You Spotted Snakes...

...with bright blue eye
Your pains the Bugloss will repay

The viper's bugloss is out again on the dunes, where it will last for some weeks. It's a striking plant with its vibrant deep blue flowers. It likes bare and scrubby ground, often growing near beaches or on mine spoil tips, where its roots go down deep, and is one of those fascinating plants whose flowers emerge one colour (a deep rose) and then change. In classical times it was thought to be effective against snake bite, and its spotty stem probably gives it the first part of its name, but "bugloss" comes from ox's tongue.

In her Modern Herbal, published in 1931, Mrs Grieve tells us that it is a diuretic and can relieve inflammation and fever, though I wouldn't want to pick its hairy stems without gloves! Alternative names, according the Geoffrey Grigson, include Blue Cat's Tail, Snake's Flower and Our Lord's Flannel! I wonder if this last is because of the reddish spots on the stem, which may look like flecks of blood?

Martagon Lily

Gerard mentions the martagon lily in his list of garden plants in 1596, and it was much loved in Elizabethan gardens. Common from Eastern Europe to Mongolia, where its bulbs were dried and eaten with cow's or reindeer milk, it probably only grows in the wild in Britain as a garden escape, and is another plant of woodland edges. It doesn't appear in our British herbals, probably because it was never common in the wild, but the (poisonous) bulbs were used medicinally elsewhere for heart complaints and as a diuretic.

It's not a fussy plant, growing quite happily in our heavy clay soil yet also thriving in lighter, sandy soils, and it will take both semi-shade and sun. The flowers, fragrant at night, attract moths, so it is a plant that has had a place in my garden for 30 years. I love its reflexed flowers - its other common name is turk's cap lily - and its muted purples.


(It has been suggested that martagons are the Biblical 'lilies of the field', but it seems likely that this is a confusion with lilium chalcedonicum, the scarlet martagon).

Hedge woundwort

Stachys sylvatica

I grow within the lowly hedge;
My cousin at the marsh's edge.
And each, as shown within our name,
For healing wounds is known to fame.
Less famous is our second feat -
Our roots are very good to eat.

This pungent wild herb grows very happily in our garden, though no doubt my efforts to transplant it to the paddock will all prove in vain. Here it is growing across a path, and ought to be cleared away, but it's a cheerful soul and I shan't do so while it's in flower.

Despite its name it is not very highly rated as a wound herb - if its cousins, marsh woundwort or betony are to hand they are preferred; nonetheless, it was supposed to make a very good poultice (who, these days, remembers the agonising relief of a hot poultice on a recalcitrant splinter?) and styptic, more often collected from the wild than cultivated, since it grows readily in hedgerows across much of northern Europe. Gerard advised mixing it with hog's grease, much as I used to make comfrey ointment by heating comfrey leaves in lard.

Mrs Grieve, in her Modern Herbal, reports that a yellow dye can be made from the plant and it is suggested that there might be commercial uses for the fibres. Young shoots can, apparently, be eaten like asparagus, and the roots are said to be very nutritious, although the smell does little to persuade me.

There are good reasons for encouraging this plant in the wild areas around your garden, however: bees and moths both love it, and we should be doing all we can to provide habitats for both. Encouraging moths will also provide food for bats, and our long-eared bats regularly hunt over the woundwort patch (also the nettle patch, we have a very messy garden, although we claim that it is intentional).

Flower of the Week

Convolvulus cneorum, or silverbush, June 2009

This is a plant which likes warm, dry conditions, and should be struggling here, but I've got this one through two winters in this pot, and it flowers quite prolifically. It's in the most sheltered part of the garden, and protected by reflected warmth from both the woodern deck on which it stands and the wall behind it. Unfortunately, the ophiopogon in the pot beside it is not thriving here, but it does better elsewhere.

Flower of the Week

Water lily, June 2009

Wordless Wednesday

Cherry blossom.

Thinking vegetables

Choosing a gardening book is a very personal thing, I think. My mother quite often gives me books she thinks I will like, and I now have several very attractive books that lurk, unconsulted, in dark corners. She got it right last birthday, tracking down a copy of Roger Phillips' Roses, which delighted me. The odd thing is, I can't find it, and am now beginning to think I imagined the whole thing! My current favourites, though, focus on vegetables, so it's not surprising that they are both within easy reach at this time of year, as I plan how to amuse the pigeons and deer for another season.

Joy Larkcom's Creative Vegetable Gardening is a visual delight. A large format paperback that will almost lie flat while you browse through it, and written in a chatty tone of voice, it take its inspiration from gardens all over the world to create pretty vegetable gardens and potagers. There is a brief (I want to say, potted) history of growing for the kitchen, before moving on the Elements of Design, with guidance on how to plan your potager, and Dramatic Effects - how to make it even more beautiful. There is a whole chapter on fruit, which is followed by a useful one on Management, with good advice on improving soil fertility and watering. Even this chapter makes me itch to get outside, with its picture of the feathery green manure, phacelia tanacetifolia, glorious in its own right, or a potager bed with brick paths, covered in rich manure for the winter. There are an excellent sections on container gardening and small potagers, making this a book for those with limited space, full of ideas about how to cram in the most you possibly can, while creating interest with texture and colour, contrasting plants with dramatic supports and edgings, or choosing between hedges and fences. Photographs are sumptuous and inspiring. The final section is where I spend most time, especially at this time of year - the A-Z of vegetables, fruit, herbs and edible flowers. This is just as wonderfully illustrated as the rest, with an eye always to looks as well as taste - vegetables as objects of desire.

I'm so busy at the moment that I am reduced to near wordlessness, but there are still moments of pleasure in a day, often triggered by my admiration for this blowsy pair. The butterfly orchid has been in flower since before Christmas, and keeps getting more dramatic. I'm also delighted that another orchid (also a phalaenopsis) that I was given last April is coming back into flower for the second time. I had been very disappointed that I accidentally broke a flower spike on it last year, reducing its total flowering time to a mere six months or so. I've given it special liquid orchid food and its leaves are a bit shabby but I am getting more confident with them, and have hopes of keeping them all going - I suspect this puts them into to "idiot-proof" category of houseplant.

Spring flowers

I can't take any credit for this hellebore, having just bought it, but I think the double flowers are lovely, with a greenish tinge on newly opened ones.

Flower of the Week

Just because it's pretty, and seasonal.

Adieu, sweet Amaryllis

For a couple of weeks this beauty has been gracing our sitting room. It catches the eye every time you enter the room, so huge and splendid is it. Although it's nearly over now, this is the fourth time this hippeastrum has flowered in the couple of years I've had it, and I think it deserves some loving care and attention during next summer, so I shall be feeding it assiduously, along with the two new bulbs which haven't yet started into growth. When they do start, they grow so fast you can practically watch it happening – there will be a perceptible increase in the length of the flower spike at the end of a good, sunny day, and then the bloom emerges, luscious and velvet-y, the richest colour imaginable. Next year I have promised myself one of the newer varieties, if I can find it – somewhere I am sure I've seen a deep plum coloured flower – and one of the multi-stemmed ones. You can be sure I'll post pictures if I'm successful.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe growing in Oxford Botanic Gardens

Travelling south on the train near Bristol I was surprised to see trees festooned with quite large quantities of mistletoe (Viscum album). I don't know why I was surprised, since it's not uncommon in the south of England, but I've spent so much time in the north that I just don't expect to see it, I suppose. With my interest in folklore it's not surprising that I've always rather wanted to grow it, and always lived in the wrong places.

I think most people know about its pagan associations and have a mental picture of it being sought by druids in oak groves for use in their rituals, where it had to be cut with a golden sickle to preserve its qualities. Such images probably arise from Europe, since in England it's rare for it to grow on oak, being much more common in old apple orchards, and therefore somewhat under threat, as our old orchards are a dying breed. Mistletoe is difficult to get established, which is why I'm not wasting my time trying to persuade it to adopt one of its alternative host plants, although I would be happy to see some of our hawthorns supporting this particular parasite. Not, I might add, that any plant in our garden is allowed to bear its berries for more than a day or two, before hoards of marauding blackbirds descend to strip them.

Here for your delectation is a link to a mistletoe blog – who would have thought there was such a thing? It, and the accompanying Mistletoe Pages will tell you far more than I ever could about this fascinating plant. As usual, though, Christmas in our house will be mistletoe-free.

Froth on a daydream

Over the garden wall...

The lanes are bordered with foam – hedges here are mostly hawthorn, or may (bringing to mind the country saying about ne'er casting a clout till may be out, particularly apt yesterday, when wind and rain had moved in after Saturday's glorious sunshine), while along the verges a froth of Queen Anne's Lace dances in the gusts, its delicate heads weighted by raindrops.

My recent post with its picture of heartsease reminds me that country names here and across the Atlantic may differ. In North America Queen Anne's Lace seems to refer to the wild carrot (daucus carota) whereas I was brought up to use the name for anthriscus sylvestris, also known as cow parsley or, most unattractively, kecks, which according to Geoffrey Grigson in The Englishman's Flora, refers to the hollow stalks (presumably for the same reason that in some parts of northern England "kecks" also refers to trousers, and even knickers).

Anthriscus sylvestris is listed as a culinary herb, although not one of great value, with dire warnings about not muddling it up with the somewhat similar hemlock (conium maculatum) – though, since hemlock stinks of mice, it's hard to see how anyone could. Grigson points out that the similarity between umbellifer flowers has led to much overlapping of names, hence the different usage in the US, where they attach a legend to the appearance of wild carrot: Queen Anne was a great lacemaker, and challenged the ladies of the court to make something as delicate as the flowerhead – none except the Queen could, but she pricked her finger, and that's why the wild carrot has a drop of red at the centre. Grigson, more prosaically, suggests that the plant is named is for Saint Ann, sister of the Virgin Mary.

Anthriscus sylvestris has strong associations with the Devil and witchcraft, too, reflected in some of its other names: devil's oatmeal and hare's parsley, oldrot and gipsy's curtains. Perhaps the prettiest, however, is its Wiltshire name of moonlight - think I might start calling it that. The maytree too, has attractive alternatives, but I'll save them for another post.

This pretty spiraea echoes the effect of the Queen Anne's Lace and mayblossom