A trio of wayside flowers

Calls for local authorities to go easy on the mowing and conserve wayside flowers seem to have gone unheeded locally and few flowers escape the unkindest cut of all. I took a ball of chalk along Christchurch Drive for a butcher's hook.


I was pleased to see that a small patch of Lady's Bedstraw, Galium verum, had avoided the mower by teetering on the edge of the kerb. It is a member of the Rubiaceae, a family which - as I mentioned a few days ago - includes coffee among its ranks, but also contains quinine and gardenia.

Lady's Bedstraw hugs the kerb to avoid the mower. Christchurch Drive,

Daventry. 26 June, 2020

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Its common name apparently derives from the custom of using it when dry to stuff mattresses, particularly for women about to give birth. I have noticed a smell of honey when strolling through swathes of this plant on Foxhill Farm but when dried it gives off a different scent - that of new-mown hay. Apparently the plant was used to provide a substitute for rennet in the process of cheese making, but the secret has been lost. I tend to associate the plant with acid heathland or at least neutral soil, but it will grow even on chalk and the main requirement then seems to be good drainage.

With the Lady's Bedstraw were many plants of Field Bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis. There is no doubt that is an agricultural pest, able to regenerate from small fragments of the creeping stems or of the underground runners. That said, it is a beautiful plant with a delicate fragrance. It is nutritious too and many years ago I, like thousand of other enthusiasts, fed it to my pet rabbit.

The heads of Field Bindweed may be mown off, but the underground

 portions survive with ease. Christchurch Drive, Daventry. 26 June, 2020

Flowers on the local plants tend to be almost totally white but elsewhere delicate pink shades are common and frequently there is a clear pink stripe on each petal. According to W.J.Stokoe '...it resents the plucking of its delicate flowers by closing its pink cups almost immediately'. Stokoe (1963). This comment intrigued me and I promptly went out and picked a few of the flowers. The other cups did close, but only partially and over 3-4 minutes.

John Clare, as a farmworker, must have been aware of its reputation as a weed but he wrote fondly:

                                 So trailing Bindweed with its pinky cup

                                 Five leaves of paler hue go streaking up.

                                                                                   Clare's Rural Muse, 1835

Field Bindweed can be very colourful.

Photo Plantsam.com

The third plant which came to my attention on my stroll was Cinquefoil, Potentilla reptans. Although buttercup-like in its appearance it belongs to the Rose family, Rosaceae. It can become a weed inasmuch as it spreads rapidly when once established by stolons which root at the nodes, may be some metres long and can quickly cover a large area. Madeline Harley (Harley, 2016) wrongly calls it an annual but it is a persistent perennial whose eradication can be a real problem.

The five leaflets of cinquefoil are clear here, as is a red runner in the

top left of the picture. Christchurch Drive, Daventry, 26 June, 2020

The common name refers to the fact that its leaves are divided into five leaflets, making it a very distinctive little plant. At the base of each petiole is a pair of appendages called stipules. They form one of the main reasons why these flowers belong with the roses and not in the buttercup family.

People have claimed that some of the 13th Century carvings in Southwark Minster represent cinquefoil. I am not convinced but they certainly represent wonderful craftsmanship.

A variation on the Green Man theme. Southwark Minster, Nottinghamshire.

'So,' I hear you cry, 'what did John Clare have to say about cinquefoil?' I quote again from his Rural Muse of 1835.

                                       The five-leaved grass, mantling its golden cup,

                                       Of flowers - five leaves make all for which I stoop.

The name 'Five-leaf Grass' was used also by 18th Century pharmacists, who employed it to treat 'looseness of the bowels', (Wren, 1923), by which I suppose they mean dyer, dior, dyar - the shits.

All very nice, but local authorities must go easy on the mowing.

                                     

Reference

Harley, Madeline, 2016  Wonderful Weeds  Papadakis Publications

Stokoe, W.J. (compiler) 1963  The Observer's Book of Wild Flowers. Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd.


Wren, R.C. 3rd edition, 1923  Potter's Cyclopaedia of Botanical Drugs and Preparations  Potter and Clarke, London