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, if the county plant of London is the Rose-Bay Willowherb, then the Postal Code Plant of East Finchley must be the Green Alkanet. As I wander the streets, it seems to be obligatory to have at least one of these hairy-leaved beauties peering out from under the Buddleia, or popping forth boldly from the bottom of a fence. And yet, I cannot remember it from my childhood in East London, so I wonder if it has a preference for the heady heights of North London.

It is, in fact, a member of the Borage and Comfrey family, and, as you might expect, is popular with bees, especially early in the season when there isn’t much else about. Its leaves survive right through the winter, hence its Latin moniker, sempervirens, which means ‘always green’.

Green Alkanet was introduced into gardens in 1700, and was first recorded in the wild in 1724, so it has been with us for a long time. It is a true Londoner inasmuch as it can’t abide acidic soils, and so the cold, claggy clay of the capital suits it down to the ground (literally). It is a very hairy plant – the stems are hairy, the lavender buds are hairy, the leaves are hairy (and sometimes feature white spots as well). It is readily attacked by rusts (as in the specimen above). All in all, it is something of a bruiser, a street-fighter of a plant whose toughness belies its delicate flowers.

‘Alkanet’ is an interesting word, thought to derive from the Arabic word for the plant-based red dye Henna. The word is also the root of the names of Dyers’ Bugloss (Alkanna tinctoria) and Common Bugloss (Anchusa arvensis), to which Green Alkanet is closely related. In fact, Anchusa is derived from the Latin word for paint. The  books that I’ve read seem to agree that a red dye can be extracted from the sturdy root of the plant, and the WildflowerFinder website, which has a special interest in plant chemistry, goes further, suggesting that the extracts from the root can be used to make a purple or burgundy dye, with alkaline compounds being used to increase the blue pigment, and acid ones turning it red again. There is also a strong suggestion elsewhere that the plant was deliberately introduced to provide dyes for cloth, being cheaper than true Henna, which is extracted from the Henna tree (Lawsonia inermis).

Green Alkanet has several other uses – the flowers are apparently edible, and I can just imagine them frozen into ice-cubes and clinking away in a gin and tonic. Being a member of the comfrey family, the leaves can also be composted, or rotted down to provide liquid fertiliser. But it’s as a plant for pollinators that it finds its true vocation, the white heart of the flower acting as a target for all those thirsty early bees. It is yet another of those plants that we would be delighted with if we planted it deliberately, but which is undervalued because it’s just a ‘weed’. It seems as if we find it difficult to appreciate the beauty that comes to us for free, like grace.

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 April Fool’s Day I headed out to a new cemetery with my botanical friend, to see what we could find. Unlike St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, which has bramble tangles and secret, woody places, East Finchley Cemetery is well manicured and full of splendid Victorian memorials, like the ones below.

So, we were not hoping for much in the way of wild flowers. A man was wandering around in a desultory fashion, waving a leaf blower in spite of no leaf having the audacity to fall on those bowling-green lawns. The noise was ear-splitting. In an attempt to get away from the racket, we headed ‘off-piste’ to explore an area behind a row of well-tended graves, and there we found our reward.

Cowslips are not the first primulas to come into flower – the Common Primrose has that honour. But what a splendid plant it is. Each stem can hold up to thirty blooms, which seem to erupt in a yellow fountain. The pale, soft green of the calyx sets off the gold of petals and the five apricot-coloured  spots at the heart of the flower. The plant is said to smell of apricots too, but as usual I forgot to check this out. If you see some, have a good sniff and let me know.

Once upon a time, our fields and meadows were full of Cowslips – the name refers to them being found amongst cowpats. People made cowslip wine, and for a most excellent recipe, described by one Mr Moxon as ‘right good’ back in 1764, have a look here. The path of a bridal couple was strewn with cowslips, and young women wove them into their hair on May Day. But, as with so many of our country wildflowers, they were soon to be pushed to the margins by changes in agricultural practices. Old grassland was ploughed up, meadows drained, and everything was sprayed with herbicide, including some field margins and roadsides. The ‘freckle-face’ of the Cowslip was soon a rarity, and so was the Duke of Burgundy butterfly, whose caterpillars feed on Cowslip.

So, it was a great pleasure to find this cowslip here, lonely as it was. Cemeteries and churchyards are sanctuaries for all manner of wild plants and animals, and more and more of these sites are being managed with this in mind. And we are not as laissez-faire with the chemicals as we once were, which is just as well, bearing in mind their effects on everything, from bees to humans, who came into contact with them.

Cowslips are woven into the history of the British Isles. Shakespeare mentions it in The Tempest, as the bed of Arial:

‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.’

John Milton also writes of the plant, in his Song of a May Morning:

‘Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowering May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.’

Spring flowers must have been welcomed with a very special kind of relief, in the days when you could never be sure if your winter supplies would last until the warm weather returned. To me, the Cowslip is a sign that the world has turned towards the sun again, but in earlier, harder times there must have been a feeling of joy that the cold and the dark had been survived. No wonder May Day was such a celebration.

Cowslips have also been used for their medicinal properties, as you might expect from a plant that has grown beside us for so long. It was believed that a lotion made from Cowslips would remove wrinkles and freckles, with maybe an indication of the old ‘Doctrine of Signatures’ – the plant has little orange freckles in its flowers, so maybe it will help us to remove them! It was believed to be sedative, to be good for coughs and for rheumatic pain, and no less a person than Hildegard of Bingen recommended using the leaves to make ointment.

Occasionally, a red-flowered Cowslip is found, and there is a belief that this is because the seed was planted upside down. How you would know which way up it was supposed to go puzzles me somewhat, but the plant is very different in its red form, bold and defiant.

The Cowslip is considered a magical plant in other ways, too. The Cowslip is supposed to be able to open the doors of caves filled with hidden treasure. To dream of a Cowslip is a sign of unexpected good luck. In the language of flowers, it symbolises ‘comeliness and willing grace’. And furthermore, it is, apparently, the birthday flower for 22nd September, which is my wedding anniversary.

No wonder I love it, and was so delighted to see it so unexpectedly last week. I hope that it will continue its fightback, and that soon our churchyards and field-edges and ‘waste ground’ will be full of it.

 

 

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…..

In East Finchley, all the Red Dead-nettle plants seem to have come into bloom at exactly the same time. Where last week there was just a clump of leaves, this week there are those tiny magenta-pink flowers, each one a complicated combination of long throat (corolla) and upper and lower lip. They seem designed to encourage a foraging bee to take a sip of nectar, with a handy landing-platform provided by the lower lip, and the stamen poised to gently tap the insect on the back, as if administering a blessing. It is also a source of pollen, especially for Queen bumblebees who are looking for food for their new offspring. This is reflected in the name given to the plant in Nottinghamshire and Lancashire – ‘Bumblebee flower’.

However, like many plants, Red Dead-nettle is not dependent on bees to reproduce. It can self-pollinate if times are hard, and ants have been observed dispersing the seeds by carrying them into their nests as food, where some of them will germinate before being eaten. A quick look at the Garden Organic website tells me that a single Red Dead-nettle can produce 27,634 viable seeds if there isn’t any competition from other plants. Such abundance! This is not surprising, as unlike its close relative White Dead-nettle, which is a perennial, Red Dead-nettle is an annual, and so has only one chance to pass on its genes. As with many things in nature, it’s lucky that not every seed or egg is able to reach adulthood or we’d soon be buried under a positive carpet of furry leaves and pink flowers.

Red Dead-nettles are plants of disturbed soils, but they are not tolerant of trampling, so they often crop up just at the edge of footpaths or other open spaces. Although it is native to continental Europe, it is thought to have been brought to the UK during the Bronze Age – remains of the plant have been found in deposits of wheat and barley from this period. It has since travelled widely with its human compatriots, and is hence found in North America and New Zealand too. Unlike many ‘weeds’ however, this is not an especially vigorous plant, and so it is not generally considered to be a problem. In addition to its value to pollinators, it is also useful for humans: the leaves and flowers can be eaten as a salad vegetable, and if you want to experience the delights of Dead-nettle and Chilli Soup or, indeed, Dead-nettle Beer, you can have a look here.

As we have seen before, the medicinal uses of plants often depend on their appearance, and Red Dead-nettle is no exception. Because of its colour, Nicholas Culpeper, the fifteenth century herbalist, considered it efficacious for any problems relating to the blood, especially menstrual problems. It’s also believed that the crushed leaves will help to staunch blood flow, which is useful if you are ever unlucky enough to walk through a particularly vengeful bramble patch en route to your destination. I also note that it is sometimes used as a treatment for piles, although Lesser Celandine is more commonly referred to as the ‘go-to’ plant for such afflictions.  Beware, however: Red Dead-nettle also has a reputation as a laxative, and, whilst browsing through the various ‘wild food’ websites on the internet I noticed several people referring to cramps and diarrhoea. So, the word here, as everywhere, is caution. On the other hand, if you have a pet tortoise, Red Dead-nettle seems to be a fine food for them.

Sometimes, it’s possible to find a more unusual flower tucked in amongst the Red Dead-nettle. This is the Cut-Leaved Dead-nettle (Lamium hybridum). Described as ‘easily overlooked’, you can see why. The main difference between this plant and Red Dead-nettle is that, as you might expect from the name, the leaves are less rounded and more deeply toothed.

Red Dead-nettle is also has an angelic alternative name – Purple Archangel. It is argued that this is because the plant comes into flower around the time of the feast of the Archangel Michael, which is on 8th May. However, the plants that I saw today are obviously having a bit of calendar trouble if this is the case. Maybe there is something about the flowers which looks a little ethereal and heaven-bound. For the bumblebees, at least, they are manna.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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, most of the plants that I write about in the Wednesday Weed are not unusual: they are the kind of flowers that might crop up in any urban area, and are all the more precious for their resilience and unexpected beauty. But I was astonished to be led to this plant by my botanical friend. It was growing in a damp corner of St Pancras and Islington cemetery, all on its own and far from any graves. Known as Loddon Lily or Summer Snowflake, you might initially mistake it for a Snowdrop with its white flowers, each petal kissed with green. But a closer look shows that the structure of the flower is quite different.

There are two species of Snowflakes in the UK: the Spring Snowflake (Leucojum vernum), which is not native and which normally has only one flower head per stem, and the Loddon Lily (or Summer Snowflake), which has multiple heads and is generally considered to be native, although it is also cultivated, which complicates matters somewhat.  The plant is named for the river Loddon in Berkshire – the seedpods of the plant can inflate, which means that they can be dispersed by streams and rivers, and accounts for the thick stands of Loddon Lily on the riverbank. The plant is so beautiful that it is the County Plant of Berkshire – Geoffrey Grigson, who wrote a book called ‘The Englishman’s Flora’ (1958) amongst many, many other works on natural history, described the Summer Snowflake thus:

‘White flowers hanging in severe purity from long stems’.

Who knew that we even had County Plants? To find out what yours is (if you live in the UK), have a look at the Plantlife site here and click on your area. One thing that gave me a little pause when I came to investigate this plant was that it was in flower in mid-March. All my books tell me that it shouldn’t come into flower until April or May. As usual, the plant appears not to have read them. However, my botanists’ group was unanimous in their identification of the plant, and some reported early flowering in their ‘patches’ too. Maybe our mild winter (in the south of the UK at any rate) has encouraged the plants into early bloom. This is much appreciated by the early bees that are just about beginning to appear now.

The inside of the Loddon Lily flower is a combination of white, green and gold. Notice that you can see the green mark inside the flower as well as outside (another thing that distinguishes it from the Snowdrop).

According to Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica, the Summer Snowflake has been used to adorn church altars, and in the May Day celebrations, though there is some evidence that the cut flowers have an obnoxious smell. Best to leave them where they are, I think. It’s sad how often blooms that look wonderful on the plant turn to sad, wilted objects when they’re picked.

Summer Snowflake has not escaped the attentions of the pharmaceutical industry. In Bulgaria, it is harvested on an industrial scale to extract a chemical called Galanthamine, used to make drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease. A scientific study by L. Georivaa has shown that the bulbs which contain the chemical also contain a very variable range of other helpful compounds, and recommends the better management of wild populations and the careful cultivation of the plants, both to ensure a sustainable supply and to provide time to look at the other uses that these compounds might have. You might think that this would be common sense, but as we know, there is a universal tendency by big business to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Let’s hope that we can develop a reciprocal relationship with this elegant plant, whereby we make use of its gifts without wiping it off whole swathes of the planet. It doesn’t seem a lot to ask.

 

 

 

 

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 last visit to St Pancras and Islington Cemetery involved an unexpected detour. One of the heavily wooded paths in the older part of the graveyard was blocked by a massive fallen beech tree. As my friend , as agile as an anorak-clad mountain goat, clambered over the branches and found a way through, I slid down a muddy incline,into the middle of this mass of heart-shaped leaves. A little investigation showed that this was Lesser Celandine, normally one of the earliest woodland plants to flower. Gilbert White, the nature diarist of Selborne, records it flowering on 21st February, but mine were still not in bud in early March. However, one of the plant’s vernacular names is Spring Messenger, which gives some indication of its precocity.

The plant is a member of the Buttercup (Ranunculaceae) family. This is a group which prefers damp habitat,  which may explain why the  Latin meaning of Ranunculus is ‘little frog’. Like many buttercups, It can certainly spread when in the right situation. The tubers easily break off from the roots in disturbed situations, such as cemeteries which are trampled by eager middle-aged lady plant hunters. A subspecies, Ranunculus ficaria bulbifer, produces little bulblets at the junction of its leaves, which can be accidentally transported by walkers, dogs and wildlife. In its native range (the whole of Europe and West Asia)  it grows where few other plants can survive and is more of a boon than a problem. However, it is yet another ‘weed’ which is described as ‘invasive’ in other places. For example, it has been imported to North America, where its early flowering and spreading habit means that it can smother more ephemeral native plants.

The name ‘Celandine’ is interesting. In the UK, there is the Lesser Celandine and the completely unrelated Greater Celandine, which will undoubtedly be a subject for a future post, as there is a great mass of it growing at the side of my house (I like to have a few ‘weeds’ up my sleeve in case domestic emergency or sheer laziness stop me from walking in the woods or the cemetery). Just to say here that the name Celandine derives from Chelidon, the Greek name for the swallow. This works for Greater Celandine, which flowers at about the same time as the swallows arrive, but Lesser Celandine flowers much earlier. I suspect that someone back in antiquity got confused because the flowers of both plants are yellow, and look superficially similar. Either that or, as Richard Mabey suggests, the plant was seen as a kind of ‘vegetable swallow’, a harbinger of spring.

Now, let us return to the Doctrine of Signatures. As you might remember, this was a belief that God had put a sign on plants that were useful to human beings. The buds of Nipplewort, for example, are shaped like nipples, and so the plant was said to be good for all kinds of things related to breast feeding. Have a look at the picture below, in particular the roots of the plant, and see if you can guess what Lesser Celandine was said to be good for.

One of Lesser Celandine’s alternative names was Pilewort, and it was used to treat hemorrhoids. In Germany, it is known as Scurvygrass, and was harvested because its leaves are rich in Vitamin C. As it appears so early, it must have been a blessing to eat something green just as winter was coming to a close, and the cupboard was bare. In Russia, the dried herb is also used for a variety of ailments.

Wordsworth loved Lesser Celandine, and wrote three poems about it. This is part of my favourite of the three, which sums up a little how I feel about all the ‘weeds’ that I write about every week.

Comfort have thou of thy merit,
Kindly, unassuming Spirit !
Careless of thy neighbourhood,
Thou dost show they pleasant face
On the moor and in the wood,
In the lane; — there’s not a place,
Howsoever mean it be,
But ‘t is good enough for thee.

Wordsworth wanted the Lesser Celandine to be depicted on his tomb, as it was his favourite flower. Unfortunately, the stone mason carved images of the Greater Celandine, which is not, as we’ve seen, the same thing at all.

 Richard Mabey, in his magisterial ‘Flora Britannica’, notes that Wordsworth made the following field note about the Lesser Celandine.

‘It is remarkable that this flower, coming out so early in the Spring as it does, and so bright and beautiful, and in such profusion, should not have been noticed earlier in English verse. What adds much to the interest that atttaches to it is its habit of shutting itself up and opening out according to the degree of light and temperature of the air’.

And this is exactly what the plant does. Wordsworth was a great walker and observer of nature and, although unfashionable at the moment, had a deep love of his local area and of the plants and animals that lived there. He was a man with a big heart, and a great and enduring spirit, as so many poets are, but he was also modest and reclusive, How appropriate that he should have been so fond of this little, unobtrusive flower.