Living with twisted willow

Crocus, crocuses, croci

2011-02-21T14:29:00.000-08:00

The carpet of crocuses by our gate this morning

There's something pretty magical about the appearance of crocuses - or should that be croci? - at this time of the year. I always get taken by surprise. They seem to emerge almost overnight straight from the soil. OK, most species actually have a cluster of leaves, but they're so fine and grass-like they usually go unnoticed. And then, just a couple of warm days and it's like a switch has been flipped .... wow. The synchrony is as amazing as the display.

It's a bit of a cliche to to say the crocus flowering marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring - and with February still a week or more to run, experience tells us there's plenty of time for another spell of wintry weather - but the joyous colour of the crocus is a clear promise of what's to come.

The crocus seems so at home semi-naturalised that it's tempting to imagine it must be native, but actually the native home of the 80 or so crocus species is centred on Turkey and the Balkans, but spreads out to Morocco, the Alps, Western China and Poland at its edges. Actually it's only a limited number of species that are happy in our wet climate with Crocus vernus and its large flowered hybrids raised in Holland the most successful.

The name Crocus is derived from the Greek Krokos which in turn is probably derived from the Arabic kurkum, the word for saffron. This is a reminder that one Crocus species - an autumn flowering one - is the source of the world's most valuable spice by weight. It takes 50 to 100,000 flowers to produce one pound of dried saffron worth £500 or more!

Foxgloves and fairy bells

2010-06-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

Wild foxgloves making a showy display

The foxglove must be one of our most striking wild flowers, and in the less formal parts of our garden we welcome its stately spikes of purple flowers. The name conjures up a delightful image of the flowers making gloves for foxes, but we shouldn't take it that literally. It probably derives from the Anglo-Saxon word gliew - a musical instrument with hanging bells, and folk's meaning the little people or fairies. In Ireland and parts of Britain it's still referred to as fairy bells.

I remember as a child collecting the flowers and fitting them over my fingers. A magical plant indeed. Had I known how poisonous it was, I might have been a bit more reticent about handling it. Chewing a small piece of leaf can be fatal, and all parts of the plant are poisonous. And yet it's one of those plants which, despite being so poisonous, also yields the drug digitalis which is used to treat heart complaints - a treatment first described as long ago as 1785.

Some of our foxgloves bred for the garden

This year our wild foxgloves have been supplemented by some of the more showy garden varieties that I raised from seed last year. The colour range is from white, through cream to salmon pink, but it's the size of the flowers, the number on each spike and startling markings that make these such terrific plants for a border.

The mutant flower

A plant caught my attention today because one flower has opened flat and is significantly larger than the rest. It seems this is quite a common phenomenon in foxgloves in the wild and in cultivation and is the result of a mutation. It's called a peloric flower and even Darwin was fascinated by this oddity and did some experiments to see if seed from these flowers produced plants with the same odd flowers. Apparently they do - so I'll be following in the steps of the great man when I collect the seed, as I intend to, and see what flowers the plants I raise produce.

A bee busy pollinating

Darwin also took a great interest in foxglove flowers because they are wonderfully adapted to ensure cross-pollination by bees. In fact the whole design of the flowers has bees in mind. There's a landing strip marked with eye-catching spots, the nectar is at the base of the flower so the bee has to push its way up the tube of the flower with the anthers and their pollen attached to the roof of the tube. Pollen rubs off on the bee's back and gets carried into the next flower and onto the stigma for pollination.

The foxgloves are alive with bees at the moment and there's certainly a lot of pollination going on. The result apparently is one to two million seeds on each foxglove spike. It's a plant that doesn't leave the next generation to chance!

Glad tidings .... a bit late

2010-01-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

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What a difference a week makes. A week ago we were in the grips of our longest and most severe cold spell for a generation. We had no water which meant we had no heating - water pressure is needed to run the boiler - we had frequent long breaks in our internet connection, and our roads were so badly iced we weren't able to get out for a fortnight.

And just look at it today ....

This was the view across or local lake, Lough Graney. Not a sign of snow, beautiful clear sky and warm sunshine ... and the lake so still it was like a mirror. The unwary might have been fooled into thinking spring was just around the corner, but it's still only January and I'm sure this winter has got a few more surprises in store for us before it's spent.

But the return to good weather did allow me to do some of the early winter jobs that just weren't possible at the end of last year - either because of the incessant rain, or the freezing conditions.

One of those jobs was lifting the gladiolus corms. It's one of those tasks that reminds me so much of growing up and learning some of the rudiments of gardening from my father. He was a great gladiolus grower and used to exhibit them at local shows.

I always thought lifting the corms was a magical time - there was the excitement of seeing how big the corms were, but also collecting up all the cormlets that grow round the base of the new corm. Some varieties seem to produce lots of them and many fall off when the corms are being lifted. My job was to sift through the soil and pick out as many of the cormlets as I could spot. Dad used to grow them on like seeds and in a couple of years they would produce flowering size corms.

So, I was able to re-live that pleasure yesterday when I lifted the corms I grew last year for cut flowers. They're now being dried out a bit so they can be cleaned and the old corm removed, but they're mostly a good size so we should get some good long spikes this year.

And look at all those cormlets. I'll be planting them out just as Dad did - and congratulating myself in a couple of year's time for all the money I've saved by raising my own corms. We gardeners get pleasure from the simplest of things!

The Daddy of Leyland Cypress

2010-01-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

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The snow's come and gone again over the last few days. Referring back to my last blog entry, it made our oldest living willow fence look particularly attractive.

Mature living willow fence in the snow

You can get a good idea from this just how much growth a mature fence can produce each year. Some of these shoots are 10 feet long or more. They all have to be pruned off before the spring. It's a big job.

This view towards our cottage shows how two conifers dominate the treescape. Most of the deciduous trees you can see are ash and sycamore which are the most common trees of the hedgerows in this part of Ireland along with hawthorn, blackthorn and holly. So it's something of a surprise to find two fine conifers specimens planted around the yard of what was a traditional Irish farmhouse. And they're an unusual conifer for this area too - Nootka cypress, also known as Yellow Cypress and Alaska Cypress.

Two conifers dominate the trees around our cottage

The one on the right is a massive multi-stemmed tree about 60feet high and the one on the left a single stemmed tree probably 10 feet shorter. I haven't got much information on growth rates of Nootka Cypress in Ireland, but it's not a particularly fast growing tree anywhere so I reckon these specimens must be 80 to 100 years old - if not older.

Quite how an ordinary farming family came to be planting trees which at that time would have been quite exotic is hard to imagine. The first specimens of this North American native tree only reached Britain in the 1850s and I suspect it would have been a little time after when they reached Ireland. The answer may be found at Caher House about a mile away down the lake. The landscaped gardens of this fine house contain some rather special specimen trees including the largest Sitka spruce in Ireland. Could it be that the family did some work for the owners of Caher House and were given the young Nootka cypress trees to plant by their farmhouse.

Whatever the reason, they've left a legacy of two fine trees that are firm favourites with us. They have a beautiful pendulous habit which means the foliage reaches down to the ground and there's little bare trunk to be seen.

The larger specimen is multi-stemmed and around 60 ft high

The pendulous branches sweep down to the ground

The name derives from its discovery on the lands of a First Nation of Canada, the Nuu-chah-nulth of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, who were formerly referred to as the Nootka. The tree is native to the west coast of North America from Alaska down to the northen part of California and favours wet sites with cool summers - ideal for Ireland then!

Its other claim to fame is that it is one of the parents of the hybrid tree, the Leyland Cypress. In fact, it was the planting the Nootka cypress alongside a botanically close relative the Monterey Cypress in a garden in Wales that gave the trees, that in nature never grew closer than 400 miles to each other, the chance to cross pollinate.

The result was actually a fine tree when planted in the right place, but as a hedging tree for suburban gardens it was a disaster. In 2005 in the United Kingdom, an estimated 17,000 people were at loggerheads over Leylandii hedges, which lead to violence and in at least one case murder, when in 2001, retired Environment Agency officer Llandis Burdon, 57, was shot dead after an alleged dispute over a leylandii hedge in Talybont-on-Usk, Powys - ironically just a few miles from Leighton Hall where the first Leyland Cypress had been discovered back in 1888.

So the claim to fame of Nootka Cypress as the daddy of the Leyland Cypress is perhaps a mixed one, but it certainly makes a fine tree in its own right and the treescape of our little cottage would be much the poorer if it were not there.

Don't take a fence

2010-01-07T16:28:00.000-08:00

I've realised reading other people's blogs that I've really no right to complain about the cold spell we're having at the moment. There are lots of people around the world gardening in much more challenging conditions and getting on with it.

I suppose, in my defence, we are in the middle of the longest cold spell here since the 1960s and if the forecast is to be believed - another two weeks of it at least - it's going to be the worst for a hundred years or more. Our local lake, Lough Graney, which is a pretty large lake - about 100 acres in area - is now almost completely frozen over which no-one can remember happening before.

Lough Graney almost completely frozen over

So, we're just not used to it, but day by day we're settling into a different routine. Normally at this time of year we'd be out pruning and doing other winter jobs and this time last year I was weaving my first willow wattle fence to protect my veg plot from the dog and the occasional deer and stray cattle that find their way onto our land.

It's great to see that a year on it's still looking just as good and has encouraged me to do some more adventurous things with the large amount of willow we have growing around our land.

The fence is a simple structure of uprights of trimmed three year old willow stakes driven into the ground with willow withies - one year old shoots - woven between them. It took quite a pile of withies to make this fence, but it's sturdy and animal-proof and should last a few years. The great thing is it didn't cost a penny and it gave me a great deal of satisfaction making it.

Most of the withies used were the common osier or basket willow, but we also have stands of a number of different coloured stemmed willows which I must make an effort to identify this year. One of them has beautiful orange- yellow stems which turn almost red on the side facing the sun.

I used these to make my first living willow fence. It produces lovely straight shoots six feet and more long which are ideal for the kind of lattice-work fence I wanted to create. This is the fence I 'planted' in March last year.

I say planted because holes a little wider than the withies are made at an angle in the soil with a thin metal pole and the withies pushed in to a depth of about six inches. Alternate withies are pushed in at opposing angles and they are woven into each other to create the lattice of sticks. The tops are tied to a horizontal withy to give some stability to the top and that's about it.

The withies root readily as the soil warms up and they come into leaf. I didn't lose a single one in this fence. During the summer any side-shoots are rubbed off to keep the lattice work of the fence clear of growth, but the top three or four buds are allowed to grow out. These shoots are trimmed back to the top of the fence in the winter - that's the next job I have to do on this fence as well as tie in some shoots along the top to provide a more stable fence.

After three or four years, the fence will look like this:

And after 10 or more years a well-established fence will look like this:

The Siberian dogwood for a Siberian winter

2010-01-03T16:22:00.000-08:00

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The challenge I set myself this year was each day to find a new plant flowering in our garden or in the surrounding countryside of East Clare and talk about it. And here I am on day 3 and I've already run out of plants in flower.

We get used to blaming the weather for lots of things in Ireland - usually because it's raining. But with the warm (ha ha) waters of the Atlantic bathing our coasts we aren't usually troubled by extreme cold. But here we are three weeks into a spell where temperatures have rarely risen above freezing point.

Just a month ago we were stunned to see a narcissus in flower (it was actually December 10). We should have realised it meant that this was going to be no ordinary winter. And so it's proving to be. Who says climate change is a myth.

Dwarf narcissus in flower on December 10 2009

The upshot for this blog is that I come to a grinding halt .... or I change the rules a bit.

So today's plant, the appropriately named Siberian dogwood, is offered for the beauty, not of its flowers, but its stems. And what a stunning display it's making this year. The one we have is a selection with particularly vivid red stems - Cornus alba 'Sibirica'.

Siberian dogwood on January 3

This cultivar also has strong green foliage that turns a deep red in the autumn so you get the benefit of autumn as well as winter colour. It loves wet ground - so it loves Ireland - and it propagates itself by layers. In the photograph above, the main plant is to the left and the collection of shoots in the middle is a new plant produced from a shoot laying on the ground and rooting. We've already moved a number of clumps to other parts of land where we want to introduce some winter colour.

You can just as easily stick some of the prunings in the ground or in pots in the early spring and they're pretty well guaranteed to root. Mind you, the way this year's going I should be very wary about saying that anything's a certainty.

Heathers in a foggy bottom

2010-01-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

We got off lightly last night. The temperature only went down to -8C. Enough, though, to freeze the water in the pump in our barn - we draw water from our own well here. No mod cons like piped mains water. Fortunately it thawed out pretty quickly with the help of a fan heater so we were only without water for a couple of hours - better than the three days we were without over Christmas.

So, with the arctic weather continuing there's not much change on the flora front. But today's blog is saved by yet another reliable winter flowerer - the winter flowering heather. It's in winters like this that its toughness and tolerance of cold is really appreciated.

We've got a couple of plants in a border to the front of the cottage. I have to admit that we inherited them with the cottage and we've not lavished them with much love and care. We've kept the weeds down a bit - that's about it. But that's the other beauty of these heathers, they're robust enough to stand up to some rough treatment and still put on a good show. And, unlike most heaths and heathers, they're not even too worried about having acid soil round their roots

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Winter flowering heather on January 2

I'm not sure what varieties we've got, but I'd take a stab at Erica carnea 'Springwood White' and 'Springwood Pink'. Erica carnea is found in the wild in mountainous areas in central and southern Europe in the Alps - hence its tolerance to cold. A white form was discovered growing on Monte Corragio in Italy by Mrs Ralph Walker of Springwood, Stirling, Scotland in the 1920s. Originally just called ‘Springwood’ but changed when ‘Springwood Pink’ appeared as an offspring.

The Springwoods have remained the stalwarts of the winter heather world ever since although there are now many more cultivars available.

I can't see heathers without thinking of the wonderful Blooms Nurseries at Bressingham in Norfolk, England which were part of my education into horticulture in the 1960s. The nurseries were founded by one of the great characters in the world of gardening, Alan Bloom shortly after the end of WW2.

Heathers and conifers in Foggy Bottom at Bressingham

The nursery was perhaps most well known for popularising the use of herbaceous perennials by growing them in containers and so making them more widely available to gardeners through garden centres. But in the 1960s the nursery was at the forefront of promoting the use of heathers combined with dwarf conifers to create low maintenance beds with all-year-round colour interest. And they showed just how good these beds could look in the area of the gardens at Bressingham known as Foggy Bottom. A name that must have come from the imagination of Alan Bloom.

Nurseryman Alan Bloom at the controls of one of his locomotives

His other passion was steam locomotives and he set about building a collection of the locomotives then being discarded by British Rail and built a track round the nursery to show some of them off. His great joy was to take visitors round the nursery and few of them realised that the eccentric chap with the long flowing white hair and greasy overalls shovelling the coal and taking the controls was actually the founder, owner and boss of the whole establishment.

Alan Bloom died just a year short of reaching the age of 100 in 2005.

Arctic start to the New Year

2010-01-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

It's some time since I posted on this blog. I'd love to be able to offer a convincing excuse, but it's perhaps better to look on the positive side and say that it's a New Year - and a new decade - and that's as good a time as any to get back to noting some of the plants I come across on our five acres of rural Ireland - and in the surrounding countryside - and a few other thoughts that link in with them that interest or intrigue me.

My thought was to feature every day, as far as I could, a plant that I had photographed that day in flower. In this part of Ireland where snow is rare and winters are usually relatively mild that seemed a feasible idea. But I didn't count on this winter being such an exception. We are now three weeks into what will almost certainly prove to be the coldest spell in living memory. We've had frost every night over that period and it's getting worse - the temperature is expected to drop to -10C tonight which is pretty well unheard of around here.

Needless to say, the flora is seriously non-floral at the moment and I suspect it's going to stay that way for a while, but I shouldn't have been surprised to find one old favourite still bravely putting on a show - gorse (Ulex europaeus). There's an old country saying that "When gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of fashion", meaning that lovers never need worry because gorse is to be found flowering throughout the year.

And here's the proof - gorse flowering on January 1 in the depths of a severe cold spell. OK, it's not exactly at its best, but it's a splash of yellow in an otherwise green, brown and white landscape.

Gorse flowering on January 1

Gorse, also known as furze and whin, grows commonly in this area and was probably planted into hedgerows to contain livestock and provide a good windbreak. It's said it was also planted around dwellings so that washing could be laid out to dry without fear of it being blown away.

The few flowers today weren't offering much scent, but when gorse is in full bloom it produces a strong sweet coconut scent which some people like myself find very noticeable. Others apparently are hardly able to smell it. Presumably bees and the other insects that it relies on for pollination aren't quite so fickle.

Cosmic revelations

2009-08-23T18:25:00.001-07:00

Cosmos with Small Copper butterfly

OK, I admit the last blog was a bit of a challenge. It takes a peculiar mind like mine to be intrigued by the mathematics of flowers. But I’m also fascinated by the simpler aspects of gardening – and it doesn’t get much simpler than growing annuals from seed.

I’ve always loved growing annuals from seed – right back to when I got my first little garden plot when I was about nine years old. I pretty quickly learned I could fill it with all kinds of exciting annuals from packets of Cuthberts Seeds bought for a few pence from Woolworths.

Later on I discovered that there were seed companies like Dobies and Carters that would post me wonderful colourful catalogues of their seed ranges for free. I even sent off to seed companies in the US for their catalogues and I remember getting a huge catalogue of all kinds of exciting plants from the Burpee Seed Company. As a 12 year old, I found the name enormously amusing. And I bet I was the only boy of my age in my town who had a pile of seed catalogues as bedtime reading!

I still reckon annuals from seed offer fantastic value in the garden and we grow quite a lot to fill the holes in our beds while we are waiting for the perennials to reach full size.

One of my particular favourites has always been Cosmos. It’s such a big showy plant with lovely fern-like foliage and attractive flowers that insects and butterflies just love. But I always wondered why it was called Cosmos as it seems pretty extravagant to name a flower after the universe.

Apparently it was given the name by Spanish priests who found the plant growing wild in Mexico and grew it in their mission gardens. The evenly placed petals led them to christen the flower Cosmos - the Greek word for harmony or ordered universe.

And why is it so ordered? Well the fact that every Cosmos flower has eight petals might have something to do with the previous blog …. but I did promise. No more mathematics!

Sunflowers - maths, art and the pineapple

2009-08-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

My apologies for such a long gap since my last blog - I can only plead pressure of work - some paid, some voluntary unpaid .... and a great deal unpaid and not particularly voluntary either.

But I just couldn't let this picture of sunflowers from our garden pass without a blog.

Why? .......not because it's one of the most beautiful flowers in cultivation or because it's one of the most economically valuable plants in the world.

No ..... what stirred me into action was the connection between the sunflower and a little known Italian mathematician from the thirteenth century, Renaissance artists and the pineapple.

Unlikely, I know, but let me explain.

When you look at the sunflower above, what's one of the first things to catch your eye once you've taken in the overall beauty of the flower and the purity of its yellow colour? It's the spiral patterns shown by the developing flower seeds in the centre of the flower.

It's obviously a result of the way the seeds are packed into the seed heads to get the maximum number into the space available - a triumph of evolutionary development creating such perfection? Maybe ... but there's a lot more to it than that.

Look closely at the flower and you'll see two sets of spirals radiating in opposite directions. In one direction there are 21 and in the other 34. And this is where the Italian mathematician comes in. Those two numbers are successive numbers in a sequence starting with 0 and 1, where the following number is the sum of the previous two. So the sequence goes:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610

This sequence is known as the Fibonacci Numbers after Leonardo of Pisa also known as Fibonacci who lived from 1170 to 1250. The sequence of numbers was his attempt to mathematically define the growth of a population of rabbits under idealistic conditions. That may have been what he had in mind, but actually the sequence has been found very widely in nature - as in our sunflower. There they are - ninth and tenth in the sequence - 21 and 34.

Look at any sunflower and count the spirals. They will always be two successive numbers from the sequence. The huge sunflowers may have 55 and 89 spirals or even 89 and 144 - but they will always be two adjacent numbers from the sequence.

The reason is the golden ratio - and that's where the connection with art comes in.

Renaissance artists who studied classical art and architecture found that there was often a ratio (0.618 to 1) between key features. For example in Michaelangelo's statue of David many measuremnts between important features of the figure follow this ratio. Similarly on the Parthenon in Athens, the ratio between the measurements of key architectural features fitted the golden ratio. Artists felt that using the ratio in their paintings would capture the essence of classical art and used it to position figures in the canvas, or to divide it into land and sky and often in much more subtle ways.

The golden angle is the golden ratio expressed as degrees of a complete circle of 360 degrees. It works out as 137.52 degrees.

Are you keeping up at the back there?!

So, to return to our sunflower. The flower grows on the end of a shoot and if you blow up the shoot tip under a microscope the end is like a flattish circular dome. Each seed starts as a little bump just to one side of the very tip of the dome and moves down the dome as it develops and as new ones are formed after it. To get the maximum number of seeds on the flower head each new bump that becomes a seed forms at exactly 137.52 degrees round the head of the dome from the previous one and so on. It has to be accurate - just a small error and the whole thing would become chaotic - the spiral patterns would disappear and the exquisite packing of the seeds would be lost.

But nature doesn't get it wrong! It keeps producing those little bumps at exactly 137.52 degrees from the previous one hundreds and hundreds of times over to make a single flower head. And it repeats it millions of millions of times around the globe on every sunflower from the Andes to Ireland to Australia.

And the trick is repeated on lots more plants from daisies to pineapples - which makes our final connection.

Ever noticed that the blocks that make up the pineapple fruit are arranged in spirals? Count them up and they will usually be 8 one way and 13 the other. Numbers 7 and 8 in the Fibonacci sequence.

So that completes the connection between the sunflowers growing in our garden, an Italian mathematician, Renaissance art and the pineapple.

It's got a great Fuchsia

2009-06-02T03:07:00.000-07:00

Fuchsia magellanica by our gate at Doorus, Co Clare

Beautiful ballerina-like flowers

The Fuchsia is a plant that used to drive me to distraction. Not because it was hard to propagate or difficult to grow, or anything horticultural like that. People just seem to find it so hard to spell.

As an editor working on horticultural publications it was one of those bogey words. However much I told my writers how it should be spelled, it would still arrive on my desk as Fuschia. Aaaargh. Just typing it that way brings me out in a cold sweat.

It got so bad I resorted to sticking a large notice on the office wall with the correct spelling in letters a foot tall.

So there were mixed feelings when I moved to this plot in Ireland and found out that many of the hedges were of the hardy fuchsia. But seeing it this time of the year, dripping with its beautiful red and purple flowers that dance in the breeze, any bad memories are instantly washed away.

The species we have is one of the hardiest, Fuchsia megallanica. It looks so at home here it’s hard to believe it’s actually a very long way from home – the clue to how far is in the name. It’s actually native to Chile – from the area near the Magellan Straits.

Trinity College Dublin lists it as an invasive alien species to Ireland. I know they’re probably technically right, but there are aliens and aliens and this one, like ET, is certainly a friendly one.

How it found its way here is somewhat disputed, but it has probably been here since the early 18th century. Charles Plumier certainly brought it back from his plant hunting expedition to South America around 1700 and was responsible for naming it Fuchsia in honour of the German botanist Leonhart Fuchs.

You see … it’s easy. It’s named after Fuchs so it’s Fuchs..ia. I can hear myself repeating this endlessly to aspiring writers and seeing the same glazed look in their eyes.

Sorry …. I must get over it!

So Fuchsia magellanica made its way to Britain along with a number of other species and it became one of the parents of many of the fuchsia hybrids we now know and love to grow. It’s reckoned there are some 8000 hybrids in the garden trade around the world – a reflection of our universal love for this wonderful plant.

But I think the original species is still a great plant in its own right and worthy of a place in any large garden.

Just remember though …. if you decide to comment, just watch that spelling. Get it wrong and I’ll be after you with my editor’s blue pencil!

Like golden rain

2009-05-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

Laburnum X 'Vossii' at Doorus, Co Clare - a stunning display this year

Beautiful long strings of flowers catch the sun

Our Laburnum tree has been absolutely stunning this year – thoroughly living up to its name of Golden Rain Tree, it’s been just dripping with huge long strings of brilliant yellow flowers.

It’s not a native of Britain and Ireland, but it has been around for going on 500 years.

There are two species of Laburnum – the Common Laburnum (Laburnum anagyroides) and the Scotch Laburnum (L. alpinum). Both are native to the mountain of southern Europe from France through to the Balkans, but their potential as ornamental trees for gardens was recognised early on. The Common Laburnum was introduced in 1560 and just 30 years later came the Scotch Laburnum – so-called because it stood up rather better to the harsher conditions north of the border.

But the most showy and commonly grown Laburnum, and the one which we have in our garden, is a hybrid between the two. Laburnum X watereri ‘Vossii’ or Voss’s Laburnum. Like all the most successful hybrids, it combines the best of both parents, with the longer strings of flowers of the Scotch Laburnum and the more densely packed flowers of the Common Laburnum.

The hybrid seems to date from 1864, and I presume from the name that it originated in one of England’s most famous nurseries, John Waterer & Sons of Bagshot in Surrey.

When I first became involved with horticulture back in the 1960s it was one of the first nurseries I visited. They were still growing their speciality, rhododendrons, in a very traditional, and labour-intensive way. Most were grown in the soil and hand-dug with a root ball and bagged for sale. Techniques that had probably hardly changed over the 140 years the nursery had been in business.

Nowadays, of course, much plant production in containers is highly mechanised. It might seem more like factory production than horticulture, but it does mean that a far wider range of plants are now much more affordable than they were back then.

I’ve not been able to find any records of Waterer’s having an interest in Laburnums – or who Voss was, but a Rhododendron raised at the nursery called ‘Betty Ann Voss’ is perhaps a clue. Maybe the Laburnum is also named after her – or perhaps she’s the wife of Mr Voss who worked at the nursery as a plant breeder.

Whatever the origin, ‘Vosii’ is the Laburnum to look for if you plan to plant one in your garden. As well as its better flowers, it also sets very few seeds – a great advantage as the seeds are highly poisonous.

As this is a member of the pea family the seeds are in pods which children can think are rather like pea pods. Eating large numbers can cause severe illness and even death. But don’t let that put you off. You’ll get few if any seeds from ‘Vosii’.

The darling buds of May

2009-05-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

Mayblossom at Doorus, Co Clare

Right now, our hawthorn trees and bushes are putting on a great show. And there’s a good chance that wherever you are in the Northern Hemisphere you’re going to be sharing the same experience ..... and feeling, just as we do, that the hawthorn display really does signal that summer is just around the corner.

Most people across the British Isles know it as May or Mayblossom – a reminder that many centuries ago hawthorn blossom was reliably available as decoration for the First of May – May Day. These days, apart from in the more climatically favoured south east of England, it’s normally at its best a couple of weeks into the month. So why is it now usually late?

Surprisingly, the answer is not climate change - or the influence of the El nino ocean currents – or one of those other fashionable environmental explanations. It’s much simpler than that. As far as Britain, Ireland and most of North America is concerned it dates back to 1752 when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. This inserted the calendar correction of removing 11 days so that Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September. So when May Day came round the following year, it was actually only April 20 – and this shift in dates has remained with us ever since.

The hawthorn's pivotal position between spring and summer made it deeply important in mythology – reflected in Shakespeare’s phrase the ‘darling buds of May’ – referring to the opening buds of the Hawthorn pointing towards the warm summer ahead and marking the change from youth and exuberance to adult maturity.

It comes from Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

We also see how the flowering of the May tree has long been regarded as an important moment of seasonal change in the proverb: ‘Ne'er cast a clout ‘til May be out’ – clout being old English for an item of clothing.

Although the Hawthorn is widely known as May, it also has a host of other names, some of them quite odd. Where I grew up in West Yorkshire it’s known as ‘cheese and bread’ – presumably from the taste of the shoots which are edible when young. Here in Ireland it’s often referred to as ‘Johnny Magory’ or ‘Johnny MacGorey’ – I’ve no idea why.

In Ireland there's also a lot of superstition surrounding the hawthorn. A tree standing alone in open ground is known as a fairy tree and there is a strong feeling that to cut one will disturb the fairies and bring a great deal of bad luck. Even in recent years roads here have been re-routed to avoid uprooting hawthorns.

The hawthorn also features in one of the most evocative books recounting the horrors of the Irish Famine in the 1840s when over one and a half million men, women and children died from hunger and related diseases. ‘Under the hawthorn tree’ by Marita Conlon-McKenna tells the story of the three O’Driscoll children who lose both parents and then their baby sister who is buried under the hawthorn tree to be with the fairies. They set out to walk across Ireland to try and find their great aunts who they only know about from the stories their mother told them. Not surprisingly, it’s an epic battle for survival. It was made into a film by a cast and production company made up entirely of young people – mostly at school. Here’s a clip.

The last part of it refers to protests against the disgraceful continuing export of corn from Ireland to England rather than it being used to feed the starving.

Even more inexplicably, Britain’s relief effort, such as it was, centred around dried corn which was bought from the US and kept under close lock and key in the control of Sir Charles Trevelyn. He welcomed the famine as a “mechanism for reducing surplus population,” and refused to distribute this corn to anyone who could theoretically provide for themselves including those who were fit enough to work, regardless of the fact that no work available, and those with a quarter of an acre of land or more.

Anyone caught attempting to steal the corn from his warehouses faced deportation to Australia – the subject of one of the most powerful Irish songs - The Fields of Athenry – heard at its best when sung by many thousands at one of Ireland’s great rugby matches. This clip was recorded at a match between Munster and the welsh team the Ospreys just a couple of weeks ago. I was there with my daughter who was visiting from England, and you can get some idea of the spine-tingling effect of 25,000 voices singing this deeply moving song in unison.

Fields of Athenry - the Lyrics

By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young girl calling
Micheal they are taking you away
For you stole Trevelyn's corn
So the young might see the morn.
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.

Chorus
Low lie the Fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly.
Our love was on the wing
we had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry.

By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young man calling
Nothing matters Mary when you're free,
Against the Famine and the Crown
I rebelled they ran me down
Now you must raise our child with dignity.

Chorus

By a lonely harbour wall
She watched the last star falling
As that prison ship sailed out against the sky
Sure she'll wait and hope and pray
For her love in Botany Bay
It's so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry.

Blackthorn to Finnegan's Wake

2009-05-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

Blackthorn in flower at Doorus, Co Clare

If gorse, the subject of my previous blog, lights up the Irish landscape with splashes of yellow in early spring, then blackthorn follows with a liberal dusting of white. Only to be replaced by the more intense white of hawthorn blossom in May.

All three are thorny, but blackthorn takes the prize for the most vicious, as we’ve discovered to our cost when we’ve been trying to cut it back or clear it. The thorns will penetrate leather gloves, the soles of Wellington boots and many layers of clothing and leave themselves buried painfully deep in fingers. It’s these qualities that make it a hedging plant of choice in this part of Ireland to retain livestock and provide protected shelter for game birds.

Not surprisingly it’s been given the Latin name Prunus spinosa – the Prunus part, a reminder that this is a member of the plum family and it does indeed produce small plums – commonly know as sloes.

They’re really much too tart to be used in cooking, but most people know about Sloe gin – not really a gin, but an infusion of the fruit in gin or other distilled spirit to create a liqueur.

But what makes the blackthorn a plant steeped in Irish folklore is the shillelagh – the walking stick or club which was very often made from the dense wood of the blackthorn – using the knotty stem base and root as the club end. Suitable sticks were suspended in the open chimneys to harden and acquire the sooty blackness of the true shillelagh.

These days the shillelagh is an object of fun bought, often with a shamrock painted on it, as a ‘souvenir’ of Ireland. But in reality it was a serious weapon used in stick-fighting contests, and the skills of this marshal art were passed on from one generation to the next.

I remember singing along to The Clancy Brothers, who revived the wonderful 1850s Irish drinking song, Finnegan’s Wake and wondered quite what was meant by:

“Shillelagh law was all the rage and a row and a ruction soon began”

Of course, this was a reference to the laws that governed the use of the shillelagh in formal fights.

By the time Finnegan’s Wake was written, the shillelagh was much more the weapon of choice in gang warfare and faction fights that had a habit of breaking out at social gatherings – particularly when there was a lot of drink around.

Listen to this performance by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem of this wonderfully funny song – with a bit of explanation about the song and the lyrics ….. and sing along.

The singer Tommy Makem, in the introduction refers to James Joyce and his book Finnegan’s Wake – said to be loosely based on the story in the song.

Most people know Joyce for Ulysses – and that’s considered to be a pretty hard read – but it has nothing on Finnegan’s Wake. It was Joyce’s final work and written over 17 years in Paris and published in 1939.

I think the style would be described as experimental. To me it’s a bit like the literary equivalent of abstract art. You’re not entirely sure whether it’s a work of genius or a lot of nonsense. Still, it’s kept a lot of worthy academics busy trying to interpret what it all means.

What makes it so hard to understand is that Joyce made up a language with references to Latin and other languages and then threw in a lot of made up words –often combinations of other words or made-up words conveying sounds or emotions.

Here’s a sample:

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

You can get an impression of what he's writing about - or at least you think you can!

So there we are. The humble blackthorn has got a lot to answer for.

Gorse of course

2009-05-14T04:12:00.000-07:00

Gorse (Ulex europaeus) and rainbow over foothills of Wicklow Mountains (top) and gorse flowers (and spider!) at Doorus Co Clare

This is really just an excuse to include in my blog this photo I took last week on the fringes of the Wicklow Mountains on the Eastern side of Ireland. It was early in the morning and the countryside was bathed in bright sunshine when a sharp shower produced a spectacular rainbow right ahead of me. I had to pull in and capture the moment.

I'm sure I ought to have known this, but it hadn't struck me until then, that when the sun is low in the sky, as it was then, the rainbow it produces is also a low arc in the sky. I suppose I'm more used to seeing rainbows that come with rain later in the day and then it's hard to capture the full arc without a very wide angle lens.

It's not coincidental that gorse is in the foreground. It's a dominant feature of the landscape in Ireland - surprising really for a plant with reduced leaves and spines - adaptations for growing in dry conditions. It obviously isn't aware that 'dry' and 'Ireland' are rarely, if ever, heard in the same sentence.

In early spring gorse has the landscape to itself and wherever you look, yellow is the dominant colour. Now the blackthorn and hawthorn are in flower white is starting to edge out the yellow. But the remarkable thing about gorse is that it flowers pretty well throughout the year, hence the old saying:

"When gorse is out of bloom,
Kissing's out of season."

The custom, in some parts of the British Isles, of inserting a spray of gorse in the bridal bouquet is an allusion to this saying.

We've got quite a few gorse bushes on our land and the sweet scent of coconut they give off is quite noticeable - particularly at this time of year. It's inspired me to have a go at making gorse flower wine which apparently retains this delicate aroma of coconuts.

The recipe is:

1 gallon of gorse flowers
1 gallon of water
2-3lb of sugar
1 tablespoon cold tea
1 orange
1 lemon
50g root ginger
25g yeast

Cover the flowers, ginger, orange and lemon juice and rind with boiling water. After 5 days, with occasional stirring, strain into a fermenting jar. Dissolve the sugar in the rest of the water and add it. When cool add the yeast and cold tea. Syphon after a couple of months and again in 8 to 10 weeks.

I wonder what the tablespoon of tea is for?!

It sounds easy enough. Look back around October to see whether it turned out to be drinkable!

Archangel or devil

2009-05-11T19:45:00.000-07:00

Yellow archangel
Lamium galeobdolon

We have a lovely plant growing at the top of our trackway and next to our car park. Its common name is Yellow archangel or Yellow deadnettle. English Nature agrees and says it is a “beautiful, yellow-flowered plant with nettle-like leaves which is a member of the dead-nettle and mint family.”

The one we have growing is actually a cultivated form with silver markings on its leaves which makes it even more attractive. But over in the USA the story is very different. In a number of states the archangel has become the devil in plant form and it has noxious weed status. Orders can be made to have it cleared and destroyed like some dangerous alien invader.

OK, it does spread quite readily, but sometimes that’s just what you want – a plant that does what a ground-cover plant is supposed to do …. cover the ground. I suppose it's all a matter of degree.

Why is it called archangel? The view is that it closely related to the red and white dead-nettles which, because they flower close to April 27, the day dedicated to the Archangel Michael, are sometimes called red and white archangel. Yellow archangel flowers a little later, but shares the name because of its similarity to them.

It also shares with them the reputation as a guardian against evil spirits and, in particular, for protecting cattle against a disease known as elf-shot. This disease is commonly referred to in the literature and folklore of Celtic areas. It was considered to be inflicted on cattle by elves acting for witches using flint arrowheads – the artefacts we now know to be of Neolithic origin. The arrowheads were supposed to cause a paralysis known as elf-stroke – from which we get the now familiar medical term of a stroke.

So, you take your pick …. archangel, the devil, or protector against witches. I just like to think of it as a lovely plant with bright golden flowers and attractive foliage. If it keeps my farming neighbour’s cattle healthy, then so much the better.

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows

2009-04-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

Primrose (top) then Cowslip, 'Oxlip' (third from top) and (bottom) from the left, the arrows show plants of cowslip, primrose and 'oxlip' (over on the right) by the gate at Doorus

Our land and climate is obviously ideal for primroses. I’ve already blogged about Primula juliae 'Wanda' which is taking over all the dank, shady, inhospitable bits of the garden, but the wild primrose is everywhere – particularly on the old field banks. In this part of Ireland stone walls are rare and most fields are bounded by banks of soil, rocks and anything else that comes to hand - including lots of domestic rubbish. They're up to five or six feet in height, often with thorn hedges along the top. We’re in the process of clearing a lot of these banks and making them features in the extended garden we’re creating, and the primrose love the new freedom they've got to spread along these banks.

We’ve also got a handful of cowslip plants, but I got really excited last year when we were clearing a patch of rough grass near our gate and there was what I thought was an oxlip. The flowers had almost died down and I couldn’t be sure, so I’ve been waiting and watching this year to see what appeared.

I knew the oxlip was pretty rare, but I hadn’t realised just how limited it was in the British Isles – just a patch around Essex, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk – and certainly none in Ireland …. so far.

But the books kept stressing that, as well as the true oxlip, there was also a false oxlip – a natural hybrid between the primrose and the cowslip. Perhaps that’s what I had. An imposter!

Now the long wait to find out is over. The primroses came out first and then this week, the cowslip and the ‘oxlip’.

I’ve compared the pictures and I don't think we’re going to be able to re-write the botany of Ireland. It’s almost certainly the hybrid – the false oxlip. As you can see in the picture the chances of the hybrid cropping up are pretty strong as the primrose and cowslip are only a few feet apart and the ‘oxlip’ is only a few feet away from both of them.

Mind you, I can take comfort from the fact that no less an authority than Charles Darwin struggled to distinguish the oxlip and the false oxlip and did numerous experiments to try and sort them out.

And long before him the Bard threw a potential botanical spanner into the works in Oberon's famous speech from Act II of A Midsummer Night's Dream:

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.”

"The wood outside Athens", in which most of the action takes place, would seem to be an English wood, but if it had the oxlip growing it would have to be in Essex, Suffolk or Cambridgeshire. But most scholars consider the woods are based on the Forest of Arden. If the location had moved to the eastern counties it would tell a rather different story about Shakespeare and his influences.

However, the answer is probably that the Bard was also referring to the more widely distributed false oxlip.

But it wouldn't be quite the same if Oberon said:
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where that imposter, the false oxlip, and the nodding violet grows.”

Dandelions .... Mick says it all

2009-04-10T20:03:00.001-07:00

.
I've had a snatch of a song running round my head all day

"Dandelion don't tell no lies, Dandelion will make you wise"

Must have been the sight of all the dandelions that have popped up in the lawn - just as I described in my blog of a few weeks ago about this plant we gardeners love to hate.

But isn't it infuriating when you've got a bit of a song in your head, and you can't remember any more or what the song is or who recorded it.

I felt pretty stupid when I realised it was a Rolling Stones track from 1967 - and I was a big Stones fan.

I said in my blog that the dandelion reminded me of happy times as a child blowing the seed heads to find out if "she loves me, she loves me not". But others commented that they only connected this with the daisy and not to blowing the dandelion clock.

Well now we have it on no less an authority than Mick Jagger and Keith Richard that blowing the dandelion can answer no end of questions including the happiness of the one you love.

Dandelion
The Rolling Stones

Prince or pauper, beggar man or king,
Play the game with ev'ry flow'r you bring.
Dandelion don't tell no lies.
Dandelion will make you wise.
Tell me if she laughs or cries.
(Blow away dandelion.)

One o'clock, two o'clock,
Three o'clock, four o'clock, (five).
Dandelions don't care about the (time).
(Dandelion) don't tell no lies.
(Dandelion) will make you wise.
Tell me if she laughs or cries.
(Blow away dandelion.)
Blow away dandelion.

Though you're older now it's just the same.
You can play this dandelion game.
When you're finished with your childlike prayers,
Well, you know you should wear it.

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailors' (lives).
Rich man, poor man, beautiful daughters, (wives).
(Dandelion) don't tell no lies.
(Dandelion) will make you wise.
(Tell me if she laughs or cries.)
(Blow away dandelion.)
Blow away dandelion.

Little girls, and boys come out to (play), yes.
Bring your dandelions to blow away.
(Dandelion) don't tell no lies.
(Dandelion) will make you wise.
(Tell me if she laughs or cries.)
(Blow away dandelion.)
Blow away dandelion.
Blow away.
Dandelion.
Blow away.
Dandelion.

And if you want to hear it ..... there doesn't actually seem to be a video of the Stones performing this, but this is the track

From Russia with love

2009-04-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

Primula juliae 'Wanda' (above)

Primula juliae

We tend to think of plant hunters as intrepid explorer-types who fought natives, deadly insects and tropical diseases to hunt down and bring back exotic species from inaccessible rain forests or remote mountains to satisfy the demands of the lords and gentry for plants to impress their friends … and rivals.

Sure, a few plant hunters were in that mould, but the majority were just enthusiastic botanists who were fascinated by the challenge of finding plants that had not previously been found and described. If they proved worthy of cultivation as garden plants then that, for them, was a big bonus.

With a few additional twists and turns, that’s really the story of Primula juliae ‘Wanda’, a plant we have in great abundance in our garden and one which we love for its showiness in the spring, and its ability to spread and cover some pretty dank and unpromising corners of the garden.

The story starts towards the end of the 19th century with a young Russian girl, Julia Mlokossjewicz, who used to accompany her Polish-born father on plant hunting trips to remote parts of the Caucasus Mountains in south west Russia. She continued to be an avid naturalist into adulthood and, on 20 April 1900, while exploring these slopes of her homeland, she discovered a tiny primula growing with moist mosses alongside a mountain stream.

This charming little species was named Primula juliae in honour of its discoverer, but it wasn’t until 1911 that seeds from this new species were sent to Oxford. The following year P. juliae, was brought to the attention of gardeners when a plant was exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society show and received an Award of Merit.

What made Primula juliae of such interest to gardeners, apart from its charming little purple-pink flowers, was actually the bit you can’t see – its root system. It’s unique among primulas in having a root system with stolons – these are thickened roots that grow out from the parent plant just under the surface and form a branched network with at intervals along the length of the stolons, buds that produce new shoots and flowers. So P. juliae can quickly spread to form a dense mat covered with a sheet of flowers – very different from the primulas we are familiar with that form tight rosettes of leaves with flowers growing out from the centre. Expansion of these plants to form clumps is relatively slow.

It was pretty soon discovered that the pollen of Primula juliae was compatible with other primulas and the plant breeders got to work. The result was a whole range of hybrids the most well-known of which is ‘Wanda’. This came from a cross between P. juliae and a red form of our native primrose Primula vulgaris.

Like all the most successful hybrids it has the best of both parents …. and a bit more besides.

It has the vigour, larger leaves and flowers of the primrose, it has the spreading root system of P. juliae and the same masses of flowers, but they are more intensely coloured. And, as a plant that came from the mossy sides of a stream in the Caucasus mountains, it loves damp moist conditions – something we have in abundance here in the West of Ireland.

So, it's a plant that may have travelled a long way from home and taken a hundred years to get here, but now it looks as much at home here as any native.

What is the shamrock?

2009-03-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

The shamrock is the quintessential Irish icon. The Celtic harp might be the official symbol, but the three-leafed shamrock is recognised the world over as the true symbol of Ireland. So what better subject for a blog on St Patrick’s Day than the shamrock.

But there’s a problem.

There’s something delightfully Irish about having a plant as a national emblem – and yet ask an Irishman to show you a shamrock and he’s likely to come up with any one of four or more different plants. So what plant is the true shamrock?

Let’s take a look at the evidence and the main contenders.

A survey done in 1988 found the following were identified as shamrock by the percentages of Irish people shown:

Trifolium dubium (lesser trefoil) 46%
Trifolium repens (white clover) 35% (photo second from top)
Medicago lupulina (black medick) 7%
Oxalis acetosella (wood sorrel) 5% (photo third from top)
Trifolium pratense (red clover) 4%

If we go back a hundred years to a similar survey in 1893 the results were:

Trifolium repens (white clover) 55%
Trifolium minus (now recognised as a small form of white clover) 33%
Trifolium pratense (red clover) 6%
Medicago lepulina (black medick) 6%

So overall, white clover seems to win the popularity vote and that’s backed by the origins of the word shamrock derived from the Gaelic word 'seamrog' meaning ‘little clover’, but there’s still some doubt. Earlier illustrations of the shamrock don’t help resolve the problem. They show a rather stylised three-leafed plant, very much like the shamrock symbol that’s seen everywhere on St Patrick’s Day.

It could be any three-leafed plant and perhaps that’s the root of the problem. In the absence of a plant specifically called the shamrock, people have chosen the three-leafed plant happens to be around ..... or the one they are familiar with.

So, if we can’t tie down exactly which plant is the true shamrock, we must surely be able to establish why the shamrock has become such a potent icon for the Irish .... and particularly associated with St Patrick.

Well …. perhaps not.

The earliest written mention of shamrocks is not until 1571 and it’s not until 1727 that there’s a record of Saint Patrick using the shamrock to illustrate the Christian trinity of a united Father, Son and Holy Spirit when trying to convert the Druids in Ireland to Christianity. As this is written some 1000 years after St Patrick died, many suspect this to be a myth that was created in the 18th century and then been backdated.

What is known is that the shamrock was an important plant to the Druids prior to Saint Patrick. It was believed to have medicinal properties and its association with the number three had significant meaning in ancient numerology, in which three was a sacred number with mystical powers.

But whatever the truth of its ancient associations, more recent history marks the shamrock as a truly potent icon for the Irish. It was regarded as a symbol of rebellion and independence from the British crown during Queen Victoria’s reign and wearing it on a military uniform was a crime punishable by death. So ‘the wearing of the green’ became an enormous point of Irish pride and its spiritual roots – and indeed its botanical roots - have become lost as the shamrock has been transformed into a political symbol of national pride.

She loves me, she loves me not

2009-02-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

The dandelion must be one of the plants most people can recognise and name. For gardeners, it’s a plant to be hated … the archetypal weed. In lawns it lies flat to the ground avoiding any number of passes of the mower, then sends up flower heads, seemingly overnight, just to annoy us.

In flower beds it produces enormously long tap roots that test the abilities of even the most skilled weeder. Removing them is like pulling teeth, except that the root usually breaks just when it feels like it’s going to come out whole. And a few days later, up pop not one but half a dozen fresh shoots to mock the gardener.

But to children the dandelion is a pure delight. Every child knows the ball of fluffy parachutes that make up the dandelion seed head. And most are sure that blowing it will tell them the time of day, or whether “He loves me, he loves me not”, or that it will make their wish come true . It’s the seed heads that give the common name for the plant in a number of countries such as Pusteblume (blow flower) in Germany. But it’s the serrated leaves that provide the origin for the name most of us know – looking like a row of lions teeth or dent de lion in old French.

Ironically, in France, its common name is now pissenlit, and you don’t need a degree in French language to realise that translates as piss in the bed – not such an extraordinary or inappropriate name when you realise that the dandelion has very good diuretic properties.

In fact, the dandelion has a whole host of medicinal properties as the Latin name Taraxicum probably indicates. It’s thought this comes from the Greek words taraxos, meaning disorder, and akos, meaning remedy. Many herbalists regard the dandelion as an effective treatment for liver disease, useful even in such extreme cases as cirrhosis. It cleanses the bloodstream and increases bile production, and is a good remedy for gall bladder problems as well. The herb is also a boon to such other internal organs as the pancreas, kidneys, stomach, and spleen. The dried leaf, taken as a tea, is used as a mild laxative to relieve constipation.

So, how come a plant that’s got so much going for it has such a bad reputation?

It’s even got an extraordinarily beautiful flower.

Blogging Jim ... but not as we know it

2009-02-18T15:09:00.000-08:00

Blogging, in the sense that most people do it, is contrary to my nature and at odds with most of the writing I've done - or had to do - during my working life. I've always written for an audience I know and understand. That was the essence of writing for the kind of specialist magazines I worked for. Get that wrong and you'd pretty soon be out of a job.

Blogging seemed much more spontaneous and rather random. Firing words off to an unknown audience. Maybe hitting a target ... maybe not. The process worried me.

I wanted to write a blog, but it had to be a blog with rules and a structure. So I turned to plants. They've been a recurring theme throughout my life and whilst I've written for magazines on topics as diverse as caravanning and printing, and outdoor pursuits and town planning, I've always felt happiest writing about plants and on plant related topics.

Blame my parents. They dragged us out on Sunday afternoon walks across what passed for the open countryside in the area between the sprawling industrial waste and housing estates of Wakefield, Dewsbury, Batley and Leeds. We always had our Penguin book of British Wild Flowers with us and we learned what a rich diversity of plants could be found even in such unpromising surroundings.

I don't think it was a 'normal' upbringing in that area. At school when it came to choosing subjects for A level, I said I wanted to do Botany .... and I was the only one. So I did it ... by myself. I couldn't believe how lucky I was. I used to go off for hours "collecting specimens". I had my own area of a lab to do microscope studies and my own windowsill for growing things. And I had a teacher who I used to see for an hour or two a week and the rest of the time I was left to get on with work I was set to do.

I got good marks in the exams and went off to do botany at university. The best I can say about it was that I got a degree. Student politics, beer, parties, writing for the student newspaper and a host of other things all seemed to offer much more excitement than sitting in a lecture room learning about the reproductive structures of liverworts or the biochemical processes involved in photosynthesis.

But the underlying interest in plants never went away. Much later I returned the favour my parents gave me by taking my children out on walks and telling them about the plants - how they worked and some of the stories attached to them. And that's really where this blog has come from. My fascination with the diversity of plants, their place in food, industry, medicine, culture ... and folklore. Why do they have the names they have? ... why do they grow where they do? ... why? ... why?

I'll be looking for some of the answers to those questions, to satisfy my curiosity and, I hope, to stimulate yours. And I'll be looking mainly at the plants I see around me - on our fives acres of rough pasture in Co Clare and in the woods, down the lanes and on the hillsides around us.

It'll be an interesting journey for me. I hope you'll find time to join me.

A host of golden celandines

2009-02-17T19:01:00.000-08:00

The first Lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) to come into flower at Doorus on February 17, 2009

Although Wordsworth's 'Daffodils' is one of the most famous and widely read poems in the English language, daffodils were probably not Wordsworth's favourite flower. He wrote no less than three poems about the tiny Lesser celandine and just one about the more famous daffodils. This is his first poem in praise of the celandine

To the Small Celandine

Pansies, Lilies, Kingcups, Daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are Violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.

Eyes of some men travel far
For the finding of a star;
Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that keep a mighty rout!
I'm as great as they, I trow,
Since the day I found thee out,
Little flower! - I'll make a stir
Like a great Astronomer.

Modest, yet withal an Elf
Bold, and lavish of thyself,
Since we needs must first have met,
I have seen thee, high and low,
Thirty years or more, and yet
'Twas a face I did not know;
Thou hast now, go where I may,
Fifty greetings in a day.

Ere a leaf is on a bush,
In the time before the Thrush
Has a thought about its nest,
Thou wild come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast
Like a careless Prodigal;
Telling tales about the sun,
When we've little warmth, or none.

Poets, vain men in their mood!
Travel with the multitude;
Never heed them: I aver
That they all are wanton Wooers;
But the thrifty Cottager,
Who stirs little out of doors,
Joys to spy thee near her home,
Spring is coming, Thou art come!

Comfort have thou of thy merit,
Kindly, unassuming Spirit!
Careless of thy neighbourhood,
Thou dost shew thy pleasant face
On the moor, and in the wood,
In the lane - there's not a place,
Howsoever mean it be,
But 'tis good enough for thee.

Ill befall the yellow Flowers,
Children of the flaring hours!
Buttercups, that will be seen,
Whether we will see or no;
Others too of lofty mien;
They have done as worldlings do,
Taken praise that should be thine,
Little, humble Celandine!

Prophet of delight and mirth,
Scorned and slighted upon earth!
Herald of a mighty band,
Of a joyous train ensuing,
Singing at my heart's command,
In the lanes my thoughts pursuing,
I will sing, as doth behove,
Hymns in praise of what I love!

The name is probably derived from the Greek chelīdónion meaning swallow said to be so called because it blooms when the swallows return in spring. Actually it blooms much earlier than the swallow returns, but like the swallow it is regarded as a harbinger of spring.

The plant was traditionally called 'pilewort' and was used to treat the painful affliction of piles because a bunch of the fleshy small roots somewhat resembles the condition. Surprisingly Wordsworth didn’t bring that into his poem

It is a member of the buttercup family and is one of the earliest spring wild flowers, and provides nectar and pollen for bumblebees emerging from hibernation. Its flowers react very clearly to weather conditions, opening with the sun and closing whenever rain or colder weather come along.