Escolar Documentos
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NOSEGAY:
A Botanical Miscellany
Giles Watson
2010
2
PART 4: ORCHIDS.....................................................................63
FRAGRANT ORCHID.........................................................................................63
FLY ORCHID (OPHRYS INSECTIFERA).......................................................64
BEE ORCHID (OPHRYS APIFERA)...............................................................65
EARLY PURPLE ORCHID (ORCHIS MASCULA).......................................66
PYRAMIDAL ORCHID (ANACAMPTIS PYRAMIDALIS)............................67
EARLY MARSH ORCHID (ORCHIS LATIFOLIA).......................................68
BIRD’S NEST ORCHID (NEOTTIA NIDUS-AVIS)......................................69
FROG ORCHID (COELOGLOSSUM VIRIDE).............................................70
GREEN MAN ORCHID (OPHRYS ANTHROPOPHORA)...........................71
JUG ORCHID (PTEROSTYLIS RECURVA)..................................................72
PINK FAIRIES (CALADENIA SPP.).................................................................73
DONKEY ORCHID (DIURIS BRUMALIS).....................................................74
COWSLIP ORCHID (CALADENIA FLAVA)...................................................75
LEEK ORCHID (PRASOPHYLLUM SPP.).....................................................76
JAMES BATEMAN’S ORCHIDACEAE OF MEXICO AND GUATEMALA
..................................................................................................................................77
VANDA SANDERIANA.......................................................................................78
STANHOPEA........................................................................................................79
POLLINIA...............................................................................................................80
LADY’S SLIPPER.................................................................................................81
PART 5: THE MERMAID’S TRESSES: SEAWEEDS.......................82
CODIUM................................................................................................................82
ULVA LACTUCA..................................................................................................83
HOLDFASTS.........................................................................................................84
KILP BURNERS...................................................................................................85
WRACK CUTTERS..............................................................................................87
KNOTTED WRACK.............................................................................................88
DILLISK..................................................................................................................89
DILLISK II..............................................................................................................90
CORALLINA...........................................................................................................91
TROW.....................................................................................................................92
PART 6: CRYPTOGAMS: THE SPORE-BEARING PLANTS.............93
SECTION A: FUNGI....................................................................94
ARMILLARIA MELLEA......................................................................................94
MARASMIUS OREADES...................................................................................95
PHALLUS IMPUDICUS......................................................................................96
AMANITA MUSCARIA........................................................................................97
LYCOPERDON SPP............................................................................................98
AMANITA PHALLOIDES...................................................................................99
CORDYCEPS MILITARIS................................................................................100
HIRNEOLA AURICULARIA-JUDAE.............................................................101
POLYPORUS SPP..............................................................................................102
COPRINUS COMATUS....................................................................................103
CLAVICEPS PURPUREA.................................................................................104
SECTION B: FERNS.................................................................105
OPHIOGLOSSUM VULGATUM.....................................................................105
BOTRYCHIUM LUNARIA................................................................................106
ASPLENIUM MARINUM..................................................................................107
5
HYMENOPHYLLYM TUNBRINGENSE.......................................................108
CETERACH OFFICINARUM..........................................................................109
OSMUNDA REGALIS.......................................................................................110
PILULARIA GLOBULIFERA...........................................................................111
PHYLLITIS SCOLOPENDRIUM.....................................................................112
SECTION C: MOSSES...............................................................113
SPHAGNUM SPP...............................................................................................113
LEUCOBRYUM GLAUCUM............................................................................115
FONTINALIS ANTIPYRETICA........................................................................116
POLYTRICHUM COMMUNE..........................................................................117
SECTION D: HORSETAILS.......................................................118
EQUISETUM TELEMATEIA...........................................................................118
EQUISETUM HYEMALE.................................................................................119
SECTION E: CLUB MOSSES......................................................120
ISOETES LACUSTRIS.........................................................................................120
LYCOPODIUM SPP..........................................................................................121
SECTION F: LIVERWORTS.......................................................122
MARCHANTIA....................................................................................................122
PART 7: PLANTS AND CULTURE..............................................123
ARROWHEAD....................................................................................................123
VIPER’S BUGLOSS..........................................................................................124
WOUNDWORT...................................................................................................126
BIRTHWORT......................................................................................................128
SHEPHERD’S PURSE......................................................................................129
WHITE CLOVER................................................................................................130
DOCK....................................................................................................................131
SWEET FLAG.....................................................................................................132
YARROW..............................................................................................................134
HERB PARIS......................................................................................................135
SOLOMON’S SEAL...........................................................................................136
LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY....................................................................................138
MONK’S HOOD.................................................................................................139
HELLEBORE......................................................................................................140
RAGWORT...........................................................................................................141
WORMWOOD.....................................................................................................143
BRYONY...............................................................................................................144
FOXGLOVE.........................................................................................................146
BELLADONNA...................................................................................................148
THORN APPLE...................................................................................................149
VERVAIN.............................................................................................................151
HENBANE...........................................................................................................152
MANDRAKE........................................................................................................154
HEMLOCK...........................................................................................................156
DANDELION SPRING......................................................................................157
WOOD ANEMONE............................................................................................158
WOOD SORREL................................................................................................160
MUSK MALLOW................................................................................................161
NAVELWORT......................................................................................................162
SILVERWEED....................................................................................................163
6
QUAKING GRASS.............................................................................................164
CENTAURY.........................................................................................................165
HERB ROBERT.................................................................................................167
GOOSEBERRY..................................................................................................168
ST. JOHN’S WORT...........................................................................................169
RUE.......................................................................................................................172
WILLOWHERB...................................................................................................173
ON AN EDELWEISS IN THE BACK OF SCHRÖTER’S ALPINE FLORA
................................................................................................................................174
7
MEADOW CRANESBILL
Source material: Gerard and Culpepper called the blue flowered Meadow Cranesbill
“Dove’s Foot” because of the perceived similarity between the leaves and the feet of
doves. The more common name alludes to the strong resemblance of the enlarged
stylar column and seed capsule to the head and bill of a crane. Gerard
recommended the herb, taken in claret before sleep, for the miraculous healing of
“ruptures and burstings, as my selfe have often proved, whereby I have gotten
crownes and credit”. He adds that “the powder of red snailes (those without shels)
dried in an oven in number nine” should be added to the concoction if it is to be
used on an older person. Elizabethans used the plant not for healing physical ills,
but as the main ingredient in love potions, but it is not clear whether they added the
red slugs as well. More recently, botanists have noticed that Cranesbills have an
unusual method of seed dispersal. W.B. Turrill, British Plant Life, London, 1962, p.
explains: “The long ‘bill’ of the fruit is structurally the persistent and enlarged stylar
column. At maturity the lower two-thirds above each one-seeded compartment splits
away from the compact central portion. The seeds become detached, but each
remains in a carpellary pocket attached by two threads to the corresponding stylar
strip. The stylar strip acts as a spring and when a certain degree of tension is
attained by the drying-out process it suddenly curls up and breaks away from the
central column, with such force that the partial fruit with a seed at the bottom is
shot for a distance of about seven yards...”
8
RESTHARROW
Source material: Cammock is the older English name for Restharrow ( Ononis sp.),
a legume which was once a persistent farmland weed, but has now been banished
from agricultural land. It persists in places on the Ridgeway. The roots of this plant
are remarkably tough, and could stop a horse or ox-drawn plough in its tracks. They
were, however, much prized by country children, who chewed them as a substitute
for liquorice root. Like many legumes, Restharrow greets its insect visitors with
small explosions of pollen, but its bright pink blooms are false advertisements: they
contain no nectar. See Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, 1975, p. 141;
Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal, 2009, pp. 290-291; G. Clarke Nuttall and H.
Essenhigh Corke, Wildflowers as they Grow, Volume 4, 1912, pp. 154-160.
9
MELILOT
Like crowns of scatterbrained kings,
Melilot sprays in golden rounds
Hang dangling by the Ridgeway. Fate
And metaphysical aid have crusted
Them with dew. It dries like diamonds.
Source material: The Melilot was probably introduced to Britain as a fodder herb of
similar nutritional value to alfalfa, but it has been thoroughly naturalised for
centuries. The Plaister Claver was a Melilot poultice, much celebrated in the great
herbals, and the second stanza contains the recipe. The herbalist Parkinson (1656)
compared the flowers with a crown, a notion echoed in its ancient Latin name,
Corona regina. It was sometimes called Hart’s Clover, on the assumption that the
kingly beast preferred it to all other food. See G. Clarke Nutall and H. Essenhigh
Corke, Wildflowers as they Grow, Volume 6, London, 1914, pp. 116-7; Geoffrey
Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, pp. 142-3.
10
DROPWORT
Pink as upturned eyelids, buds of Dropwort
Break in the sun and blanch, bend with the breeze,
Their slim stalks flexing. Some bloom on the domes
Of barrows, tombs of chieftains – beds of loam –
Their swords beside them, arms about their knees,
Wombed and foetal for all their worth in bronze,
And Dropwort roots grow downwards
Through globes that held their brains.
GREATER KNAPWEED
Ants negotiate the bracts
With testing antennae,
Climbing the plant’s
Globed involucre.
A bumblebee alights,
Inserts his gleaming
Drinkingstraw tongue.
KIDNEY VETCH
Reclaiming ground, kidney vetch
Occupies a swathe, an invading
Host. Every calyx is a wad
Of down, ready-carded for clotting
Wounds; and jaundiced little fingers
Grope the air, as though lambs
Have lost their wool to grasping hands.
Source material: Like many plants with woolly calyxes, Kidney Vetch (Anthyllis
vulneraria) has a long-standing reputation as a wound herb, and would certainly be
as effective as gauze or spider web in staunching bleeding. Its folk names include
Lamb’s Toe, Lady’s Finger and God Almighty’s Fingers and Thumbs. The plant is
common on chalk grassland, and is adept at colonising bare areas of ground. See
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, pp. 219-221; Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s
Flora, p. 150.
13
HOARY PLANTAIN
Hoary plantains are the spirits
Of old men, growing thin on top,
But sporting magnificent sideburns.
GOAT’S BEARD
Jack woke up before the light
And went to bed at noon,
Hid his yellow locks from sight.
His long and pointed shoon
GENTIANS
Source material: John Clare, ‘Prose on artificial nature poetry’ in Eric Robinson
and Geoffrey Summerfield (Eds.), Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare, Oxford,
1978, p. 66: “Pastoral poems are full of nothing but the old thread bare epithets of
‘sweet singing cuckoo’ ‘love lorn nightingale’ ‘fond turtles’ ‘sparkling brooks’ ‘green
meadows’ ‘leafy woods’ etc etc these make up the creation of Pastoral and
descriptive poesy and every thing else is reckond low and vulgar in fact they are too
rustic for the fashionable or prevailing system of rhyme till some bold inovating
genius rises with a real love for nature and then they will no doubt be considered as
great beautys which they really are” [sic]. Still one of the great unsung heroes of
nature poetry - and one with a philosophy to live and die for - John Clare’s woes are
described in his own poem ‘I am’, which reflects on his bouts of mental illness and
imprisonment in an asylum. The poem above was inspired by my own observation of
a Chiltern gentian (Gentianella germanica) at the Warburg Nature Reserve near
Nettlebed on 20th August 2003, and by discussions, aired on the radio as I drove
home, about the inquiry into the death of Dr. Kelly. The Anglo Saxons called all
gentians “Feld wyrt” (Fieldwort), and recommended the powdered root as a cure for
adders’ bites, but it would be foolish to experiment with the remedy these days,
given the scarcity of gentians. See Stephen Pollington, Leechcraft: Early English
Charms, Plantlore and Healing, Norfolk, 2000, pp. 296–297.
16
SAINFOIN
MILKWORT
Rogationtide children beating the bounds
Carried the Virgin, blue on her pole,
Sought flowers for garlands, deep in the grass,
Searching for symbols, gleaning for grace,
Picking the milkwort, as blue as her robe,
Tender as thought and as small as a soul.
They weaved her a nimbus and thought it as fine
As a halo of lapis surrounding her face.
ROCKROSE
On anthills and on fairy-rings,
Sol-flowers are radiant,
Shining out the scent of sun,
Dazzling the breath.
Source material: Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, p. 89, suggests that
rather than Rockrose, the Scottish name of Sol Flower would be more appropriate as
a common name for Helianthemum nummularium, “or else an Englishing of the
French herbe d’or, Herb of Gold.” Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, p. 126, observes
that on the chalk downs, “it has a special liking for anthills and fairy rings”,
presumably because it likes slightly disturbed ground. All authors seem to agree
with John Gilmour, Wild Flowers of the Chalk, Middlesex, 1947, p. 14, that when it
is encountered on the downs, “cascades of golden flowers will light you on your
way.” The scent of rockroses is sometimes carried by their pollen over hundreds of
yards.
19
SYCAMORE
As I went out to quarry stone,
My pick upon my shoulder,
I heard a singing nightingale
And sat upon a boulder.
Source material: Eirwen Jones, Folk Tales of Wales, London, 1947, pp. 66-68.
21
Source material: The poem is inspired by the deciduousness of larches, and the
“cone” bearing of alders. I have always associated the two trees: both of them
contradict the normal rules.
22
BEECH POLLARDS
Long Plantation, February 2009
Source material: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 8, the story of Baucis and Philemon.
The two elderly lovers welcomed the gods into their house even though they had only
the most basic fare to offer them. For their reward, they were made guardians of a
temple, after their valley, inhabited by people who turned the gods away, was
flooded. Their wish was that neither one of them should outlive the other, so that
neither of them would grieve. The gods answered their prayers, at the end of their
lives, by transforming them both simultaneously into trees.
24
HOLLY
IVY
Adorn the final harvest sheaf
With ribbons, ivy-bound,
And give your thanks for all the green
That grows in goodly ground.
Adorn the final harvest sheaf
With ivy twine and ivy leaf:
Dry leaves fly in the wind, and whirl,
As we bring home the Ivy Girl.
The light has changed; the nights grow long;
The cold gusts fade. The golden crowns
Of maidens, manes of laden mares,
Glimpsed through yellowed leaves,
As they bring in the harvest sheaves.
Leaves stir, all bronzed, the burnished orb
Lights all with long rays: auburn glades,
The sheep, the style, the sharpened scythe,
The bundled straw, the swathe, the broom;
Through window panes, the lamp, the loom.
In stillness, silence, sylvan shadows,
The unheard sigh from earthen mould,
Wood-ear fungus, wet and pungent,
Croaking crows, and creeping cold,
Black, grey and brown: gone green and gold.
BIRCH
HONEYSUCKLE
SPINDLE
HEATHER
BEECH
Source material: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, xvi, c. 91. Sir James Frazer, The
Golden Bough, p. 8, argues that priests of the goddess Diana, seeing the Beech tree
as her aspect, may have physically married the tree. If so, it is hardly appropriate to
characterise modern “tree huggers” as “New Age”, though one might well insist that
the level of their commitment is not quite the same as it used to be. See also
Alexander Porteous, The Lore of the Forest, London, 1928, p. 70, and Margaret
Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, pp. 26–27.
32
OAK
BROOM
Source material: The fourth branch of the Mabinogion. Although Blodeuedd was
made in order to become a “consort to the great god Llew”, she had other ideas.
35
GORSE
ASH
APPLE
Source material: Roy Vickery, A Dictionary of Plant-Lore, Oxford, 1995, pp. 6–7. The
chorus is the wassailing song attributed to Spratty Knight, Captain of a wassailing
band from Duncton in West Sussex in the 1920s. The gifts given to the apple tree
and faeries are described by Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants,
Princes Risborough, 1999, pp. 14–15. It is a common folk custom to fire guns into
apple trees. If aimed at the branches, the intention appears to be the scaring-off of
41
evil spirits. On other occasions, apple trees which have given poor crops are
threatened, and shot in the trunk to make them more fertile next year.
42
HAWTHORN
ROWAN
WILLOW
YEW
Yew Auguries
I dreamed I sat beneath a Yew,
Ivy and dog’s mercury, toxic companions,
Scrawled across the red and powdered earth,
The great bole’s girth growing branches,
Tree trunk thick, each of them,
Bristling with half-started shoots.
The needle-scattered roots enveloped me.
Great tufts of red twigs, peppered
With fallen fruits, nut-hard,
And browned needles, like ants’ nests.
A green curtain, black by dusk,
Hanging almost to the ground.
Source material: There are two species of Pedicularis in Britain: the meadow
lousewort (P. sylvatica) and the marsh lousewort or red rattle (P. palustris). Both
have slightly asymmetrical labiate flowers which allow bees to land on one side of
the lower lip without colliding with the hood. The stigma protrudes beyond the hood,
so that it brushes the head of any insect that lands on the lip, picking up the pollen
grains adhering to it from an earlier visit to another flower. Inside the hood, the
stamens are exactly positioned so that the bee cannot access the nectar without
being smeared with more pollen. Louseworts are also partially parasitic, deriving a
portion of their nutrients from the roots of other plants. They were once blamed for
transferring lice to sheep, but in fact, the opposite is true: louseworts contain a
natural insecticide. I wonder whether this is produced to prevent bees from chewing
at the outside of the corolla and stealing the nectar without coming into contact with
the anthers; this is certainly their habit with plants such as monk’s hood. See G.
Clarke Nutall and H. Essenhigh Corke, Wildflowers as they Grow, London, c. 1914,
pp. 21-22.
54
DODDER
VENUS FLY-TRAP
SUNDEW
Don’t struggle, dear
It only makes it worse,
Like being entangled
In sticky toffee:
Striving only serves
To stick you faster.
Now, if ever, is the time
To learn detachment,
Suspended, as you are
Between earth and heaven.
You have no need
Of earthly things:
None of them
Can aid you.
There is solace
In this death:
Towering above you
A white flower.
Source material: Based on observation of Sundews in Albany, Western Australia,
where the species are spectacularly diverse. All sundews kill their prey in the same
way, and many have beautiful flowers.
57
BLADDERWORTS
BUTTERWORT
CHRISTMAS TREE
BROOMRAPE
PITCHER PLANT
Cow Wheat
Source material: Cow wheats (Melampyrum spp.) are semi-parasitic plants which
derive water and minerals from the roots of grasses. The seeds are spread by ants,
and bees are the only insects strong enough to open their flowers and pollinate
them. The seed is reminiscent of wheat grain, but black in colour, and it is said to
make bread black and bitter. As a result, it has been known as “poverty weed”,
because it reduces the market value of cereals. However Linnaeus asserted that the
best and yellowest butter is made when cows browse on cow wheat flowers. See
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, London, 1996, p. 334, Macgregor Skene, A Flower
Book for the Pocket, Oxford, 1935, p. 281, and C.A. Johns, Flowers of the Field,
London, 1949, pp. 201–202.
63
PART 4: Orchids
FRAGRANT ORCHID
At twilight, moth wings quiver among vetches.
Hawkweeds fold inward, suns imploding,
And blackbirds chink in monotone,
Abandoning song.
Source material: David Lang, Orchids of Britain: A Field Guide, Oxford, 1980.
64
Source material: Fly orchids are comparatively difficult to find, appearing on single
spikes amongst the ground vegetation on the edges of woodlands. Like the bee
orchid, it is thought that they evolved to resemble flies in order to entice the insect
they imitate into “mating” with them, thereby spreading their pollen. This does not,
however, account for the wide range of other orchid forms, which so excite the
imagination.
65
Source material: Norman E. Hickin remarks that in 1968, he did not see a single
bloom of the early purple orchid in the Wyre forest, and contrasts this experience
with a spring forty-five years earlier when the meadows around Dowles Church were
full of them. “This can only have been caused,” he surmises, “by what was
apparently a harmless and attractive pastime of little girls picking flowers.” (See The
Natural History of an English Forest, Newton Abbot, 1972, p. 101.) However, given
that the tubers of this orchid, which contain bassorine, a starch-like substance,
have long been regarded as a highly efficacious aphrodisiac, it is tempting to
attribute the decline in numbers to its reputation, rather than to little girls. Salop, a
soft drink made out of the dried and ground tubers, was a popular drink in Britain
before the introduction of coffee and tea, and was consumed in establishments
devoted to the purpose. Salop appears to have been a common refreshment for
Victorian labourers, perhaps because it is highly nutritious. Richard Mabey (Food
for Free: a Guide to the Edible Plants of Britain, Glasgow, 1972, pp. 72-73) claims
that one ounce of bassorine is “sufficient to sustain a man for a whole day”. The
quip about Cobham Park is quoted by Mabey from an unidentified seventeenth
century botanist, and the Royal College of Surgeons included orchid roots in the
aphrodisiac mixture recommended in their Pharmacopoeia. The early purple orchid
has presumably gained the more ominous folk names ‘Gethsemane’, ‘king’s fingers’,
‘bloody man’s fingers’ and ‘dead man’s thumbs’ because the leaves have red
markings which look like drops of blood.
67
Source material: My father notes in his list of updated names for orchids illustrated
in John Curtis’s British Entomology, vols 1-12 (1824-1835), that “Summerhayes
(1951) accepted Orchis latifolia – the ‘Early Marsh Orchid’ – as a common British
species, and provided a colour photo closely comparable with Curtis’s beautiful
engraving [of Dactylorhiza maculata]; but neither the binomial nor the English name
are traceable in either Clapham, Tutin and Warburg (1962) or Stace (1997)! ‘Orchis
latifolia’ has evidently been ‘lost’ among the dactylorchids, where hybridization has
contributed to a taxonomic and nomenclatural mess.” (See the British Insects link on
the Delta website.) Many species of orchid worldwide are capable of hybridising to
produce fertile offspring, which exhibit variable combinations of the characteristics
of the parent plants. Often, large swathes of ground can be taken over by the hybrid
forms, resulting in what is known as a hybrid “swarm”. The name Orchis incarnata
was sometimes applied to a variant of Summerhayes’s ‘Early Marsh Orchid’, which
was so named because it had flesh-coloured flowers.
69
Source material: Frog orchids do not look especially like frogs, and are easily
overlooked because of their small stature, and because of the colour of their flowers,
which is the same shade of green as the stems and leaves. Many orchids reproduce
through the production of enormous numbers of very small seeds, but unlike other
species which also reproduce by rhizomatous growth, frog orchids are almost
exclusively dependent on sexual reproduction. Ichneumon flies are hymenopterous
insects which deposit their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars. After the eggs hatch,
the larval ichneumons devour the caterpillars from the inside, emerging from their
corpses after their hosts have pupated.
71
Source material: Donkey orchids imitate the forms and colours of native Australian
pea plants, thereby attracting bees which pollinate them without gaining the nectar
reward. It seems that the bees are blind to the vastly exaggerated lateral lobes,
which look to human beings rather like donkeys’ ears. Ovid recounts that after
Midas had his disagreeable adventure with the golden touch, he received an ass’s
ears after presuming to dispute the musical discernment of the gods.
(Metamorphoses, Book 11.)
75
A single seedling
clones
a swathe of colour,
each flower
bearing
a little bleeding signature,
a rash of authenticity.
Source material: Each group of cowslip orchid plants is genetically identical, the
individuals having cloned themselves from an individual seedling. See Andrew
Brown, Orchids of the South West, Western Australia, 1999, p. 10.
76
Source material: I encountered my first leek orchid whilst out walking with my
parents a few minutes from their home in Little Grove, near Albany in Western
Australia. My father and I thought for a few minutes that the single flower spike was
that of a broomrape (Orobanche spp.), to which it bears a superficial resemblance.
The poem also refers to the Albany Pitcher Plant (Cephalotus follicularis), which
undoubtedly once grew in the region, but is increasingly scarce, perhaps due to the
impact of grazing by rabbits. The dense scrub of the region is inhabited by a variety
of poisonous snakes, including the handsome but lethal tiger snake.
77
Source material: The archetypal coffee table book, James Bateman’s The
Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala, London, 1837–43, was so enormous that
when George Cruickshank was asked to produce a vignette for the title page, he
chose to depict a group of workmen lifting the book with block and tackle and
getting crushed in the process. Of the book’s forty illustrations, thirty-seven were
made by Mrs Augusta L. Withers and Miss S.A. Drake, about whom little further is
known. The book was on display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 2005 (see
Shirley Sherwood, A New Flowering: 1000 Years of Botanical Art, Oxford, 2005, pp.
142–143).
78
VANDA SANDERIANA
Source material: During the late nineteenth century, Frederick Sander built a
veritable empire out of the orchid business. He employed almost a score of
collectors, whose adventures read like colonialist fantasies from a Boys’ Own
annual. The most remarkable find was perhaps that made by Carl Roebelin on
Mindano in the Philippines: an orchid which Reichenbach described as “The
grandest novelty introduced for years... From the top of the odd sepal to the top of
the lateral ones, the flower measures five inches... Some plants bore five peduncles
at one time. One had three spikes with forty-seven flowers and buds, thirty-four
being open at one time, thus presenting the appearance of a bouquet.” Roebelin had
made his way by sampan up a river to the interior of the island, only to be
shipwrecked by a hurricane. He was rescued by tribesmen who were kindly disposed
towards him because they wanted his help in defeating a rival neighbouring tribe.
After assisting his hosts in battle, Roebelin was given a place for the night in the
chief’s tree house, only to find himself in the midst of a horrendous earthquake. As
Roebelin clung to the wreckage of the house, dawn disclosed a specimen of the
stupendous orchid, soon to be named Vanda sanderiana, sticking through a hole in
the floor. See Peter McKenzie Black, Orchids, London, 1973, p. 67.
79
STANHOPEA
Source material: This poem was inspired by Episode 3 of David Attenborough’s The
Private Life of Plants, and by Franz Bauer’s painting of Stanhopea insignis,
reproduced in Joyce Stewart and William T. Stearn, The Orchid Paintings of Franz
Bauer, London, 1993, p. 147. Instead of offering a gift of nectar, Stanhopea species
attract their pollinators, iridescent green bees, by exuding a highly perfumed oil with
which the drones anoint themselves in order to entice prospective mates.
80
POLLINIA
Source material: Franz Bauer was employed by Sir Joseph Banks at Kew, where he
painted many beautiful and meticulous pictures of orchids. He was a talented
microscopist, and his painting (1801) of four pollinia of Bletia purpurea, with their
thousands of individual pollen grains, is testimony to his patience. See Joyce
Stewart and William T. Stearn, The Orchid Paintings of Franz Bauer, London, 1993,
pp. 22, 152. Bauer always wrote p as b, and vice-versa, hence his unusual spelling
of Feldsberg.
81
LADY’S SLIPPER
Source material: The Lady’s Slipper orchid is pollinated by insects such as bees,
which are presented with a wide and inviting entrance. In order to escape from the
flower once inside it, a bee is compelled to push through a narrow constriction, thus
brushing against the pollinia and carrying pollen away with it when it departs.
Difficulties arise when the bee is too large to pass through the constriction, since it
is then doomed to die within the slipper-shaped portion of the flower which gives the
orchid its name.
82
CODIUM
ULVA LACTUCA
In the smoke
we ate them, and the spitting embers
made them taste better
than they might have been:
a bright green pungency
breathed out through my nose
with each mouthful.
HOLDFASTS
Source material: Written after a Force 9 gale on St. Mary’s on 27th August, 2004.
The holdfasts of brown seaweeds look like roots, but their function is limited to
anchoring the plants to rocks; they do not absorb nutrients like the roots of land
plants.
85
KILP BURNERS
In Orkney,
As in Scilly, the industry is dying,
and the reek of burning
dissipates.
One-eyed, skinless,
veins pulsating
the Nuckelavee sinks himself.
Source material: Kilp burning was common in coastal Britain from the early
eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, seaweeds of the genus Laminaria being
particularly rich in the soda needed for pottery-glazing, glassmaking and soap
manufacture. Numerous old Scillonian photographs document the noisome nature
of the labour, and to this day the stone pits in which the kelp was burnt can be seen
on Toll’s Island and in various other places throughout the Scillies. The Scillonian
poet Robert Maybee gave a detailed account of the kilp industry in his Sixty-Eight
Years’ Experience on the Scilly Islands, reprinted in R.L. Bowley, The Fortunate
Islands, A History of the Isles of Scilly, Berkshire, 1968, pp. 81-82. According to
86
Maybee, kilp was worth ₤5 a ton when he first saw it being manufactured, but when
the last kilp was burned on the islands in 1835, it was worth only 30s. per ton. The
Nuckelavee was a hideous water-spirit, half man, half horse, which was said by
Orcadians to be so enraged by the stench of burning kilp that it would punish the
island population at the first whiff of the offending smoke, by spreading a mortal
equine disease known as Mortasheen.
87
WRACK CUTTERS
KNOTTED WRACK
DILLISK
DILLISK II
Seal ag buain duilisg do charraig,
seal ag aclaidh,
seal ag tabhairt bhídh do bhoctaibh,
seal i gcaracair.
Source material: The italicized Gaelic text is from a twelfth century description of
the daily activities of an Irish monk, and the first stanza is a paraphrase of it.
91
CORALLINA
Your armour
makes you seem more delicate,
and surely the next wave
must shatter you.
Once, I had
a little wooden puppet
on a round pedestal,
just like you,
articulated
with string.
A fawn,
it was,
spotted,
on spindly
legs.
Source material: Corallina species all secrete a calcareous armour, making them
seem less like plants and more like zoophytes.
92
TROW
“How looked he?”
“Not at all.”
Source material: The Norse settlers of the Orkneys buried their dead in mounds, in
keeping with the practice of the Neolithic inhabitants of the islands. These were later
identified as the homes of Trows, semi-aquatic monsters who preyed on human
souls. Tradition has it that a person who is enticed into a Trow’s mound will emerge
the next morning to discover that several years have elapsed. Jo Ben, writing his
Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum some time between 1529 and 1657, added that in
Stronsay, “sea-monsters called Trowis very often go with the women living
there…..This is a description of that monster. It is clad in seaweed, in its whole body
it is like a foal, with curly hair, it has a member like that of a horse and large
testicles.”
93
There can be few more fertile interchanges between science and lore than that which
has revolved for centuries around Cryptogams. The name itself is inspiring, for while
on the surface it tells us, rightly enough, that the sexual lives of these plants are
hidden and mysterious, the novice who begins to pay attention to them will quickly
realise that so much more than this has been encrypted.
For an amateur naturalist trained to identify flowering plants, there is the fact that
Cryptogams are much more difficult to pin down. In the case of fungi, of course, we
are apt to overstress the difficulty, for whilst the misidentification of a species of
Geranium may occasion some embarrassment (if, indeed, it is ever noticed), a similar
error applied to species of Amanita can have far more distressing results. Ferns,
with the exception of a few very common or very remarkable species, are rarely
differentiated in the lay person’s mind at all, so much so that most of their ‘common
names’ are simply translations of their generic and specific ones. Mosses, for most,
are simply padding for plant-pots, and the Club Mosses, despite their name, are
only vaguely related. In order to become authoritative, one must be initiated into the
mysteries, and this can only happen when one can speak the language, and
distinguish a decurrent gill from one that is adnexed, or determine whether a rachis
is branched or unbranched. And just when the arcane discipline seems to be
mastered, more fundamental questions begin to vex the enquirer, such as whether
fungi are really plants in the first place.
Nor is it surprising that Lewis Carroll placed his hookah-smoking caterpillar on top
of a Cryptogam, for when it comes to exploring the secret lives of these plants, or
researching the narcotic effects of a few of them, we really are through the looking-
glass. Most of us feel out of place in a world in which whales can be carried on one’s
upturned finger, or in which the thing that emerges from a chrysalis is not a moth,
but a sort of toadstool. Fear has a role to play too, and largely, it seems, it is a fear
of something primeval, which may kill us if we are incautious, and which may yet
outlast us in any case.
All of these reactions of the recently initiated are, of course, so much better than the
indifference of the many, who for the most part are unaware that the mysteries even
exist. These poems have been written not in an attempt to decipher the code or
unravel the mystery, for this is largely impossible. They are merely little celebrations
of the secret.
94
Section A: Fungi
Armillaria mellea
Source material: The honey fungus, Armillaria mellea, parasitizes trees to death. It
begins life as a saprophytic mycelium, producing honey-coloured fruiting bodies on
the sides of dead tree-stumps. However, the fungus then sends out subterranean
rhizomorphs which seek out the roots of living trees, penetrate them, and gradually
kill them. A tree which has been killed by honey fungus is readily identified by the
looseness of the bark, which can be pulled away to reveal networks of rhizomorphs,
which look like black bootlaces. See C.T. Ingold, The Nature of Toadstools, The
Institute of Biology’s Studies in Biology, No. 113, London, 1979, pp. 52–53.
Armillaria is also a spectacular source of bioluminescence – an entertaining
discussion of this topic may be read in John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms and
Toadstools: a study of the activities of fungi, London, 1953, Chapter 14.
95
Marasmius oreades
Faerie-ring, faerie-ring,
With toadstool throne for faerie-king,
Watch them dance there in a ring,
But beware of faerie poisoning!
Don’t rely on smell or taste!
Are the gills quite widely spaced?
Are they whitish, as they ought?
Are some long and others short?
Is the cap shaped like a bell?
Is the stem quite thin as well,
And is it fibrous like shoe-lace—
Is it fuzzy round the base?
If so, they might be safe to try
(And if not, you might not die),
But just in case you get it wrong,
I’ll list the symptoms (won’t take long):
Blurry vision, lots of sweating,
Accompanied by nervous fretting,
A nervous twitch, too—oh! Poor dear!
And a spot of diarrhoea!
Delicious faerie champignon!
Delightful thing to dine upon!
Come! Sit down! Eat well! Devour!
You’ll know your fate in half an hour!
Source material: The delicious fairy ring champignon, Marasmius oreades, is not at
any costs to be confused with Clitocybe dealbata or Clitocybe rivulosa, both of which
also grow in fairy-ring formations.
96
Phallus impudicus
Source material: Whilst my simile about the devil’s balls is, to my knowledge,
original, it has precedents in Dodoens (1563) who thought the undeveloped fungi
were the eggs of spirits or devils (“Manium sive Daemonum ova”), and in a tradition
amongst German hunters, who called the Stinkhorn “Hirschbrunst”, in the belief
that it grew where stags had rutted. See John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms and
Toadstools, p. 181. The foetid odour of the mature fruiting body is designed to
attract flies, which spread the spores, and whilst it is quite harmless, it has long
caused, in Ramsbottom’s words, “needless anxiety about sanitation.” A letter to The
Times in 1865 went so far as to blame the fungus for cholera epidemics.
97
Amanita muscaria
Lycoperdon spp.
Source material: Puff balls, especially the Giant Lycoperdon giganteum, make
superb eating when they are still white. Gerard was clearly not ignorant of the wind-
breaking analogy when he called them Lupi crepitus. The last stanza refers to two
further uses for puff-balls, long known to country lore: the spores really do act as a
styptic, and can be used to stupefy bees.
99
Amanita phalloides
Source material: Suetonius, Tacitus and Dio Cassius all maintained that the
Roman Emperor Claudius was poisoned with a dish of mushrooms. Some of the
sources add that the poisonous dish was prepared by Locusta, at the command of
Claudius’s wife Agrippina. In all likelihood, Claudius thought he was eating the
prized esculent Amanita caesarea, which has an orange cap before cooking. A
servant versed in elementary mycology would no doubt have found it easy to replace
one of these delectable mushrooms with a specimen of Amanita phalloides, the most
poisonous mushroom in the world. Around ninety per cent of recorded deaths from
mushroom poisoning are caused by this plant, and only a few grams are required for
a fatal dose. It is hazardous even to breathe the spores. The baleful effects of the
poison do not exhibit themselves for around twelve hours after ingestion; by this
time, there is normally irrevocable damage to the liver and other body tissues. After
two or three days, the symptoms seem to subside, but this is merely a prelude to
delirium, coma, and death. Readers desiring further information should consult
John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms and Toadstools, pp. 33, 39–44, Michael Jordan,
Mushroom Magic, London, 1989, p. 36, and Robert Graves’s novel, Claudius the God.
100
Cordyceps militaris
Hirneola auricularia-Judae
Source material: A rather repellent anti-semitic tradition has it that Judas hanged
himself on an Elder tree, and that the Jew’s Ear Fungus, Hirneola auricularia-Judae,
is the everlasting commemoration of his suicide. See John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms
and Toadstools, pp. 74–75. I prefer the myth, associated with ancient sites such as
the Rollright Stones, which holds that elder trees can transform into witches, and
vice versa.
102
Polyporus spp.
Source material: Many fungi have evocative common names, but none more so
than the Dryad’s Saddle, Polyporus squamosus, which I have often admired growing
from the trunks of trees in Burnham Beeches. It is one of a family of fungi which
ably assist in the process of converting wood back into the mould from which it
invariably arises.
103
Coprinus comatus
Pick them under pines, before their shaggy caps have blotched themselves to ink,
Blooming from the needled ground, where pungent horses’ turds have mouldered,
And the long stems have risen like corporeal ghosts, bruised by your fingers.
I like them seethed in milk, as my father cooked them once, when I was small,
And I ate them with relish, then spat into my sleeve, compulsively, in fear
Of poison. I remember them so well, still sizzling in their buttered bath,
In a white dish, and the way their pink-white flesh slithered through my lips,
A paroxysm of sense. The melting in the mouth of my first initiation.
Source material: The Shaggy Cap, Coprinus comatus, is quite delectable, and never
poisonous, although it should always be eaten before the cap begins to wither and
the spores are released. Its near relative, the Ink Cap, C. atramentarius, is also
edible, but should never be consumed in combination with alcohol, as this causes
alarming symptoms, including nausea and palpitations.
104
Claviceps purpurea
Section B: Ferns
Ophioglossum vulgatum
Source material: The doctrine of signatures, since it dictates that like cures like,
has been used to advance the hypothesis that the Adder’s Tongue fern heals a range
of maladies including snakebite, on the mistaken assumption that the plant
resembles the tongue of a snake. In fact, it does not; it superficially resembles a
plantain, with a leaf shaped like a rabbit’s ear, and the spore capsules mounted on a
single spike. See Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns, London, 1945, pp.
101–105; Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, pp. 58–59; Roy Vickery,
Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, p. 1.
106
Botrychium lunaria
Source material: The story of the unshoeing of the Earl of Essex’s horses was first
recorded by Culpepper: “On the White Down in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there was
found thirty horse-shoes pulled off from the Feet of the Earl of Essex his Horses,
being there drawn up into a body, many of them newly shod, and no reason known,
which caused much admiration... and the herb usually grows upon Heaths.” See
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, London, 1996, p. 14. If gathered by moonlight,
moonwort is said to be capable of opening locks and loosening nails on hinges, and
the alchemists believed that it had the power to convert mercury into silver. See
Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, p. 58. Culpepper recorded that
the plant was colloquially known as “Unshoo the horse,” and it is known in West
Cumberland as “Shoeless Horse”. See Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns,
London, 1945, p. 107.
107
Asplenium marinum
Mirrored in water
in the depth of the well
sea spleenworts
with sori oblique
fracture reflections
with fronded shadows.
Roots inextricable
from cracks
in stone.
Source material: The Sea Spleenwort, Asplenium marinum, flourishes on the west
coast of England and Scotland. It commonly grows in sea caves, and is rarely very
far removed from the ocean. The specimens which inspired this poem were inside St.
Warna’s Well on St. Agnes in the Isles of Scilly. Edward Step, Wayside and
Woodland Ferns, London. 1945, p. 48, observes: “This is a tantalizing plant to the
fern collector, for so often it grows where it may be seen well, but where it is difficult
to attainment even by a very good rock climber. This is just as well, for the roots are
mostly left in the crevice when the rootstock has been secured, so that collected
specimens are commonly doomed on this account.” It also tends not to thrive when
removed from a maritime environment.
108
Hymenophyllym tunbringense
Ceterach officinarum
Source material: Ceterach officinarum, the Rusty-back Fern, is unlike other ferns in
its preference for dry places. The sori are rust-coloured, and from this it derives its
name. When deprived of water, it withers and appears dead, but soon revives after
rain.
110
Osmunda regalis
Source material: The Royal Fern (also known colloquially as the Flowering Fern on
account of its fertile fronds, which are so dominated by their sori that the upper part
of them looks similar to the flowers of the Dock) is known in Cumberland as the
Marsh Onion, because of the whitish mass which grows within its rootstock.
Folklore (documented in county Galway) has it that this “onion” is the “heart of
Osmund”, which, when sliced, pounded and left to macerate, is said to be efficacious
in cases of rheumatism. See Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, Oxford,
1995, p. 322; Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns, pp. 99–101.
111
Pilularia globulifera
Source material: The Pillwort (Pilularia globulifera) does not carry sori on the leaves,
but inside little capsules buried underwater with the rootstock. These are vaguely
reminiscent of pills, but much more so of peppercorns. This plant is unlike the “true
ferns” in that the megaspore produces a prothallium devoid of chlorophyll, and no
antherids. Instead, each microspore produces an antherozoid, and these swarm at
the funnel-shaped opening of the megaspore in order to fertilize the archegone. It
seems that no other Cryptogam takes the name to such extremes.
112
Phyllitis scolopendrium
Source material: The Hart’s Tongue Fern, Phyllitis scolopendrium, has a number of
folk names which allude to its fleshy quality, including Hind’s Tongue, Fox Tongue,
Lamb’s Tongue, Horse’s Tongue, and, in competition with another plant in this
collection, Adder’s Tongue. It is also called the Seaweed Fern in Surrey on account
of its resemblance to Laminaria. The Greeks were reminded of centipedes by the
undersides of its fronds, with their parallel lines of sori; hence its specific name. See
Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns, p. 60. On the Isles of Scilly they grow
in profusion, sprouting both from the ground, and from cracks and crevices in rocks
and walls.
113
Section C: Mosses
Sphagnum spp.
1.
An early memory: the Sphagnum swamp
pockmarked with old tree stumps,
and punctuated by the gruff plonks
of pobblebonks mating. Each step
leaves the thuck of water oozing back
while brown frogs writhe inside the moss.
Tussocks slowly parted, safely,
with a stick. A black snake coils.
Locusts click singly in the heat.
Perhaps this explains, two decades later,
Why, walking among bog-moss
and navelworts, spiked by rushes,
near Burnham Beeches, where the ground
grows soggy—a hemisphere away—
I am longing for frogs and adders.
2.
First, perhaps, an injured hind,
her fetlock grazed by a clattering stone,
made her way through the heath
and hoary bilberries, to the edge
of the blanket bog, and half-knelt there
with the bloodstain spreading through
moss already purpled.
Later, at the battle
of Clonterf, the wounded, biting
on lead, stuffed their own gashes
with the whitened clumps of Sphagnum,
and at Flodden, with green bog-moss
and soft grass.
There has always been utility
in a simple that sucks up blood
more perfectly than dressings we can make.
From the hind’s graze to the shrapnel wound,
the virtue is the same.
114
Source material: The first poem is inspired by two encounters with Sphagnum bogs,
one in the Brindabella mountains, A.C.T., Australia, in the early 1980s, and the
other in 2003, at Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire. Pobblebonks are a
startlingly vocal species of Australian frog, and their name is accurately
onomatopoeic. The second poem alludes to the highly absorbent nature of
Sphagnum. The leaves are filled with tiny tubes which suck up fluids by capillary
action. The history of the use of Sphagnum as a surgical dressing is described in
Mrs. Grieve’s A Modern Herbal, p. 553–4. It has been used for this purpose into
modern times, and indeed, surgeons at the western front during the First World War
soon realized that it was superior to cotton wool, because “A pad of Sphagnum moss
absorbs the discharge in lateral directions, as well as immediately above the
wound... [and] the wounds of our men at the front were of such a suppurating
character as to require specially absorbent dressings...”
115
Leucobryum glaucum
Fontinalis antipyretica
POLYTRICHUM COMMUNE
A little neat besom,
Pliant, well-combed,
Chestnut coloured
As maidenhair,
Dusts the wainscot
And chandelier,
Hanging and tapestry,
Curtain and rug:
A little neat besom
That grew in a bog.
Section D: Horsetails
Equisetum telemateia
Source material: The Great Horsetail, Equisetum telemateia, is the largest of the
British horsetails, the infertile fronds growing to a height of six feet or more. The
poem was inspired by a remembered scene near Coomes Wood in Oxfordshire,
where a large stand of Great Horsetails was observed beside a ditch in around 2000.
119
Equisetum hyemale
Source material: All Horsetails have large quantities of silica deposited in their
stems, but none more so than the so-called Dutch Rush, Equisetum hyemale, which
has in the past acquired some commercial value as a natural scourer. It has been
imported to Britain from Holland for this purpose, hence its common name (other
folk names for it are mentioned in the poem). Linneus testified to the fact that the
plant was a staple food for horses in Sweden, but maintained that cows lost their
teeth to it, and that it gave them diarrhoea. See Mrs M. Grieve, A Modern Herbal
(1931), Revised Edition, Surrey, 1973, p. 420.
120
Isoetes lacustris
Lycopodium spp.
Source material: See Rhona M. Black, The Elements of Palaeontology, 1970, pp.
306–7. Lycopods reached their acme during the Carboniferous period, when they
achieved tree-like proportions. Casts of their enormous fossilized stumps can still be
seen at Victoria Park in Glasgow.
122
Section F: Liverworts
MARCHANTIA
ARROWHEAD
Source material: The poem refers to Charles Collins’ painting, Convent Thoughts,
currently housed in the Ashmolean museum. John Ruskin praised the leaves of
Alisma plantago-aquatica, the Water Plantain, as models of “divine proportion” which
endorsed his theory of gothic architecture, claiming in The Seven Lamps of
Architecture (1849) that they are “shapes which in the everyday world are familiar to
the eyes of men, [and with which] God has stamped those characters of beauty
which He has made it man’s nature to love”. In a review in which he defended the
aesthetic merits of Collins’ painting, Ruskin maintained: “I happen to have a special
acquaintance with the water plant Alisma Plantago ... and as I never saw it so
thoroughly or so well drawn, I must take leave to remonstrate with you, when you
say sweepingly that these men [Pre-Raphaelite painters] 'sacrifice truth as well as
feeling to eccentricity.' For as a mere botanical study of the Water Lily and Alisma,
as well as of the common lily and several other garden flowers, this picture would be
invaluable to me, and I heartily wish it were mine.” Unfortunately for Ruskin, he had
made a grave error of identification, for there is no Alisma in Collins’ painting, but
there are Arrowhead plants (Sagittaria sagittifolia), in the bottom left hand corner of
the painting. For a more detailed discussion of Ruskin’s mistake, see Elizabeth
Deas, "The Missing Alisma: Ruskin's Botanical Error", Journal of Pre-Raphaelite
Studies (Fall 2001): 4-13. I am grateful to Jeannie for our several visits to see this
painting, and for her assistance in my research.
124
VIPER’S BUGLOSS
Canberra suburb of Weston. Bees love the plant, and I can testify to the delicious –
if somewhat acquired – taste of the honey, which is also reportedly toxic in large
quantities. In Australia, the plant is sometimes known as Salvation Jane, on
account of the fact that it provides much-needed fodder for farm animals after a fire,
but its other, more common appellation documents the tragic results which so often
ensue: it is Patterson’s Curse. I have deliberately referenced Claudius in Hamlet and
a patriotic poem by Robert Browning. The imagined reference to the brown snake
was inspired by a similar incident, beautifully described by W.H. Hudson, which
occurred during his own childhood on the Argentinian pampas. See Geoffrey
Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, St. Albans, 1975, p. 308.
126
WOUNDWORT
Source material: Marcus Woodward (Ed.), Gerard’s Herbal: John Gerard’s Historie
of Plants, (1597), Middlesex, 1998, pp. 238-240. Adapted from Gerard’s account of
how he “discovered” the healing qualities of this herb. “Clownish” is not quite as
insulting as it seems; a “clown” in the sixteenth century was a country labourer, not
necessarily a fool. John Clare’s use of the word to describe himself in the nineteenth
century was tinged with self-irony, but was in no way intended to suggest
foolishness. The comparison of the smell of the crushed herb to “burnt rubber” is an
anachronism in the context of Gerard’s writing, since rubber was not known in
Europe until the mid eighteenth century, but on the basis of my own experience, I
127
BIRTHWORT
SHEPHERD’S PURSE
WHITE CLOVER
Follow.
Stoop.
Look up.
DOCK
A dock leaf in downland
Transfigured by sun
Becomes an ascension window,
A collage of lights,
Chloroplast-coloured,
Leaded and held
By a tracery of veins.
Were I a window-maker, I
Would glaze my muse in green,
A nettle clutched unflinching
In her left hand; a dock leaf
In her other, her lips a pout
Preparing to spit on my livid
Skin: the rash she has inflicted.
Source material: The use of a dock-leaf as a means of bringing relief from a nettle
sting is perhaps the most widespread and well known of all herbal remedies. The
more traditional remedy involved spitting on the sting first: a practice which is
indeed efficacious, as the enzymes in saliva stimulate the anti-inflammatory
properties of the plant. See Gabriel Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal: The Curious Stories of
Britain’s Wild Plants, 2007.
132
SWEET FLAG
A single thread from the hem of her gown
Has snagged, and now unravels;
The fabric crimped and puckered
Lifts to show her ankles.
She tuts and bustles winningly,
A dimple punctuates her pout.
She bends in vain to smooth it out,
Source material: Acorus calamus, the Sweet Flag, is so named because its leaves
are superficially similar to those of Iris pseudacorus, the yellow flag iris, alongside
which it grows in marshy places and on the banks of rivers and streams. It is not an
133
iris, however, but a member of the Araceae, and its closest English relative is the
Cuckoo Pint or Lords and Ladies: a relationship which becomes obvious when
Acorus flowers, since both plants have a phallic spadix. Acorus is an introduced
plant, and was grown by the herbalist Gerard in his garden in Holborn. It became
established in the Fens, and has since colonised marshy areas all over the country,
although it is a shy flowerer. In the absence of flowers, the leaves of Acorus can be
differentiated from those of Iris pseudacorus by their asymmetrical midrib, and by
their tendency to pucker at one edge of the leaf, just like the snagged hem of a
garment. Acorus was highly valued as a “strewing herb” – a plant which was strewn
once a year on the floors of churches and other buildings along with others such as
those of meadowsweet – because it has a scent reminiscent of tangerines when
crushed. Perhaps the name “flag” is related in some way to the flagstones on which
it was strewn. The smell is certainly sweet, but I find it slightly nauseating. During
the reign of Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey was, according to Mrs Leyel, “censured for
his extravagance in the use of this herb, which was very expensive because of the
cost of transport.” My assumption that the smell of Acorus might have played its
part at the first meeting of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is of course pure conjecture,
but not at all unlikely. See: Mrs C.F. Leyel, Herbal Delights: Tisanes, Syrups,
Confections, Electuaries, Robs, Juleps, Vinegars and Conserves, London, 1937, p.
263; Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, St. Albans, 1975, pp. 466-7; Richard
Mabey, Flora Britannica, London, 1996, pp. 384-5.
134
YARROW
The milky-white milfoil grew in the soil
Upturned in clods by the grave-digger’s spade,
On the grave of a maiden, the cause of his toil –
Consumption had caused her to fade.
HERB PARIS
Source material: The name of this plant is not a reference to the son of King Priam,
or to the French capital. It refers to the symmetrical structure of the plant: its
parity. Grigson observes that “A usual specimen has an ovary with four cells and
four styles, four inner and outer segments to the perianth… twice four stamens,
and… four leaves.” The single star-shaped flower is later replaced by a single black
berry. Herb Paris was therefore regarded as the herb of equality, and the berries
were used against witchcraft, which, of course, has always set store by odd numbers
rather than even ones. Berries of Herb Paris were used in the treatment of epilepsy,
but the German doctor Martin Blochwich insisted that for them to be efficacious,
they must be administered in odd numbers, thereby revealing that he was of the
Devil’s party without knowing it. The four equal leaves are said to be reminiscent of
a Lovers’ Knot, and this has become one of the flower’s vernacular names. It is also
known as Devil-in-a-Bush, but the even arrangement of the leaves has led to a
folkloric association with the cross of Christ. In fact, Herb Paris is quite certainly a
Devil-in-a-Bush: the whole plant contains a saponin-like poison (emetic and
narcotic) which is unlikely to kill an adult, but is very dangerous to children. The
speaker in the poem may have a very particular reason for dicing with death: in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Herb Paris was regarded as an antidote to
mercury and arsenic, both of which were used in the treatment of syphilis. See
Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, 1975, pp. 447-9; Margaret Baker,
Discovering the Folklore of Plants, 1999, p. 96; Pamela M. North, Poisonous Plants
and Fungi, London, 1967, pp. 145-6; Frederick Gilliam, Poisonous Plants in Great
Britain, Glastonbury, 2008, p. 40.
136
SOLOMON’S SEAL
while it is fresh and greene, and applied, taketh away in one night, or two at the
most, any bruise, blacke or blew spots gotten by fals or womens wilfulnesse, in
stumbling upon their hasty husbands fists, or such like.” See also Mrs C.F. Leyel,
Herbal Delights, 1937; Pamela North, Poisonous Plants and Fungi in Colour, 1967;
Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, 1958; Mrs M. Grieve, A Modern Herbal,
1931.
138
LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY
Source material: Lily of the Valley, known to Gerard as Liriconfancie, has long been
used by herbalists, despite the fact that it contains cardiac glycosides which are
deadly poisonous, and more potent than digitalin. It has been claimed that a dog
injected with four drops of its extract will die within ten minutes. The plant was
sacred to the Nordic goddess of the dawn, Ostara. Mrs Grieve, A Modern Herbal,
1931, reports a Sussex legend explaining the origin of the plant, which purportedly
sprung from the blood of St Leonard after his protracted but victorious battle with a
dragon in the woods near Horsham. She adds that “Legend says that the fragrance
of the Lily-of-the-Valley draws the nightingale from hedge and bush, and leads him
to choose his mate in the recesses of the glade.” Aqua aurea (golden water) is the
name of the fragrant water distilled from the flowers, which was held to be too
precious to be stored in vessels of baser metals than silver or gold. In the First World
War, the plant was employed in the treatment of soldiers suffering from the
inhalation of poison gas. See also Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, 1958;
Margaret Baker, The Folklore of Plants, 1969; Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant
Lore, 1995; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal: The Curious Stories of Britain’s Wild
Plants, 2007.
139
MONK’S HOOD
HELLEBORE
Source material: Classical tradition relates that the shepherd Melampus first
realised the medicinal properties of the Christmas Rose or Black Hellebore,
Helleborus niger, and cured the daughters of Proteus of their mental afflictions by
giving them the milk of goats which had eaten the plant. The first century physician
Dioscorides lists a number of precautions required when harvesting hellebores, and
these are the subject of this sonnet. On a more mundane level, hellebores have long
been a folk remedy for worms, and a highly efficacious one, save for the fact that the
poison often kills the patient as well. The Green Hellebore, Helleborus viridis is less
responsible for such overkill than the lethal Stinking Hellebore, Helleborus foetidus.
See Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, p. 74; Roy Vickery, The
Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, p.176, and Katherine Kear, Flower Wisdom, pp. 101–
102.
141
RAGWORT
Source material: The caterpillar of the cinnabar moth feeds on ragwort (Senecio
jacobaea), and has black and yellow stripes. Traditions identifying ragwort stems as
witches’ or faeries’ steeds are common, particularly in Scotland, and are mentioned
by Burns (1785), and also by Henderson (1856): “On auld broom-besoms, and
ragweed naigs,/ They flew owre burns, hills and craigs.” See Roy Vickery, Oxford
Dictionary of Plant Lore, p. 305.
143
WORMWOOD
Source material: See Paul Huson, Mastering Herbalism, London, 1974, pp. 86–88,
and Dorothy Jacob, A Witch’s Guide to Gardening, London, 1964, p. 53. Apart from
its medicinal properties, both real and fantastical, wormwood is the source of
intoxicating absinth, which affects the drinker’s perception of colour. L. Harrison
Matthews, British Mammals, London, 1952, pp. 56–57, casts an interesting light on
the supposed “old wives’ tale” about the venomous bite of the shrew. In the 1940s, it
was established that an American species of shrew, Blarina brevicauda, does indeed
produce a venomous substance in the saliva, which assists the insectivore by
immobilising its victims, and causing discomfort even for a human handler. The
venom is introduced to the wound by means of the groove between the lower
incisors. It is probable that English species produce similar, albeit weaker, venom.
Whether the juice of wormwood is efficacious in the treatment of shrew bites is,
however, another matter.
144
BRYONY
Source material: White Bryony (Bryonia dioica) has long been used in parts of rural
Britain in place of the exotic mandrake, since its roots tend to take similar
humanoid shapes. Venus Nights were a common practice in Cambridgeshire, and
the verses of this song catalogue some of the uses to which the rejected roots were
consigned. The practice of germinating corn in the “head” of the bryony root in order
to imitate hair has a long history, and was recorded by Sir Hans Sloane (1660–
1753). See Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant-Lore, Oxford, 1995, pp. 393–394,
and Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, Princes Risborough, 1999,
pp. 33–34.
146
FOXGLOVE
Warwickshire, discovered the value of digitalin (contained in the dark green leaves of
the foxglove) in the treatment of heart disorders, after noticing its effect on the
dropsical patients of a wise woman in Shropshire. He published his theories in An
Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses (1785). When he died in 1799 a
carved foxglove decorated his memorial in Edgbaston Old Church. Foxglove’s
medical benefits were encapsulated poetically by Dr Withering himself: “The
Foxglove’s leaves, with caution given,/ Another proof of favouring Heav’n/ Will
happily display:/ The rapid pulse it can abate,/ The hectic flush can moderate,/
And, blest by Him whose will is fate,/ May give a lengthened day.” The chorus is an
adaptation of the rather more sceptical words of Gerard’s Herbal.
148
BELLADONNA
Source material: Deadly nightshade, or belladonna, was one of the principal active
ingredients of witches’ flying ointments. The opening verses are adapted from two
medieval sources; the first from the fifteenth century: “The vulgar believe and the
witches confess, that on certain days and nights they anoint a shaft and ride on it to
the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and other hairy places and
sometimes carry charms under the hair.” The second describes an inquisitorial
investigation into witchcraft in 1324: “in rifling the closet of the ladie, they found a
Pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and
galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed.” The final
verse is based on a description of the effects of using Belladonna in an ointment,
recorded by Porta, a friend of Galileo, in 1589. See Richard Evans Schultes and
Albert Hofmann, Plants of the Gods: Origins of Hallucinogenic Use, New York, 1979,
pp. 88–89.
149
THORN APPLE
Source material: “[Thorn Apple] was used by herbal ‘wizards’ (though not medieval
ones: it didn’t arrive in England until the late sixteenth century)—and perhaps
‘witches’ too. At the end of the seventeenth century John Pechey maintained that
‘Wenches give half a dram of it to their Lovers, in beer or wine. Some are so skilled
in dosing of it, that they can make men mad for as many hours as they please.”
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, p. 303. Datura stramonium is, like Deadly
Nightshade and Mandrake, a member of the Solanaceae, and has similar effects
when taken internally. It seems reasonable to assume that since John Pechey’s
“wenches” were so skilled in its use, they would have known how to exploit its more
interesting effects for themselves, whilst at the same time temporarily disposing of
their husbands with its aid. It also seems at least a fair hypothesis that Datura was
introduced as a result of Drake’s voyage, since it is a native of South America, where
150
Drake had been active in disrupting Spanish shipping, much to the indignation of
King Philip of Spain, and to the delight of Queen Elizabeth. It would, however, be
unreasonable to assume that English witches, ever resourceful by necessity, should
have taken an entire century to discover the merits of the Thorn Apple.
151
VERVAIN
Source material: Paul Huson, Mastering Herbalism, London, 1974, p. 84; Margaret
Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, pp. 152–154; Roy Vickery, Oxford
Dictionary of Plant Lore, p. 381; Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, London, 1996. p.
312. The names in italics at the beginning of each stanza all refer to Verbena
officinalis. Manx herbalists insist that the herb is most efficacious when given by a
friend, but it is rendered ineffective if asked for directly. Mabey reports Colin Jerry’s
observations: “The procedure for getting a piece is rather complicated. It cannot be
asked for directly. Broad hints will be dropped and perhaps the possessor will take a
hint and a plant will discreetly change hands, usually wrapped in paper. No word
should be exchanged. It must always change hands from man to woman or vice-
versa. It can be stolen, but I have not stooped to that yet.”
152
HENBANE
Source material: Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), is the witch’s plant par excellence
on account of its strongly narcotic and toxic properties. It contains a combination of
atropine, hyoscyamine and hycosine. The herb has been used as a pain-killer, and
especially for treating the symptoms of tooth decay. The normally astute naturalist
John Ray described its use in 1660: “The seed of Hyoscyamus placed on a coal gives
off a smoke with a very unpleasant smell: when passed through the mouth and
nostrils by a tube it drives out small worms (vermiculi) which sometimes grow in the
nostrils or the teeth. They can be caught in a basin of water so that they can be seen
better.” The existence of these worms is attested by several other authorities, but
dismissed by John Gerard, who described henbane-administering dentists as
“mountibancke tooth-drawers”. (See Roy Vickery, The Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore,
pp. 177–178.) Henbane was a common ingredient in witches’ flying ointments.
Storms could be raised by throwing some of the plant into boiling water. The incense
recipe for raising spirits of the night is cited by Jon Hyslop and Paul Ratcliffe, A Folk
153
Herbal, Radiation Publications, Oxford, 1989, p. 15. “To be rid of them”, they add,
“burn Asafetida and Frankincense.”
154
MANDRAKE
Source material: This lyric is based on two legends about the mandrake, both of
some antiquity. The oldest, concerning the method of harvest, in which the wrath of
the mandrake demon is supposedly unleashed on the unfortunate dog, appears to
have its origins in ancient Greece, and may be still older. The more recent, which
holds that the mandrake springs from the urine or sperm of a man dying on the
gallows, probably dates from between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Schmidels relates in 1751: “At the foot of the gallows on which a man has been
unjustly hanged for theft it is said that there springs from the urine, voided just
before death a plant with broad leaves, a yellow flower, and a root which exactly
represents the human form even to the hair and sexual organs... To dig it is said to
be attended with great danger, for it gives forth such groans when drawn from the
earth that the digger if he hears them, dies on the spot.” Some traditions insist that
the death, either of dog or digger, occurs not instantaneously, but at sunrise. The
assumption that the uprooting of the plant might cause nightmares for a third party
is the author’s own, but it seems a logical one. Readers interested in the fascinating
history of mandrake lore should consult C.J.S. Thompson’s superb study, The
Mystic Mandrake, New York, 1968.
156
HEMLOCK
DANDELION SPRING
This spring, dandelions took arms
Against cowslips and primroses,
Prevailing on the field of battle.
WOOD ANEMONE
WOOD SORREL
Source material: See G. Clarke Nutall and H. Essenhigh Corke, Wildflowers as they
Grow, Volume 2, London, 1912, pp. 117-118. The wood sorrel is a strong contender
for the title of the true “shamrock”, and therefore may well have been the plant St
Patrick referred to in his sermon exemplum on triunity. Its trefoil leaves are very
mobile, closing along the midrib of each leaf at night, and shutting down like
collapsed tents in the heat of the day. The plant’s folk names reflect a long
association with the cuckoo, because it blooms when the bird begins to call.
161
162
MUSK MALLOW
Children
Find the cheeses ready-plated,
Bundled, babybelled, for waiting mouths,
Tight cakes of mucilage
Ripe for tasting. The hoverflies’
Eyes - and their thousand tiny worlds –
Extinguished, and every petal
Wilted.
Source material: G. Clarke Nuttall and H. Essenhigh Corke, Wild Flowers as they
Grow, Volume 1, 1912, pp. 62-64. There are three main stages to the life cycle of a
musk-mallow flower. In the first, a pyramidal arrangement of stamens arises on a
central column, as soon as the flower has opened itself by unrolling after the
manner of a scroll. In the second, the anthers fall away to allow insects to perch on
the stigmas, transferring pollen from their legs as they do so. After this, the flower
withers, and the fruits are bundled on top of the calyx just as though they are being
presented on a dinner plate. They are indeed edible, and particularly delectable to
country children, who have called them “cheeses” for generations. The detail of the
hoverfly rubbing the stamens together in a twirling fashion with its forelegs in order
to extract the pollen for eating is based on personal observation.
163
NAVELWORT
Flowers, corpse-coloured,
Waxy as candles, stand in spikes
By cracks in the stone,
The tomb empty of all
But the dead man’s fingers.
Source material: Navelwort (also known as Wall Pennywort), has been a remedy
against chilblains since Dioscorides recommended it in the first century. The
epidermis, or “skin”, is peeled from the leaf, and the leaf is then applied to the
chilblain. The epidermis itself is used in lieu of sticking plasters in the treatment of
cuts and abrasions. The plant is prevalent in the south-west of England, and
especially on the Isles of Scilly, where it often grows between the granite stones of
megalithic tombs. “Dead Man’s Fingers” is a folk name which is also associated with
the Early Purple Orchid and the Broomrapes. See Charles A. Hall, A Pocket Book of
British Wild Flowers, London, 1937, p. 35; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal, pp.
246-7; Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, pp. 200-1.
164
SILVERWEED
Plantain and the Little Powerful One
Will claim the trodden portion of the path.
QUAKING GRASS
Source material: Quaking Grass (Brizia media) is so named because the spikelets
tremble in the slightest wind. Local names for the plant appear in the first line of
each verse; Rattle and Golden Shekels are two more. Still more folk names are listed
in C.E. Hubbard, Grasses, London, 1968, p. 215, and Richard Mabey, Flora
Britannica, p. 396.
166
167
CENTAURY
1.
2.
Source material: The thirteenth century Dominican and occult researcher, Albertus
Magnus reports, “Magicians assure us that this herb has a singular virtue for if it is
mixed with the blood of a female hoopoe and put in a lamp with the oil, all those
present will see themselves upside down, with their feet in the air.” By the time
Francis Barret wrote The Magus in 1901, the recipe and its effects had changed: “If
centaury be mixed with honey and the blood of a lapwing, and be put in a lamp,
they that stand about will be of a gigantic stature; and if it be lighted in a clear
evening, the stars will seem scattered about.” The latter authority is perhaps the
more to be doubted, given that he also asserts that “The ink of the cuttle-fish being
put into a lamp, makes Blackamoors appear.” Part 2 of the poem is derived from the
list of uses of “Curmelle feferfuge” in The Old English Herbarium Manuscript V, 36
(see Stephen Pollington, Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plantlore and Healing,
Norfolk, 2000, p. 304–305).
169
HERB ROBERT
GOOSEBERRY
You may find me in October when the berries are all gone—
Am I ghastly, am I grisly, am I grim to look upon?
Will I beat you, will I eat you, will I make your children sick?
No, I’ll stand here at attention and I’ll imitate a stick.
You may seek me in November when the leaves fall to the ground,
When the thorns are standing starkly, but I shall not be found.
Will I bite you, will I smite you, will I kill you with a sting?
No, I’ll hibernate in winter and I’ll not be seen ’til spring.
You may look for me in May, by the warmth I am awoken,
Like the wand of a witch, like a twig that has been broken.
Will I flay you, will I slay you, will I batter or betray you?
No, I’ll hide amid the flowers, and pinch me not, I pray you.
When you search again in June, you will find that I have spun
A web of silken gossamer, its strands caught by the sun.
Will I blight you, will I slight you, will I bring your mum to grief?
No, I’ll hide inside my silken bed, the darkside of the leaf.
In the middle of July, with gooseberries growing round,
You must seek me with your lantern, a-fluttering around.
Will I rile you or beguile you, will I rob you of your life?
No, and you shall never recognise the gooseberry wife.
Source material: On the Isle of Wight, parents traditionally scare their children
with stories of the “gooseberry wife”, a giant caterpillar which supposedly eats people
alive. The gooseberry wife is a typical “nursery bogey”, designed to dissuade children
from stealing the ripening fruit. This song is based on the assumption that, far from
being the “hairy caterpillar” so often described in the legends, the original
gooseberry wife might have been the larva of Uropteryx sambucata, the Swallow-Tail
Moth, which, as Edward Newman, British Moths, p. 50, observes, “exactly resembles
a twig”. It feeds on honeysuckle, elder, various herbaceous plants, and on
gooseberry bushes, and it pupates inside a leaf suspended from the underside of a
twig by silken cords. See also Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies,
Harmondsworth, 1977, p. 196, and Margaret Baker, The Folklore of Plants, Princes
Risborough, 1980, pp. 62–63.
171
1.
2.
3.
4.
Wounded through your hauberk
By the halberd of the Moor,
Crusader of St. John
Soak the red cross with your cruor.
Pierced through your mail
By the lance of infidel,
This is the penance which
Will save your soul from hell.
Pounded is the poultice
And yet the knight has swooned,
The wort bears the signature
To quell his weeping wound.
Source material: Long used in rituals at the midsummer solstice, when it blooms,
St. John’s wort partly owes its solar association to the bright yellow colour of its
flowers. At times, the leaves have a strong smell, described by some as “goat-like”,
and by others as “foxy”. The plant has long been burned in the midsummer fires,
perhaps originally, as Richard Mabey suggests, as a form of sympathetic magic
intended to mimic and strengthen the power of the sun. The smoke from the
burning herb would waft over the fields, ensuring a generous helping of sunlight,
and protecting the crops. The ancient Greeks placed a plant called Hypericum above
their religious statues to ward off evil spirits, and while it is not known whether this
really was the plant which in modern times has inherited that generic name, it is
certainly true that Christianity appropriated the plant for its own purposes, as a
charm against demons. Originally sacred to the pagan sun-god Baldr, the Christians
dedicated it to John the Baptist, claiming that the bloody colour obtainable from its
leaves was intended as a reminder of his martyrdom. The Revd. Hilderic Friend
reports that “About Hanover... I have often observed devout Roman Catholics going
on the morning of St. John’s Day to neighbouring sandhills, gathering on the roots
of herbs a certain insect looking like drops of blood, and thought by them to be
created on purpose to keep alive the remembrance of the foul murder of St. John the
Baptist...” The insect in question was Coccus polonica, a sap-sucking bug. In a
thirteenth century life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, a woman tormented by a “licentious
demon” in the form of a man was instructed by another male spirit to take a sprig of
St. John’s Wort and hide it in her bosom. The demon-lover forsook her house
whenever she kept it in place because, he maintained, it was “disgusting and
stinking”. The plant was, according to the same author, efficacious against poisons,
including snakebite. Sir Walter Scott also alludes to the disdain with which demon-
lovers regarded the plant, since one says “If you would be true love of mine/ Throw
away John’s Wort and Verbein.” Oddly, the plant was good not only for banishing
spirits, but also for raising them. The enlightened Reginald Scot, who incurred the
wrath of James I by writing to quell anti-witchcraft hysteria, nevertheless affirmed in
his Discoverie of Witches (1584) that it was possible to “raise the ghost of a hanged
man with the aid of a hazel wand tipped with an owl’s head and a bundle of St.
John’s Wort”. Moreover, the resin glands in the leaves of perforate St. John’s Wort,
Hypericum perforatum, which look like tiny pin-holes, were reckoned by Paracelsus,
champion of the Doctrine of Signatures, to be an effective treatment of “inward or
outward holes or cuts in the skin”. Today, the herb is used to treat depression, but
not in cancer patients, since it has been shown to block the effects if chemotherapy.
It can also have alarming side-effects, including heightened photosensitivity. See
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, pp. 114–115, Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of
Plant Lore, pp. 330–333, Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, pp. 140–
141, Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies, p. 346, Lesley Gordon, Green Magic,
173
RUE
Source material: Care must be taken when picking Rue, as its juices will cause
blistering of the skin if exposed to sunlight. Rue was known as the Herb of Grace or
the Herb of Repentance because the plant was used in the Asperges before the Mass
as a brush for sprinkling holy water. Whilst the herb certainly possesses medicinal
properties, it is also poisonous, and most modern herbals warn that it should be
avoided by pregnant women. It seems reasonable to speculate that, during the
Middle Ages, many of the women who were persecuted as witches were in fact
unofficial birth control practitioners. Rue must have been particularly useful to
them. See Lesley Gordon, Green Magic: Flowers, Plants and Herbs in Lore and
Legend, Exeter, 1977, p. 77. The pun at the end of the song has long been used
folklorically; a jilted lover may blight a marriage by throwing rue on the wedding day
of the man who has wronged her, shouting “May you rue this day as long as you
live.” See Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, Oxford, 1995, pp. 322–323.
175
WILLOWHERB
Last winter, incendiaries ignited
A bloom of flame in your bedroom,
And the gramophone gouged
Through ‘Lili Marlene’ one last time
Before the bakelite buckled
And the window-glass turned liquid,
You lying there on the counterpane
As though asleep. The Luftwaffe
Droned your orisons as the rafters
Turned to ash.
Source material: After the Blitz, one of the first plants to colonize bombed buildings
in London was the Rosebay Willowherb. Although it has never looked back since the
Second World War, its remarkable proliferation in the twentieth century had been
noted as early as 1912 by G. Clarke Nuttall, Wild Flowers as They Grow, Volume 1,
pp. 89-96. Nuttall also provides an unparalleled description of a single flower-spike
of the willowherb, from the unopened flowers at the top, down to the seed-pods at
the bottom of the spike. The scene I have described is imagined, but was reproduced
many hundreds of times in wartime London.
176