Tag Archives: british wild flowers

fruit, historical recipes, nature, plants

British Wild Flowers: The Blackthorn

6 Comments

I was driving along the roads around her a couple of days ago and the blackthorn was in full bloom. It struck me that I’d not posted a British Wild Flowers post for ages.

So let me introduce The Blackthorn.

This tree is in flower right now. Large areas of white are visible in every hedgerow around here (East Sussex in the south east of the UK).

It is one of the earliest trees to bloom. I’m calling them trees because they can grow to four metres. Yes, that’s a smallish tree, but I think it’s bigger than a bush! However, because they are often found in hedges, they are trimmed and I’ve not seen a really tall one for ages.

They can live for 100 years, apparently.

Image by Lenny Löwenstern from Pixabay

They are one of the earliest bushes to bloom in spring, usually around March. As such, they are very useful for insects to find nectar and pollen at this early time. The leaves are also the food for a number of butterfly caterpillars.

As the dense stems are very thorny, they provide an excellent nesting site for birds, and the caterpillars and other insects that eat it become an easy meal for them.

They have been associated with witchcraft and it was said that witches wands were made from its wood. More prosaically, it was used to make walking sticks and it is said to burn well.

In the past it was used to make tonics. Bark, flowers and fruits were used for these.

It belongs to the genus, prunus (Prunus spinosa), and is thus related to the cherry, plum, peach, nectarine, apricot and almond. Like them, it has a fruit containing a stone, but unlike them, you wouldn’t want to munch on them.

Image by Hans from Pixabay

The fruit is called a sloe. It is a small black fruit , but you wouldn’t want to eat it as it is because it’s very sour and bitter. However, when cooked, it is much more palatable. Sloes are often made into jam and sloe gin.

To make sloe gin, you need 500 ml gin, 250g of sloes and 250 g of sugar. and a 1 litre jar with a tight-fitting lid.

First prepare the sloes by cleaning them and pricking them all over with a fork. I believe that freezing them works, too. This is to break the skin so the juice can escape.

Add the sloes to the jar along with the sugar and gin. Shake it thoroughly. (Don’t forget to put the lid back on first!) Shake daily for the first couple of months, then weekly for about 3 months. Store it in a cool dark place.

The gin will have taken on a deep purple colour and the sugar will have removed the sour and bitterness from the sloes. When the time is over, decant the gin. You can filter it if you wish. Bottle it into clean dry bottles and store in a cool dry place. It continues to improve as it matures, and it’s best drunk after a year. (So prepare this year to drink next!)

Enjoy.

My mum made sloe gin from time to time, but her forte was damson gin. It was made in the same way, except she used damsons instead of sloes. I think that was even nicer!

Thanks to The Woodland Trust and Wikipedia for some of the details of this lovely plant.

There are some more unusual drink recipes in my recipe book, Viv’s Family Recipes, which you can get by clicking on the cover of the book in the sidebar. This book has some recipes dating as far back as 1909 and came from my grandma. Although not things we eat nowadays, long cooking and probably too much fat, it’s interesting to see what kind of things people used to eat.

Have you ever made sloe gin, or any other kind of unusual drinks? I would be interested to find out.

nature, plants, Poetry

Discover the Beauty of Wood Anemones in Spring. British Wild Flowers.

15 Comments

Image by mikezwei from Pixabay

One of the prettiest sights in spring is the carpets of white that cover the ground beneath woodland trees.

This is not a late scattering of snow, but thousands of wood anemones.

The Woodland Trust says:
A sign of ancient woodland.

Wood anemone is an ancient-woodland-indicator plant. If you spot it while you’re out exploring, it could be a sign you’re standing in a rare and special habitat. 

I am lucky enough to have woodlands with these flowers within walking distance of my house. Ancient woodland that has been there since time immemorial.

The wood anemone is a delicate-looking plant with white star-shaped flowers.

Image by Pirkko Valtonen from Pixabay

The Wood anemone found in the UK is Anemonoides nemorosa, while in the US there are two species–Anemonoides quinquefolia, which has white stamens as well as white flowers, and the western wood anemone Anemonoides oregana, which is blue.

I am going to talk about ours, though, since this is one my British Wild Flowers posts.

Image by Albrecht Fietz from Pixabay

These plants are very small. Wikipedia says seldom reaching a height of more than 30cm, but I’ve yet to see one anywhere near that height. Most of those I’ve seen are around half that. They have delicate leaf-like bracts beneath the flowers that are divided into three lobes.

We find these little beauties in bloom from May until about April, so they are one of the earliest to appear, flowering before the trees come into leaf and block the sunlight. The flowers are around 2cm across with six or seven petals surrounding a large number of stamens.

It spreads by rhizome, but only extremely slowly. One estimate I read was that it was only 6 feet per 100 years! This is why it can be used as an identifier of ancient woodland. If the ground is covered, then the woodland is several hundred years old.

How useful is it?

Deer and many other herbivores such as rabbits, hares, mice and voles will eat wood anemones. Many insects also feed on it, including small wasps and flies.

The wood anemone is also a host plant for larvae of some butterfly species .

Human uses.

It has been traditionally used to treat some illnesses (although I don’t suggest trying it unless you know exactly what you are doing!)

According to Glenlivet Wildlife “it has been reported to have several medicinal properties, including sedative and cardiovascular benefits, amongst others.

“Wood anemone root extracts have been used to treat a wide range of liver diseases, including chronic hepatitis and liver cirrhosis.”

“In traditional medicine, it is also believed that they can induce menstruation if eaten in large amounts.

“Used by many European countries, they help prevent soil erosion due to their extensive root system, which binds the soil together with their numerous fibrous roots.”

Picking wild flowers wasn’t illegal when I was growing up, and I used to pick many of our wild flowers. The local church had an annual flower show, and one of the classes was for a wild flower arrangement. Wood anemones would not have been good for this as I discovered. They fade and die very quickly when picked.

White heads dancing
In the gentle breeze
Carpet the ground
Beneath the trees

Bees buzz eager
For this new supply
Of nectar from
A flower so shy.

Fill your eyes with
Ethereal sight.
They’ll soon be gone
These flowers so white.

Poetry

British Wild Flowers. The Lesser Celandine.

5 Comments

Lesser celandines are one of the earliest wild flowers to appear, blooming from late January until the end of April.

They are small, growing to a mere 2-3 inches, but form masses of flowers. They look gorgeous when in bloom. A veritable carpet of yellow stars.

They are found on banks, at the edges of woods and paths, in grassland. In fact, almost everywhere. One might be tempted to put some in the garden, but think twice. Although they are lovely little flowers and bloom when there isn’t much else, they can be invasive.

They spread from tiny tubers which grow in the leaf axels. Rooting them out can be a problem as it can help them to spread! My suggestion is to enjoy them where they are. I did see some for sale in a local garden centre. They were lovely with unusual dark, reddish leaves. Very tempting.

I understand, from reading on the net, that their leaves are a rich source of vitamin C. Useful at a time when, in past ages people hadn’t had much green vegetables during the winter months and may have been suffering from scurvy as a result. I have no experience of eating these leaves, and so cannot recommend them as a salad vegetable. ALWAYS CHECK FOR TOXICITY BEFORE EATING ANYTHING GATHERED FROM THE WILD.

Here’s a little poem to the celandine.

Celandines

Little stars litter the grass.

Have they fallen from the sky?

They are shining when I pass

Reflecting sun’s rays from on high.

Celandines are here to say

Winter’s gloom is nearly past.

Spring is really on the way;

Warmth will soon be here, at last.

Bright and cheerful little flowers

Covering the woods and banks  

Creating lovely yellow bowers.

We should all be giving thanks.

I hope you enjoyed this little post about one of our early spring flowers. Feel free to share it with anyone you think might find it interesting, but please link back to this blog if you do.

If you want to read more of my poetry, you can buy my first poetry anthology, Miscellaneous Thoughts, by clicking on the book cover in the side bar or the title in this paragraph.

I just looked at my poem on the preview, and the breaks between the verses does not appear even though I added them when writing. this always happens and I wonder why. Does anyone know why?

Please leave your comments in the comments box. I love hearing from you.

plants

British Wild Flowers: The Scarlet Pimpernel

2 Comments

Many of you will have heard of the book by Alexander, Dumas, The Scarlet Pimpernel. This story told of a British aristocrat who rescued French aristocrats in the Revolution. He got his name because he took as his emblem a simple, small red flower.

This flower is also known as Poor Man’s Weathervane, or, according to the Wildlife Trust, Old Man’s Weathervane, or Shepherd’s Weathervane, but where I come from originally, it was Poor Man’s Weathervane!

This simple little flower got its name because it closes its petals when the pressure falls, and bad weather is on the way.

It is a pretty little flower that was once a weed of cereal crops, is now in decline because of the way farmers now farm the land, spraying crops with herbicides to maximise their yield. It is now found mainly in gardens and roadside banks, and other waste ground.

It is easily overlooked because of its small size, which is a pity, because it’s a pretty little flower.

The picture, which I got from Pixabay, makes it look larger than it is in real life. The flowers are only about 1 cm across. I think it’s a lovely little flower and I hope it doesn’t decline further.

I have one small plant in my garden that comes back each year, and I hope it stays. I don’t think of it as a weed, because a weed is a plant growing where you don’t want it, and I want this wild, little beauty.

Do you have a favourite wild flower? If so, what is it? Where does it grow?

Please leave your comments and answers in the comments box.

If you would like to receive an exclusive, free short story by me, called The Haunted Table, simply click the link. This will take you to the page where you can download it.

Maria and Tom have bought an antique table for the old cottage they have bought. When they hear strange noises in the night that sound like crying, they worry their house is haunted, but the sounds seem to come from the table.

They set about trying to find what is causing the disturbances. The answer is stranger than either of them had thought.

send me my free story.

(Clicking the link will add your email address to my email list, but don’t worry, you can unsubscribe immediately if you wish. Nor will you get any spam. I only send out an email each quarter, or if I have any exciting news–like a new release.)

plants

Wild Flowers of Britain. 1. The Dandelion

3 Comments

Some people will refer to these plants as weeds. But what is a weed? Grass growing on your lawn is not a weed, but if it grows between your beloved flowers in the flowerbed, then it is.

In the above case, the grass is growing where you don’t want it, hence it’s a weed. So a weed is any plant growing where it’s not wanted.

I have, in the past, bought plants from garden centres and put them in my garden. Sometimes I regretted it as they wanted to take over the whole garden, even though they might be pretty. They have become weeds.

A weed is a plant growing in the wrong place.

So here are a few wild flowers, not growing in the wrong place!

The first of these is one that is often disparaged, and called a weed wherever it grows. That’s the Dandelion.

These plants are so-called from the French, ‘dent-de-lion’, meaning ‘lion’s tooth’. If you look at the leaves, you can see how this name came about. However, the French call it ‘piss-en-lit’ or ‘wee the bed.’

When I was growing up, we told each other not to pick dandelions or we’d wet the bed. There is a miniscule truth in this as the sap of the plant has diuretic properties.

I also believe that the leaves make a spicy addition to a salad, but I’ve never tried it myself.

When we were growing up, we used to call the seed heads ‘Dandelion clocks’. We blew the seeds of, counting ‘one o’clock, two o’clock etc’ until all the seeds were gone. then that was the time. We never really believed it, but it was a fun thing to do. And it helped spread the dandelion seeds.

Personally I like dandelions. They are lovely flowers, and make a bright carpet in the springtime on roadside banks.

Here is a picture of a field of dandelions in Parthenay, France, just outside the walls.

I have a vague memory of being told that during WW2, people used to make coffee from the long tap roots. It would certainly be caffeine free! Anyone who has ever tried to dig up a dandelion can testify to those roots!

Dandelions, though, have a high propensity for absorbing things around them, that includes weedkillers and pesticides, as well as heavy metals such as lead, so it is as well not to eat them from anywhere near roads, or places where herbicides and pesticides can be absorbed.

Wikipedia tells me that dandelion flowers were used to make a pale yellow dye, and the inner ribs of the leaves made a purple one.

They can self-pollinate, which is useful for them as they flower early, so they can pollinate themselves before insects are around, but their bright yellow flowers attract bees as soon as they emerge in the spring. Be careful of using herbicides on them, though, as it can harm or kill the pollinating insects.

And, of course, the Rolling Stones made a song about this flower. Here’s a link to YouTube so you can listen to it.

click here to listen

If you would like to join my mailing list and receive a quarterly email about what I’ve been up to, click the button below.

You will receive a free and exclusive short story by me as a thank you.

Send me my free story