Arable weeds - a treasure-trove

This is a very long post, so you might like to read it a bit at a time.

We’ve had a stressful week (trying to change our phone and broadband suppliers) and, even though we’d had two outings and I’d wanted to write about them, I’d either not had time or discovered when I did sit down to write that I was too tired and nothing worked out. Today however after a good night’s sleep I’ve decided to abandon all those ideas and write instead a simple post about my dogwalk round home yesterday. Or at least that was the idea . . .

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Saturday 12 September

As usual I climbed the track behind the house, on the way catching up with two delightful women with five Shelties (Shetland Sheepdogs) between them. The youngest of the dogs, Coco, had been born just before the lockdown and so had never had a chance to get used to strange humans and was frightened of them. I spent a while in a squat talking to her and managed to get her to take a biscuit from my hand three times. I felt very proud and hoped I’d helped.

As they were going the same way as me and as their dogs were very yappy and had got on Ellie’s nerves, I squeezed through a hole in the hedge and sat down to wait while they got ahead.

I was in a field which had been full of some sort of grain last time I visited several weeks earlier. Now the grain was cut but the field hadn’t yet been ploughed and I began to notice that it was full of wildflowers and buzzing with insects (which Ellie was amusing herself by trying to catch).

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The first flower I noticed was this.

It’s called 'Spotted' Persicaria after the dark blob in the middle of its leaves and also Red-legs because of its red stalk. It's common on waste ground and a type of Bistort, and I knew all about the Bistorts because I’d seen the larger Amphibious Bistort (which grows both in and beside water, hence its name) on one of our outings during the week and done some research.

Amphibious Bistort on a river bank.

The Bistorts get their name from their twisted rhizome and one type is also known as Snakeweed for the same reason. As I read that I was struck - as I so often am - by how much our ancestors knew about wild plants and the natural world. Would we notice the shape of a plant’s root, would we care, and would we even have the opportunity to discover it as it’s now illegal to dig up wild plants without the landowner’s permission? How many of us have seen a live snake in the English countryside?

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I already knew about this Scarlet Pimpernel because it’s always popping up in my veg beds. It has many country names including Change-of-the-weather, John-go-to-bed-at-noon and Poor-man’s-weatherglass (or just about anything you want to invent) because it opens in the morning and closes mid-afternoon or in wet weather. I can’t say that I’ve ever observed that myself or taken the time to notice it – I just read about it - but our ancestors obviously did.

Scarlet Pimpernel

According to Isabella Tree in Wilding (which I’m always quoting), the seeds of Scarlet Pimpernel are eaten by Turtle Doves. The bird’s numbers have declined rapidly in the last 60 years (from a quarter of a million to fewer than 5,000) and one of the reasons is intensive farming which doesn’t have time or space for these so-called weeds.

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A plant I've only discovered recently and saw again now is Field Madder. It has minute mauve or pale-pink flowers probably no more than 2mm across (but I haven’t actually measured them), so you don't notice it unless your nose is on the ground.

Field Madder (with Spotted Persicaria and Scarlet Pimpernel)

Strangely though, all my books show the plant with darker purple flowers, which is not my experience.

If you’re a long-term reader of this blog (and paying attention), you may remember me mentioning Wild Madder, a close relative of this plant. I’m puzzled though because the flowers of Wild Madder have five petals and those of Field Madder four (but then I don’t know very much about how plants are classified). Their flowers do however have the same propeller-like shape, which is very distinctive.

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Many of the other flowers in the field were tiny and not immediately noticeable, but no less lovely because of that. Such as these . . .

Speedwell

Chickweed

. . . as well as Forget-me-not and Wild Pansy, whose photos came out blurred so aren’t included here. (It was on this walk, because of all the tiny flowers, that I used the flower setting on my camera for the first time, but not sadly for these two plants.)

According to the books, Forget-me-not has the alternative name Scorpion-grass because the flowering stem curls at first like a scorpion’s sting. (How did our ancestors know that? Do we have scorpions in this country?)

Wild Pansy has the alternative name Heartsease (no one says why) and when I lost a baby (see ‘Mother’s Day’) the hospital gave me a folder with a picture of the plant on the front in which to keep mementos. (Would they do that now?)

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Slightly larger was this Black Nightshade, named for its black berries.

Black Nightshade

Black Nightshade is poisonous like all members of the Solanum (nightshade) family, except potatoes, peppers, tomatoes and aubergines. Deadly Nightshade was cultivated by monks for medical use but is I believe usually removed nowadays because it’s so dangerous. (I have a vague memory of it popping up in the local churchyard when I was a child, and grown-ups talking about it in hushed voices.)

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Also in flower was this Scentless Mayweed.

Scentless Mayweed (with Heartsease, below centre)

It looks like Ox-eye Daisy but has slightly smaller flowers and different leaves – those of the Ox-eye Daisy look like dandelion leaves whereas the Mayweed's look like fennel.

The fennel-like leaves of Scentless Mayweed (with Heartsease, below left)

It's a common arable weed and can appear in quantity, like here in this picture which I took nine years ago.

Scentless Mayweed and Ellie in July 2011 when she was one year old

It’s called ‘Scentless’ because of its sibling ‘Rayless’ Mayweed which has no petals but smells strongly of pineapple when you step on it – and that I have discovered for myself. Unsurprisingly the rayless plant is also known as Pineappleweed.

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I also saw Charlock - a cabbagey plant with lemon-yellow flowers, Gorse with its golden blooms, and our old friend Cat's Ear (see 'A wet walk' and 'Blue'), as well as this large plant which I’d never seen before.

It turned out be Dame’s-violet, a type of rocket and a ‘cottage-garden favourite now widely naturalised’. It’s also ‘very fragrant’ - but sadly I didn’t know that then.

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What a treasure-trove that field turned out to be, and how thankful I am that I stumbled across it and took the time to explore.