SCURVYGRASS

Scurvygrass growing on cliffs with Thrift.  Borth, May 2021 Scurvygrass on cliffs.  Borth. May 2021	This one's a cliffhanger - sailors At sea sicken for A haven from the waves, Searching the shore, Finding in rocky coves A promise of kindness in its petals, Healing in its heart-shaped leaves.
Old Botanical Print - Scurvygrass	Scurvygrass is salt tolerant and grows extensively by the sea. Containing lots of available Vitamin C, it was used to treat sufferers from scurvy - "those that lie lamentable sick of the scurvies", as Gerard put it in his Herbal - which particularly affected sailors  deprived of fresh vegetables while at sea, so collected as a cure when they made landfall.

 

Solomon's Seal

Solomon’s Seal with Bluebells
Llanfihangel Genau’r Glyn
May Eve, 2021

 

Hanging like a harp it heralds 

the spring secretly in shade,
in wisdom awaiting warmer days
when the Song of Songs is sung
in the garden and Summer is made.

Germander Speedwell / Llywelyn's Herb

Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys)

‘Dolly’s Eye’ , it is in Welsh
because of the bright blue
of its petals - some pigment used
in coloured glass I supposed, though
surely not so long ago. But wait,
it’s also called ‘Blue Eye’, Bird’s Eye’,
‘Cat’s Eye’, ‘Bull’s Eye’ and ‘‘Angel’s Eye’.

The shape, then, of the petals
as much as the colour, the common theme
its eye-like opening into flower
low to the ground, winking at the world,
so called chamaedrys - ‘low-growing oak’ -
to speed you sturdily on your way
with a bright blue glint in its pupil.

Then consider ‘Llywelyn’s Herb’*, and folklore
of the plant - that if you pick or harm the flower
birds will peck out your eyes - and to mar
its brightness brings tears to your eyes.
‘The oak door of Aberffraw’, Llywelyn’s bard called him,
laid low with a cold heart, as was his land with weeping,
though his herb still gleams bright beneath the hedgerow.

* Llysiau Llywelyn - strictly speaking this is in the plural

Alchemist's Dew (2)

Photograph by Sue Greaves

Glitter after rain; quicksilver against green
Sits in its alembic of leaf, needing
No transmutation but itself an
Enchantment distilled from out of the Air.

This elemental Water is one of Earth’s
Treasures lingering under the Sun’s Fire
Until its elusive gold is drawn back
To suspire into the breath of being.

Yellow Archangel

(Lamiastrum galeobdolon)

It might have been called ‘Yellow Dead Nettle’, like ‘Red’
And ‘White Dead Nettle’, but instead it is ‘Archangel’
Why? It has no sting, but this alone should not elevate it.

Taking no account of heavenly status, the bumble bee hangs
From the caps of yellow petals arrayed up the shady bank
Probing for deposits of pollen beneath the branches

Of woodland trees. Just look at this flower, the way
Its parts co-ordinate, holding the bee’s body in an embrace
As it fumbles for the looted treasure in the vaults.

But then consider: its Latin name means ‘weasel smell’
And it’s also known as ‘Weasel Snout’, its aroma said to be
Like that animal’s scent. Such a thing of beauty rooted in

Odiferous rankness and common mould but discovering,
In those benign leaves and soft yellow petals, treasures
Of a world of light beyond the reach of bees or humans.

Wortcunning

To have it is to know
That this seed and that leaf
Put in a mortar with old wine,
Compounded with a pestle,
Will bring succour to a friend
Or grief to an enemy.

For Toothache

Root of this herb: yellow flag iris

Chewed into the cavity

Carries the hope of cure

But also the fear

Of delirium, or death.

Why risk it? The tongue

That finds the opening

For the root knows compulsively

That to stop it anything

Is possible, even oblivion.

In The Physicians of Myddfai, the herb 'gellhesg y nant' is recommended for toothache but there is also a warning that swallowing it could result in 'days of delirium' or it could 'take your life'. In Pughe's translation the name of the herb is given as 'water flower de lys', though it is certainly the yellow flag iris that grows in wet ground. However, none of the other herbalists - early or modern - suggest that the plant is poisonous, though it is used herbally as an emetic. Was this, then, a flight of fancy from Iolo Morganwg who is known to have supplemented the medieval manuscript of the recipes of the Physicians with his own additions?

Old Man's Beard

It doesn’t belong here 
 But still I see it year after year 
Taking the lime it needs from the spoil 
Of a house long gone, so it grows up 
And greys the bare hedge in Winter. 


 Old men lived there once, women too; 
Perhaps they died there before it crumbled 
And it commemorates their grey hair 
And ragged clothes. It was long ago


That the house fell but when the seed came 
Is hard to tell. It was there from the first 
Time I passed in Winter. I always mean to look 
When Summer comes for the flowers in bloom 


But I’ve never seen them. It is passing 
That it means to me, leaving things behind. 
Old men, old women, lives like green leaves 
That withered before I knew them.

Dandelion (Compositae: Taraxacum officinale)

 19th century lithograph by Carl Friedrich Schmidt

Dant y Llew, like Dent de Lion
sounding fierce with ragged teeth;
as kids we called it ‘wet-the-bed’
(like piss-en-lit), shreds
of meaning to compose a memory:

Pulling the yellow heads off the stalks
we’d sit on the grass plucking each petal,
daring each other to nibble, and then
“you’ll wet the be-ed” from the girls
and we thought of them wetting the bed
too and plucked again as, tooth
against tooth, we dared damp sheets.

On waste ground or green fields
they have always infused
memory’s sweet wine
calling back lost hours:

Blow on white feathers – one-o-clock, two …
drifting through passing years they shine
on every roadside edge and seedy garden
keeping their own time after time.

RAGWORT - Senecio jacobaea

Cinnabar Moth caterpillars on Ragwort

  These clusters of sunlight
  shine with the wings of bees
  but are dark honey when
  hidden in sweet hay.

  I’ve seen them, untouched,
  seeds drifting over close-bitten grass
  where horses graze. Caterpillars
  of cinnabar moths
                          dependently displaying

  In their tiger stripes its dark
  And its sunny aspect, the black
  And red moths returning to lay
  Eggs where no ruminant rasps them.

Cinnabar Moth

Ragwort is poisonous to cattle and horses who have the sense to avoid it when growing in fields where they graze, but if too much of it gets into hay it can cause problems. The Scottish poets Robert Burns and James Hogg both have poems where the stalks of Ragwort are ridden by fairies or changed into horses by witches. The specific name 'jacobaea' apparently comes from the fact that the plant is in full bloom on St James' Day (25 July).

Pyramidal Orchid

Anacamptis pyramidalis

A pyramid of pink in this dingle

Where rough grasses dissemble

The wind-blown sand with a tangle

Of growth and these petals tremble.

Midsummer Orchids

As the poem in the previous entry indicates, we often make a point of being out in the open on Midsummer’s Day. We do this whatever the weather. The poem records a previous Midsummer. There St John’s Wort provides the Midsummer theme, a plant especially associated with this time of year. Although the longest day usually occurs on the 21st June, and so is called Midsummer Day, the 24th June (St John’s Day) is also often so called. In fact the day length, rounded to whole minutes, is the same for each day between the 21st and the 24th June. So ‘Midsummer’ is best thought of as a time of year rather than a precise event as suggested by the Summer Solstice.

Nevertheless, we always choose to go out on the ‘Longest day’ for a picnic and to spend some time in the Midsummer atmosphere, I suppose as much for symbolic reasons as for any other . This year we went out to the sand dunes to look for orchids. Some heavy showers of rain fell in the morning, but by the time we had prepared our picnic lunch and were ready to go out, the sky was clearing with some patches of blue appearing. So, following our picnic, we went in search or orchids on a bright, if windy, afternoon.

There were plenty of marsh orchids and pyramidal orchids in flower and quite a few helleborines still in bud.This splendid specimen, towered above the other orchids and had purple blotches on its leaves. 

We identified it as a Broad-leaved Marsh Orchid (Dactylorhiza majalis). We found this at the end of a long afternoon on the way back from the far reaches of the nature reserve, on our way to the Information Centre where we intended to ask where we might find the Bee Orchids that we knew were there but could not find. But we had left it too late and the centre was closed. No matter. We spent the end of the day looking across the estuary to the distant mountains and watching the waves roll onto the sandy beach which, by then, we had almost to ourselves. Rain clouds were gathering again as we made our way home. But it had been a perfect Midsummer’s Day for us in the brightness of the afternoon and the extended tranquility of the evening.

Midsummer

Hypericum perforatum

The longest day, and we went
Into the mountains to see it through.
The shallows of the river were dry
So we sat for the feast of Midsummer
On grey sand and shingle and only
The deeps of the river ran swiftly
In a narrow channel beneath the sky.
We lingered there till the day was spent.

It was open season and hunting weather
So we stalked flowers in grass and heather,
Slender St. John’s Wort had translucent spots
And petals edged with a beading of dots:
Small suns of the mind to hallow the day
And keep from Time its passing away.

Hypericum pulchrum

A Consolation of Philosophy

To contemplate the venation of a flower

Is not to look at the flower,

Not to inhabit the scented bower,

But to find form where beauty blooms.

Flower Key

Red Campion (Silene dioica) - with bee!

First, discover the parts:
the ovary, womb
for the fructus, small
fruit in the pregnant bower;

To this a style
carries to the stigma’s
lips the pollen,
wild gift of vicarious
stamens, still witnesses
to the end of procreation;

The calix, a green
ring of sepals holds it
all to the stem, echoes
the softer robe they bind -

A summer frock, the
corolla – crowning glory
of the flower;

And then seeds
for the brown earth:
fructus ad terram fecundam.

Achillea

Later flowering, the feathery leaves

Modest among the petals of Spring

Are soon topped with white bunches, tinged

Perhaps with pink or purple

Gracing the green with a look of old lace.

Lore:
Yarrow is a plant reputed to have healing properties. Its generic name Achillea derives from Apuleius Platonius and from Dioscorides who both claimed that Achilles used it to heal wounds caused by iron weapons. Similarly the Anglo-Saxons (who gave it the name gearwe) recommended that it should be pounded with grease and applied to wounds whence it “purgeth and healeth” them(*).

In Scottish Gaelic folklore it was held to help young women maintain their beauty:

“I will pick the smooth yarrow that my figure may be more elegant…”

but also for protection:

“I shall wound every man, no man shall wound me”. (**)

Sources:
Geoffrey Grigson An Englishman’s Flora (1958)
(*) O Cockayne Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Old England (1864-1866)
(**) Kenneth Jackson (translator) A Celtic Miscellany (1951)

Alchemilla

Alchemilla (Lady's Mantle)

Photograph by Sue Greaves

The frilled edges of its leaves frame a bowl

In which is gathered Alchemist’s Dew:

Fine drops of water reflecting morning light

Drawn from the air; purer than gold.

BOGBEAN

Menyanthes trifoliata

BOGBEAN

The lake laps at the ooze

In the far corner edged with willows.

Here grows the bogbean:

Three sails for leaves and almost unseen

Beside them the spill

Of pink-white hairs from milk-white petals.