the long stem enables each participant to whack the other person’s flowerhead until it comes off. In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey reports how the game holds remnants of history:

‘In Kent this game is known as ‘dongers’ and in Scotland (along with the plant itself) as ‘Carl Doddies’: ‘Carl and Doddie are diminutives of Charles and George, and the game is an obvious reminder of the ’45 Jacobite Rebellion, with Bonnie Prince Charlie and King George III trying to knock each other’s heads off’.

On the Plant Lives website, Sue Eland describes how another old name for the plant is Kemps, probably a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon word Cempa, or soldier, and most likely a result of this children’s game. Maybe it reminded the little darlings of battering one another with maces.

Ribwort plantain is a native, and has acquired a whole raft of medicinal uses. The Permaculture website describes how the plant has been used for respiratory, urinary and middle ear complaints. However, it pays most attention to the plant’s use as for wounds and insect bites:

‘Simply gather and chew a couple of good looking leaves, then apply the ‘spit poultice’ to the afflicted area. Bleeding stops very quickly, and broken flesh is rapidly sealed together, due to the astringency of tannins, and the soothing mucilage. Plantains are mildly anti-septic, so they also help prevent infection. In addition, these plants are really useful against insect bites and stings, especially for children. Once again, chew or scrunch up the leaves until you get the juices flowing, then apply.’

As with dock, ribwort plantain is such a widespread plant that it can almost always be found nearby, with the exception of areas of very acid soil. It is an indicator of agricultural areas in the pollen record, as it is a great lover of grassland and disturbed soils. As such, it has often found its way into the cooking pot. The leaves are said to taste slightly like mushrooms, and as usual you could add them to salads, but for the more adventurous there is a recipe for Aubergine and Avocado Bake with Ribwort Plantain here . And what a delightful website this is! I would heartily recommend a browse if you fancy Sea Purslane Hummous or Tansy Pancakes.

Finally, I cannot leave the subject of Ribwort Plantain without mentioning the Nine Herbs Charm. This was an Anglo-Saxon incantation to be used when someone had been wounded or poisoned. The verse on Plantain goes as follows (taken here from the Odin’s-Gift website):

‘And you, Plantain, mother of herbs,
Open from the east, mighty inside.
over you chariots creaked, over you queens rode,
over you brides cried out, over you bulls snorted.
You withstood all of them, you dashed against them.
May you likewise withstand poison and infection
and the loathsome foe roving through the land.‘

I love the idea of this wayside plant being creaked over by chariots and snorted over by bulls (though to be absolutely botanically accurate, Ribwort Plantain is much less tolerant of trampling than its cousin, Greater Plantain (Plantago major) which will no doubt be the subject of a future Wednesday Weed). And more than this, I love the way that this humble, modest plant was called the mother of herbs, and was recognised as a powerhouse of healing. I suppose that we were more observant of and more grateful to the natural world when we couldn’t just go to Boots for a tube of Savlon or call for an ambulance.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, when I was visiting my parents’ house in Dorset this week for my mother’s 80th birthday, the peace of the autumn was disrupted by the whine of the hedge-trimmer. My parents have the most spectacular beech hedge surrounding their little bungalow, fully twelve feet high and three feet thick, and every year Ian the tree surgeon comes to cut it for them. This is a two day job, involving standing on scaffolding to reach the top, and trimming the sides with meticulous care, for Ian is a perfectionist, and by the end the hedge would grace any stately home. However, I think even Mum and Dad’s hedge will have to wait a while before it can match the Meikleour beech hedge in Blairgowrie, Scotland. This one was planted in 1745, and is said to grow towards heaven because the men who planted it were killed at the Battle of Culloden. It is the longest and tallest hedge on earth, reaching 100 feet tall and 1/3rd of a mile in length. Furthermore, unlike my parents’ hedge, this one is only trimmed once every ten years.

Beech is one of the few deciduous trees that carries its leaves all year, a phenomenon known as marcescence ( how I love finding a new word – I shall be trying to slip this one into the conversation for the rest of the week). It’s thought that the retention of these leaves may make the spring buds less palatable to grazing animals, and indeed beeches which are pruned (an act which must surely feel to the plant like particularly heavy browsing) are most inclined to keep their leaves. Whatever the reason, one of the distinctive sounds of November for me is the gentle rustling of the browning foliage as it clings to the twigs and interstices of the hedge.

Birds love the beech hedge. It is a valuable roosting place for them, providing more cover during the cold winter nights than a leafless haven might do. Indeed, the noise of sparrows was positively deafening today as I left Mum and Dad’s house to travel down to London. In the spring, the sparrows, wrens and blackbirds all nest in the branches, safely tucked away from predators.

When Mum and Dad first moved into the house, their first thought was to cut the hedge down. It makes some parts of the bungalow quite shady and secluded. But a neighbour advised them against it.

‘The prevailing wind comes right down the hill’, he said. ‘I’d stick it out for the winter and see what you think in the spring’.

The hedge stayed.

In my garden, I also have a mixed hedge, with beech as a large component. In the spring, I love the way that the new leaves unfurl through a gossamer-like covering, as if they were wrapped in cobwebs. I love the deep chocolate brown of the leaves, and the way that they fade to copper, and yellow, and lime-green. My sad little hedge has not yet produced any nuts, nor will it for a while: a beech may produce some beechmast, as the fruits are called, at ten years of age, but will need to be at least thirty before they are produced in any quantity. Even then they will be occasional, rather than regular, events: the production may be related to hot, dry summers, but even so the beechmast is rarely produced for two years in a row. When it does appear, however, it is a bonanza for everything from badgers to squirrels, tits to finches. Some of the seeds will, of course, be buried, leading to the development of new beech seedlings in the spring.

There is some debate about the origins of beech in the UK. Some think that it arrived in the south of England about 2000 years after the English Channel was formed, and that it was carried here by Neolithic people, who probably used the nuts for food. Others suggest that the plant predates this. Officially, the plant is described as native in the south of England and south-east Wales, and as ‘widely planted’ elsewhere. The nuts can be pressed to make oil, although this doesn’t seem to have taken off in the same way that Hazelnut oil has. The leaves, when young, can be eaten, and can also be turned into an alcoholic drink called Beech-leaf noyau. If you fancy having a go, there’s a recipe for Beech Leaf Gin here, though my dad, an ex-gin distiller for Gordon’s Gin, would no doubt be horrified.

The timber from beech trees was largely used for firewood – in Roman times, it was used to supply the fuel for ironworks. However, one specialised use of the wood was for the manufacture of chairs, and a specialised company of these carpenters, called bodgers, existed in High Wycombe right up until the early years of the twentieth century. These men lived in hovels in the beech woods, and made the chair legs for the Windsor Chair, so-called because it was sold by dealers in Windsor. The bodger felled the beech trees (he would buy a stand of trees from an estate), cut it into chair leg sized pieces, and turn the wood on a lathe to produce the part required. The legs would then be left to stand, or season, until ready to be turned into furniture. Each man could turn out 144 legs a day. However, for working six days a week, ten hours a day, he was likely to earn only £1.50 per week. I wonder if this combination of high productivity and low wages led to the use of the word ‘bodger’ as a description for someone with more enthusiasm for DIY than ability.

A beech tree was often seen as a safe haven in storms, because it was protective against lightning. It was also said that no harm would come to anyone sheltered under its branches, and that any prayers uttered there would ascend straight to heaven, unhindered. How appropriate that, when turned into a hedge, beech becomes the protector not only of houses, but of all the small creatures who might otherwise be buffeted by wind and weather. It seems to cradle all things, big and small, in its rustling, brown-leaved branches.

Photo Credits

Meikleour Hedge – “620-250 Year old Beech Hedg” by MichaelDFowler – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:620-250_Year_old_Beech_Hedg.JPG#/media/File:620-250_Year_old_Beech_Hedg.JPG

Beech mast – “European Beech” by photo en:User:MPF – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:European_Beech.jpg#/media/File:European_Beech.jpg

Windsor Chair – “Windsor Chair Sack Back Armchair cr”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windsor_Chair_Sack_Back_Armchair_cr.jpg#/media/File:Windsor_Chair_Sack_Back_Armchair_cr.jpg

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, last week I was exploring the car park at East Finchley tube station when I came across a plant that was entirely new to me – Perforate St John’s-wort. My copy of Harrap’s Wild Flowers describes it as ‘abundant, and by far the commonest St John’s-wort’. This may be so, but it’s fair to say that it’s a retiring and delicate plant, easily overshadowed by the more assertive ‘weeds’ that grow in the same habitat. It is easy to see that it’s a member of the same family as Rose of Sharon and Tutsan – it has five petals, a shaving-brush of stamen, and that butter-yellow colour that is so characteristic of the family. If you break a flower-bud, a reddish-purple liquid is produced.

But why on earth is it called ‘Perforate’? If we look closely at the leaves, we can see that they are covered in tiny translucent ‘windows’. These are resin glands, and are said to be responsible for the ‘foxy’ smell of the species, though I was not inclined to molest the small number of plants that I discovered to find out.

Although this is a new plant to me, it is a native of Europe and Asia and has a long history of interaction with humans. Richard Mabey (in Flora Britannica) describes how, since prehistoric times, this plant was burned on the Midsummer Day Fires that were set all over the country. It was believed that these fires would purify communities and crops, and Perforate St. John’s-wort was one of the ‘sun-herbs’ which were thrown into the fire, probably because its yellow colour was thought to strengthen the power of the sun, while the smoke from the fires protected the fields against more malevolent summer manifestations, such as drought and wildfires.

Another story, attributed to the peoples of both the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight is that if you accidentally stood on Perforate St-John’s-wort at night, you would promptly be carried off on a fairy horse from which you could not dismount until sunrise. By then, you could be anywhere, and would need to find your own way home. I find this such a delightful idea that I was almost tempted to creep back to the car park at dead of night with a thermos flask, some sandwiches and an Oyster card, just to see what would happen.

Later, as has so often been the case, the plant was absorbed by Christianity – the Feast of St John the Baptist is on June 24th, and so this pagan plant was renamed as a Christian one. The genus name Hypericum is supposedly derived from the Greek words Hyper (above) and eikon (holy picture), to describe the way that the plants were hung above icons on St. John’s day to protect the house against the evil eye. In a combination of the pagan and Christian uses of the plant, the flower-buds were gathered on 24th June, crushed and steeped in olive-oil, to produce a blood-red liquid that was called ‘Blood of Christ’ and was used for anointing.

The reason that most of us have heard of St John’s-wort, however, is because of its use as an anti-depressant. Reviews of the use of the plant have regularly indicated that it is more effective than a placebo for patients with major depression, as useful as standard anti-depressants in mild to moderate depression, and that it has fewer side-effects. It should be noted, however, that the studies performed in German-speaking countries (where herbal medicine is an accepted part of many treatment regimes)  returned much more positive results than those conducted in the US (where there is more reliance on synthetic medicines) (for more details see here). There is no doubt that this is a medicinally active and potent plant, and should therefore (as with all plant remedies) be treated with respect – it decreases the levels of oestrogen in the body by speeding up the rate with which the hormone is metabolised, and so may decrease the efficacy of the contraceptive pill. It may cause photosensitivity, and is also associated with aggravating psychosis and mania in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I do note, however, that all these are also potential side-effects of many standard anti-depressants. I suspect that the main danger of this plant is using it alongside conventional anti-depressant drugs, and hence doubling up the dose of psychoactive chemicals. It also interacts with many other medications, including statins and HIV treatment protocols. Even so, it is given several pages on the website of Mind, the main UK mental health charity, and many people swear that using Perforate St John’s-wort has given them relief from the symptoms of anxiety and depression. So much power in a plant discovered at the back of a car park in North London!

As with so many plants that I have discovered through The Wednesday Weed, Perforate St John’s-wort has proved to be a problem in countries to which it is not native, especially Australia and the US. It is poisonous to grazing livestock if ingested in large quantities (indeed in Russia it is known as Zveroboi, or ‘beast-killer’), and some of the side-effects suffered by humans, such as photosensitivity and mania, are exhibited in animals unfortunate enough to have dined extensively on the plant. It is said that one of the effects of the plant is to make the suffering animal run in circles, resulting in strange ‘crop-circles’. The poisoned animal may be terrified of water, or may become so obsessed with it that it drowns. Fortunately, in places in which it is native it is unusual to see Perforate St.John’s-wort growing in anything like the quantities needed to cause these effects, but see the photo below of the plant growing in Australia for an idea of how densely-packed it can become.

What a remarkable plant this is. Its chemical composition means that it can both cure and poison, relieve distress and cause suffering. Of all the plants that I’ve featured on The Wednesday Weed, it is the one that has given me the most pause for thought. Modern Western society largely despises the healing power of plants, and is disrespectful of their undoubted power to heal or harm. In many places in the world, only a manufactured drug is considered efficacious, even though it may be originally derived from plants. Thank goodness for the people all over the world who are curious and knowledgeable about their botanical heritage, and who are working to preserve this priceless information for generations to come. Now, we just need to make sure that we also preserve the plants themselves.

Photo Credits

Perforated Leaves – By Matt Flavin https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/5259021048 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Illustration of Perforate St John’s-wort – By Prof. Dr. Thomé, Otto Wilhelm (www.biolib.de) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Field of Perforate St.John’s-wort in Australia – By Peripitus (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other photos copyright Vivienne Palmer

Resources

Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey

The Plant Lives website curated by Sue Eland