Of headaches and worms

Lovely racemes of Mahonia greeted me as I parked up at Byfield Village Hall. There are about 70 members of the genus found in North and South America together with South East Asia. Hybridists have been hard at work on these plants and so many varieties are available that to put a name to a particular plant can be tricky but for my money this specimen is the very popular 'Charity', a hybrid between Mahonia oiwakensis and M. japonica.

Mahonia, probably 'Charity', beside the village hall in Byfield.

20 November, 2019

Its name provides another example of a person who would otherwise have been forgotten had it not been perpetuated in this way For the record, Bernard M'Mahon was an American horticulturalist about whom little more can be said. And, speaking of names, M. japonica is not a native of Japan, although it has been cultivated there for centuries.

I strolled down to the pocket park, passing some rather bedraggled specimens of Feverfew, Tanacetum parthenium, growing on a grassy bank near the home of our friends Damien and Lynda Moran.

Feverfew was doing its best to look cheerful on a grassy bank in Byfield.

20 November, 2019

It is a good example of a plant which was first introduced as a medicinal plant (still valued for the treatment of migraine) but whose attractive flowers gave it horticultural merit. Several forms are now available including those with 'double' flowers (flore pleno) and others with golden-yellow leaves. Its original home is the Balkans but it is now found worldwide as a weed.

On then to the pocket park. I paid more attention to the plants of Male Fern, Dryopteris filix-mas, it the hope of finding evidence of galls or leaf miners but there was nothing doing.

Male Fern, Byfield Pocket Park

If Feverfew is valued for the treatment of migraine, the Male Fern is - or was - once used as a vermifuge. Gerard wrote: 'The roots of the Male Fern, being taken by the weight of half an ounce, driveth forth long, flat worms...(but) they that would use it must first eat garlic.' At one time it was widely used by vets for expelling tape worms, and perhaps it still is. For those who feel the need to partake of this remedy there is also a small clump of Wild Garlic (Ramsons) in the pocket park. Bonne chance!

Lichens on an oak branch. Byfield Pocket Park, 20 November, 2019

Trees were nicely encrusted with lichens but the remainder of my time in the pocket park was spent in the search for leaf miners. I was rewarded with several items but I'll spare readers the details on the grounds that they could cause dislocation of the jaw through yawning.