A POET`S NOSEGAY

Transcription

A POET`S NOSEGAY

A POET’S
NOSEGAY:
A Botanical Miscellany
Poetry and Pictures
Giles Watson
2010
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For my father, Leslie Watson, who inspired my love of plants.
All poems and pictures © Giles Watson, 2010.
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PART 1: WILDFLOWERS OF THE CHALK ..................................... 7
MEADOW CRANESBILL..................................................................................... 7
RESTHARROW ...................................................................................................... 8
MELILOT ................................................................................................................. 9
DROPWORT ......................................................................................................... 10
GREATER KNAPWEED .................................................................................... 11
KIDNEY VETCH .................................................................................................. 12
HOARY PLANTAIN.............................................................................................. 13
GOAT’S BEARD .................................................................................................. 14
GENTIANS ............................................................................................................ 15
SAINFOIN .............................................................................................................. 16
MILKWORT ........................................................................................................... 17
ROCKROSE .......................................................................................................... 18
PART 2: TREE LYRICS .............................................................. 19
SYCAMORE .......................................................................................................... 19
LARCH AND ALDER .......................................................................................... 21
BEECH POLLARDS ........................................................................................... 22
THE OAK AND THE LINDEN .......................................................................... 23
HOLLY .................................................................................................................... 24
IVY ........................................................................................................................... 26
BIRCH .................................................................................................................... 27
HONEYSUCKLE .................................................................................................. 28
SPINDLE................................................................................................................ 29
HEATHER ............................................................................................................. 30
BEECH ................................................................................................................... 31
OAK ......................................................................................................................... 32
BROOM.................................................................................................................. 34
GORSE ................................................................................................................... 35
ASH ......................................................................................................................... 37
APPLE..................................................................................................................... 39
HAWTHORN ......................................................................................................... 42
ROWAN .................................................................................................................. 45
WILLOW ................................................................................................................ 47
ELDER (ROLLRIGHT ROCK) .......................................................................... 49
YEW ........................................................................................................................ 51
YEW AUGURIES ................................................................................................. 52
PART 3: ALTERNATIVE ENERGY: PARASITIC, SAPROPHYTIC AND
INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS ......................................................... 53
LOUSEWORTS .................................................................................................... 53
DODDER ............................................................................................................... 54
VENUS FLY-TRAP .............................................................................................. 55
SUNDEW ............................................................................................................... 56
BLADDERWORTS .............................................................................................. 57
BUTTERWORT .................................................................................................... 58
CHRISTMAS TREE............................................................................................. 59
BROOMRAPE ....................................................................................................... 60
PITCHER PLANT ................................................................................................. 61
COW WHEAT ....................................................................................................... 62
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PART 4: ORCHIDS .................................................................... 63
FRAGRANT ORCHID ......................................................................................... 63
FLY ORCHID (OPHRYS INSECTIFERA) ...................................................... 64
BEE ORCHID (OPHRYS APIFERA) ............................................................... 65
EARLY PURPLE ORCHID (ORCHIS MASCULA) ....................................... 66
PYRAMIDAL ORCHID (ANACAMPTIS PYRAMIDALIS) ............................ 67
EARLY MARSH ORCHID (ORCHIS LATIFOLIA) ....................................... 68
BIRD’S NEST ORCHID (NEOTTIA NIDUS-AVIS) ...................................... 69
FROG ORCHID (COELOGLOSSUM VIRIDE) ............................................. 70
GREEN MAN ORCHID (OPHRYS ANTHROPOPHORA) .......................... 71
JUG ORCHID (PTEROSTYLIS RECURVA).................................................. 72
PINK FAIRIES (CALADENIA SPP.) ................................................................ 73
DONKEY ORCHID (DIURIS BRUMALIS) .................................................... 74
COWSLIP ORCHID (CALADENIA FLAVA) .................................................. 75
LEEK ORCHID (PRASOPHYLLUM SPP.) ..................................................... 76
JAMES BATEMAN’S ORCHIDACEAE OF MEXICO AND GUATEMALA
.................................................................................................................................. 77
VANDA SANDERIANA ....................................................................................... 78
STANHOPEA ........................................................................................................ 79
POLLINIA............................................................................................................... 80
LADY’S SLIPPER ................................................................................................. 81
PART 5: THE MERMAID’S TRESSES: SEAWEEDS ...................... 82
CODIUM ................................................................................................................ 82
ULVA LACTUCA .................................................................................................. 83
HOLDFASTS ........................................................................................................ 84
KILP BURNERS ................................................................................................... 85
WRACK CUTTERS.............................................................................................. 87
KNOTTED WRACK ............................................................................................. 88
DILLISK ................................................................................................................. 89
DILLISK II ............................................................................................................. 90
CORALLINA .......................................................................................................... 91
TROW ..................................................................................................................... 92
PART 6: CRYPTOGAMS: THE SPORE-BEARING PLANTS ............ 93
SECTION A: FUNGI.................................................................... 94
ARMILLARIA MELLEA ...................................................................................... 94
MARASMIUS OREADES .................................................................................. 95
PHALLUS IMPUDICUS ..................................................................................... 96
AMANITA MUSCARIA........................................................................................ 97
LYCOPERDON SPP. ........................................................................................... 98
AMANITA PHALLOIDES ................................................................................... 99
CORDYCEPS MILITARIS................................................................................ 100
HIRNEOLA AURICULARIA-JUDAE ............................................................ 101
POLYPORUS SPP. ............................................................................................ 102
COPRINUS COMATUS .................................................................................... 103
CLAVICEPS PURPUREA ................................................................................ 104
SECTION B: FERNS ................................................................. 105
OPHIOGLOSSUM VULGATUM .................................................................... 105
BOTRYCHIUM LUNARIA ................................................................................ 106
ASPLENIUM MARINUM.................................................................................. 107
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HYMENOPHYLLYM TUNBRINGENSE ....................................................... 108
CETERACH OFFICINARUM .......................................................................... 109
OSMUNDA REGALIS....................................................................................... 110
PILULARIA GLOBULIFERA ........................................................................... 111
PHYLLITIS SCOLOPENDRIUM .................................................................... 112
SECTION C: MOSSES .............................................................. 113
SPHAGNUM SPP. ............................................................................................. 113
LEUCOBRYUM GLAUCUM ........................................................................... 115
FONTINALIS ANTIPYRETICA ........................................................................ 116
POLYTRICHUM COMMUNE ......................................................................... 117
SECTION D: HORSETAILS ....................................................... 118
EQUISETUM TELEMATEIA .......................................................................... 118
EQUISETUM HYEMALE................................................................................. 119
SECTION E: CLUB MOSSES ..................................................... 120
ISOETES LACUSTRIS ......................................................................................... 120
LYCOPODIUM SPP. ......................................................................................... 121
SECTION F: LIVERWORTS ...................................................... 122
MARCHANTIA .................................................................................................... 122
PART 7: PLANTS AND CULTURE.............................................. 123
ARROWHEAD .................................................................................................... 123
VIPER’S BUGLOSS .......................................................................................... 124
WOUNDWORT ................................................................................................... 126
BIRTHWORT ...................................................................................................... 128
SHEPHERD’S PURSE ..................................................................................... 129
WHITE CLOVER ............................................................................................... 130
DOCK ................................................................................................................... 131
SWEET FLAG ..................................................................................................... 132
YARROW ............................................................................................................. 134
HERB PARIS ...................................................................................................... 135
SOLOMON’S SEAL ........................................................................................... 136
LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY .................................................................................... 138
MONK’S HOOD ................................................................................................. 139
HELLEBORE ...................................................................................................... 140
RAGWORT .......................................................................................................... 141
WORMWOOD .................................................................................................... 143
BRYONY .............................................................................................................. 144
FOXGLOVE ........................................................................................................ 146
BELLADONNA ................................................................................................... 148
THORN APPLE................................................................................................... 149
VERVAIN ............................................................................................................. 151
HENBANE ........................................................................................................... 152
MANDRAKE........................................................................................................ 154
HEMLOCK .......................................................................................................... 156
DANDELION SPRING ...................................................................................... 157
WOOD ANEMONE............................................................................................ 158
WOOD SORREL ................................................................................................ 160
MUSK MALLOW ................................................................................................ 161
NAVELWORT ..................................................................................................... 162
SILVERWEED .................................................................................................... 163
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QUAKING GRASS ............................................................................................. 164
CENTAURY ......................................................................................................... 165
HERB ROBERT ................................................................................................. 167
GOOSEBERRY .................................................................................................. 168
ST. JOHN’S WORT ........................................................................................... 169
RUE ....................................................................................................................... 172
WILLOWHERB................................................................................................... 173
ON AN EDELWEISS IN THE BACK OF SCHRÖTER’S ALPINE FLORA
................................................................................................................................ 174
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PART 1: Wildflowers of the Chalk
MEADOW CRANESBILL
Since rupture bleeds within me from our parting,
And none can still the pain, or staunch the flow,
I’ll search the hedge, where cranesbill blooms are starting
And pluck them up before their flowers blow.
The dove-foot herbage and the pale-veined petal
I take in claret one and twenty days
With red snails melded, all to raise my mettle
While her choice divides her changing ways.
As pistils thrust through air and carpels close
About the seeds developing within,
I ache to hear what she cannot disclose
And sip the philtre down, through lips grown thin.
But if she should return, I’ll no more bleed
When the cranesbill springs, and shoots the seed.
Source material: Gerard and Culpepper called the blue flowered Meadow Cranesbill
“Dove’s Foot” because of the perceived similarity between the leaves and the feet of
doves. The more common name alludes to the strong resemblance of the enlarged
stylar column and seed capsule to the head and bill of a crane. Gerard
recommended the herb, taken in claret before sleep, for the miraculous healing of
“ruptures and burstings, as my selfe have often proved, whereby I have gotten
crownes and credit”. He adds that “the powder of red snailes (those without shels)
dried in an oven in number nine” should be added to the concoction if it is to be
used on an older person. Elizabethans used the plant not for healing physical ills,
but as the main ingredient in love potions, but it is not clear whether they added the
red slugs as well. More recently, botanists have noticed that Cranesbills have an
unusual method of seed dispersal. W.B. Turrill, British Plant Life, London, 1962, p.
explains: “The long ‘bill’ of the fruit is structurally the persistent and enlarged stylar
column. At maturity the lower two-thirds above each one-seeded compartment splits
away from the compact central portion. The seeds become detached, but each
remains in a carpellary pocket attached by two threads to the corresponding stylar
strip. The stylar strip acts as a spring and when a certain degree of tension is
attained by the drying-out process it suddenly curls up and breaks away from the
central column, with such force that the partial fruit with a seed at the bottom is
shot for a distance of about seven yards...”
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RESTHARROW
The harrow churns through chalk as the ox-plough
Turns. Urchin tests and flint nodules, bones
Of earth, lie exposed. Skylarks rise indignant,
Their ground in turmoil. Bulge-eyed oxen
Strain, goaded onward, then stall. No coaxing
Can budge them:
The blade held fast by a clump of cammock,
Spined and stubborn, its scentless blooms
The tint of sunset. The farmer swears, spits
His clay pipe to the ground, kicks
At rootbound clods. They stand, still
As monoliths: man, oxen, and wrested plough:
Noontide on the Downs.
Bees test the flowers for gifts of nectar,
Receiving only pollen, in sudden
Little explosions. They fly, bewildered.
Evening, and the children come, scab-kneed,
Brandishing penknives, hacking at the roots,
Blunting their blades, then scamper home
Down the coombe, grimly chewing
As frayed roots bulge their mouths.
Source material: Cammock is the older English name for Restharrow ( Ononis sp.),
a legume which was once a persistent farmland weed, but has now been banished
from agricultural land. It persists in places on the Ridgeway. The roots of this plant
are remarkably tough, and could stop a horse or ox-drawn plough in its tracks. They
were, however, much prized by country children, who chewed them as a substitute
for liquorice root. Like many legumes, Restharrow greets its insect visitors with
small explosions of pollen, but its bright pink blooms are false advertisements: they
contain no nectar. See Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, 1975, p. 141;
Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal, 2009, pp. 290-291; G. Clarke Nuttall and H.
Essenhigh Corke, Wildflowers as they Grow, Volume 4, 1912, pp. 154-160.
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MELILOT
Like crowns of scatterbrained kings,
Melilot sprays in golden rounds
Hang dangling by the Ridgeway. Fate
And metaphysical aid have crusted
Them with dew. It dries like diamonds.
Royal herb: Hart’s Clover
Boiled in wine, with the yolk
Of a roasted egg, seeds
Of fenugreek and flax,
Mallow roots and hog’s grease,
Made the Plaister Claver
To soften all manner
Of swellings.
Meet salve, then
For our modern politicians
To assuage their swollen heads.
Source material: The Melilot was probably introduced to Britain as a fodder herb of
similar nutritional value to alfalfa, but it has been thoroughly naturalised for
centuries. The Plaister Claver was a Melilot poultice, much celebrated in the great
herbals, and the second stanza contains the recipe. The herbalist Parkinson (1656)
compared the flowers with a crown, a notion echoed in its ancient Latin name,
Corona regina. It was sometimes called Hart’s Clover, on the assumption that the
kingly beast preferred it to all other food. See G. Clarke Nutall and H. Essenhigh
Corke, Wildflowers as they Grow, Volume 6, London, 1914, pp. 116-7; Geoffrey
Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, pp. 142-3.
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DROPWORT
Pink as upturned eyelids, buds of Dropwort
Break in the sun and blanch, bend with the breeze,
Their slim stalks flexing. Some bloom on the domes
Of barrows, tombs of chieftains – beds of loam –
Their swords beside them, arms about their knees,
Wombed and foetal for all their worth in bronze,
And Dropwort roots grow downwards
Through globes that held their brains.
Source material: Dropwort(Filipendula vulgaris) is a smaller relation of the
Meadowsweet (F. ulmaria). It is less fragrant, but arguably still more beautiful than
its widespread cousin, and the one place to be sure of encountering it is at Seven
Barrows, not far from Lambourn: a site graced not only with beautiful, natural chalk
grassland, but also with the remains of around forty Bronze Age round barrows.
Dropwort is a member of the Rosaceae, and is in no way related to the deadly
poisonous umbel, Hemlock Water-Dropwort, of the Apiaceae.
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GREATER KNAPWEED
Ants negotiate the bracts
With testing antennae,
Climbing the plant’s
Globed involucre.
The hackymore’s knops
Are built of fringed
Shingles overlapping:
Tight, impenetrable,
But at their summits
Florets flare like flags;
Streamered advertisements.
A bumblebee alights,
Inserts his gleaming
Drinkingstraw tongue.
An ant falls to ground,
Dusts itself clean,
Prepares to re-ascend.
Source material: The Greater Knapweed (Centaurea scabiosa) grows in great
profusion in chalky soil on wayside verges. It has a large number of folk-names,
most of which relate to the hardness of the involucre: the close conglomeration of
bracts which form an onion-shaped “drumstick” out of which the florets of the
composite flower protrude. The outer, more showy florets do not contain stamens,
styles or nectar, and serve merely to attract the attention of passing insects – a very
successful strategy. A botanist named Müller was reported to have counted fortyeight different species of insect visiting the flowers (see G. Clarke Nuttall and H.
Essenhigh Corke, Wild Flowers as they Grow, Volume 1, 1912, p. 125.) The mention
in this poem of the particular interest taken by ants is based on personal
observation. The name “knapweed” is a corruption of “knopweed”; “knop” is the
archaic form of “knob”, and is used in the King James Bible. The available literature
offers no explanation of the vernacular name “hackymore”, but I am reminded of
Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin, who offers Old Brown a taunting riddle containing
the line: “Hickamore hackamore on the king’s kitchen door” whilst bouncing about
like a sunbeam. It is difficult to imagine a flower which could be more “solar” in
nature. See also Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, pp. 420-421; Mabey, Flora
Britannica, p. 358. It may also be of interest to note that like the Hoary Plantain,
Knapweeds have been used in love-divination. The florets would be plucked, and the
flower heads hidden “in the bosom”. If new florets sprouted, then love would come
the way of the enquirer.
12
KIDNEY VETCH
Reclaiming ground, kidney vetch
Occupies a swathe, an invading
Host. Every calyx is a wad
Of down, ready-carded for clotting
Wounds; and jaundiced little fingers
Grope the air, as though lambs
Have lost their wool to grasping hands.
Source material: Like many plants with woolly calyxes, Kidney Vetch (Anthyllis
vulneraria) has a long-standing reputation as a wound herb, and would certainly be
as effective as gauze or spider web in staunching bleeding. Its folk names include
Lamb’s Toe, Lady’s Finger and God Almighty’s Fingers and Thumbs. The plant is
common on chalk grassland, and is adept at colonising bare areas of ground. See
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, pp. 219-221; Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s
Flora, p. 150.
13
HOARY PLANTAIN
Hoary plantains are the spirits
Of old men, growing thin on top,
But sporting magnificent sideburns.
They stand at attention on the verge,
Waiting for some chafer’s weight
To bend them, or for a girl
To kneel and pluck their whiskers
One at a time, pouting her patience,
Rustling in muslin. She picks
Him clean, pulls off his head,
Wraps it reverently in a leaf of dock,
Then hides it under a stone.
Will they have grown again by dawn,
Those grizzled whiskers? Then love
Is sure. But should she find him
Smooth-cheeked as her intended,
It were better she had not begun.
Source material: In Berwickshire, the scapes of plantain are picked clean of
anthers, wrapped in dock leaves, and buried under stone. If new anthers appear
overnight, “then love is certain” (Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, p. 357).
The hoary plantain, Plantago media, is obviously the best species to use for this
form of love-divination, since it produces such a multitude of anthers, and the
laborious process of removing them one by one assists in building magical intent.
14
GOAT’S BEARD
Jack woke up before the light
And went to bed at noon,
Hid his yellow locks from sight.
His long and pointed shoon
Were buried in the rocky chalk;
His fingers all grew speared,
And tall and thin – a wiry stalk –
He grew a goatee beard.
Jack became a hoary man;
His head turned to a sphere.
He ended where he once began:
The zenith of the year.
Source material: Goat’s Beard, or Jack-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon, is a relative of Salsify,
with a long, pointed, edible tap-root. The flower closes at midday; hence the folk
name. As the flower is going to seed, it closes, and the silky hairs which will
eventually provide each seed’s means of locomotion are bunched together in a
pappus, which resembles an inverted goat’s beard. When the seed-head opens,
around midsummer, it looks similar to a dandelion “clock”, but is three or four times
as big. Its complexity has been compared with that of an astrolabe (Richard Mabey,
Flora Britannica, p. 362), but it is perhaps more like an armillary sphere. See
Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, p. 422; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s
Herbal, pp. 146-7; Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, pp. 152-3; Marjorie
and Philip Blamey, Flowers of the Countryside, London, 1980, p. 198. My lyric is, of
course, indebted to the tradition of 'John Barleycorn'.
15
GENTIANS
To go out to die, when the poet’s powers fail,
With your cheek on the green, chalk-paled grass,
In a glade by the leafy wood, gazing at gentians.
Where the adder curled about the plant
Which purged his poison, rest, eye-level
With the sun-seeking petals, the tubed calyx
Fringed with pale hairs, the reddened stems
And paired leaves from a suit of spades.
Wait for the stillness when the wars fade,
When weapons rust and bombs implode
Into purse-petalled simplicity, when asylum
Doors clang open, when woes, self consumed,
Are forgotten, and all is one purple flower.
The sweet singing cuckoo gone, the fond turtles
Mated and flown, the sparkling brooks
Cloud-dulled, the love-lorn nightingale sated,
There is only silence, and these gentians.
Source material: John Clare, ‘Prose on artificial nature poetry’ in Eric Robinson
and Geoffrey Summerfield (Eds.), Selected Poems and Prose of John Clare, Oxford,
1978, p. 66: “Pastoral poems are full of nothing but the old thread bare epithets of
‘sweet singing cuckoo’ ‘love lorn nightingale’ ‘fond turtles’ ‘sparkling brooks’ ‘green
meadows’ ‘leafy woods’ etc etc these make up the creation of Pastoral and
descriptive poesy and every thing else is reckond low and vulgar in fact they are too
rustic for the fashionable or prevailing system of rhyme till some bold inovating
genius rises with a real love for nature and then they will no doubt be considered as
great beautys which they really are” [sic]. Still one of the great unsung heroes of
nature poetry - and one with a philosophy to live and die for - John Clare’s woes are
described in his own poem ‘I am’, which reflects on his bouts of mental illness and
imprisonment in an asylum. The poem above was inspired by my own observation of
a Chiltern gentian (Gentianella germanica) at the Warburg Nature Reserve near
Nettlebed on 20th August 2003, and by discussions, aired on the radio as I drove
home, about the inquiry into the death of Dr. Kelly. The Anglo Saxons called all
gentians “Feld wyrt” (Fieldwort), and recommended the powdered root as a cure for
adders’ bites, but it would be foolish to experiment with the remedy these days,
given the scarcity of gentians. See Stephen Pollington, Leechcraft: Early English
Charms, Plantlore and Healing, Norfolk, 2000, pp. 296–297.
16
SAINFOIN
The Ridgeway chalk is brittle
As fired clay. The donkey bites his bridle;
His hoofbeats clomp like clogs.
He takes the gradient in his stride,
Then lurches, for his eye has strayed
Sideways, where vetches line the verge:
Sainfoin, pink as dawn,
A blush of bloom across the down –
His holy, wholesome hay.
*
Engine overheated; the Ringroad
At a standstill, his Range-Rover
Stricken, where vetches line the verge.
Sainfoin, pink as plastic
Surrounds him, gaunt and static,
As sirens blast and bray.
Source material: The generic name of Sainfoin is Onobrychis, derived from the
Greek ὄνος, (a donkey) and βρύκειν, (to eat greedily). Sainfoin, a French name, has
often been mistranslated as Saint Foin, or Holy Hay, but in fact it simply means
“wholesome hay”, a suitable meal for cattle, horses and donkeys. Onobrychis
viciifolia occurs in Britain in two forms. The first grows on the chalk Downs, and
although it was once widely cultivated as fodder, is almost certainly native to
Britain. A different strain was introduced from the continent, and was often sown on
roadside verges. Richard Mabey (Flora Britannica, p. 219) remarks, “The show on the
banks of the M25 shortly after it was built was one of the ringway’s few uplifting
features.” See also Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, pp. 150-1. I am
indebted to J.R.C. Anderson, The Oldest Road: The Ridgeway, (1975), for his
delightfully bucolic notion that the finest way to travel the Ridgeway is by donkey.
17
MILKWORT
Rogationtide children beating the bounds
Carried the Virgin, blue on her pole,
Sought flowers for garlands, deep in the grass,
Searching for symbols, gleaning for grace,
Picking the milkwort, as blue as her robe,
Tender as thought and as small as a soul.
They weaved her a nimbus and thought it as fine
As a halo of lapis surrounding her face.
Reading Dioscorides, physicians took note:
“Polugalon bringeth abundance of milk.”
Wet-nurse or milk-cow, the principle holds
For calf or for babe, the ancients attest.
And seeking for signatures, a lens would reveal
The flowers were udders shrouded in silk:
Miraculous mother – the calf licked to life –
Wondrous the milk that springs from her breast.
Source material: Milkwort has long featured in folk traditions, and given that it
grows in rich grassland, it is perhaps not surprising that it has been credited with
increasing the milk yields of dairy cows. Mediaeval and early modern herbalists,
reading of Polugalon (“much milk”) in Dioscorides, leapt to the conclusion that it
was this plant, but whereas Dioscorides was almost certainly suggesting that his
plant was a boon to the dairy, the herbalists assumed that it promoted the
production of human milk. Numerous authors have noted that milkwort was
commonly used in garlands for Rogationtide processions, in the course of which the
congregation would ‘beat the bounds’ of the parish, but none that I have seen have
questioned why so diminutive a plant should play such a significant role. The poem
advances my own theory. Prior to the Reformation, Rogationtide processions were
Marian in nature, and an effigy of the Virgin was carried, such as the one depicted
on a misericord in Ripple parish church, Worcestershire. Milkwort is one of the few
readily available flowers in this country which are a striking blue in colour
(cornflowers are another, but in a predominantly agricultural economy, these might
have been viewed as a weed, and therefore not worthy of a religious function, and
speedwell, alongside which milkwort often grows, might easily have been used in the
garlands as well). Laborious as the process must have been, milkwort must have
been picked for this purpose because of the vividness of its flowers. Doubtless, the
whole idea pre-dates Christianity, and perhaps there is also something spiritually
pleasing in the idea that so diminutive a plant should occupy so vaunted a position.
In Donegal, it is said that the Milkwort is Fairy Soap, since fairies make soap from
the root and leaves. Perhaps this tradition is older than all the others. See: Geoffrey
Grigson An Englishman’s Flora, St Albans, 1975, pp. 82-83; Richard Mabey, Flora
Britannica, London, 1996, p. 260; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal, London,
2007, pp. 233-4.
18
ROCKROSE
On anthills and on fairy-rings,
Sol-flowers are radiant,
Shining out the scent of sun,
Dazzling the breath.
Source material: Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, p. 89, suggests that
rather than Rockrose, the Scottish name of Sol Flower would be more appropriate as
a common name for Helianthemum nummularium, “or else an Englishing of the
French herbe d’or, Herb of Gold.” Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, p. 126, observes
that on the chalk downs, “it has a special liking for anthills and fairy rings”,
presumably because it likes slightly disturbed ground. All authors seem to agree
with John Gilmour, Wild Flowers of the Chalk, Middlesex, 1947, p. 14, that when it
is encountered on the downs, “cascades of golden flowers will light you on your
way.” The scent of rockroses is sometimes carried by their pollen over hundreds of
yards.
19
PART 2: Tree Lyrics
SYCAMORE
As I went out to quarry stone,
My pick upon my shoulder,
I heard a singing nightingale
And sat upon a boulder.
Her song was bubbling like a brook
That runs through ferny gill;
I saw her singing to the sky
And all around grew still.
Long the sycamore may live
And faerie spells prevail:
Long as last the lilting songs
Of the nightingale.
High up in the sycamore
Crescendos filled the air,
And I sat ever watching,
Of time’s passage unaware.
And when the notes had died away
The sycamore died too,
Withered, every leaf and branch
As the cold wind blew.
I rubbed my eyes and looked again,
Alas! The bird had flown.
All thought of labours left my mind;
I hurried back for home.
An old, old man sat on the porch,
“What are you doing here?”
The old man said, “This is my house;
I’ve been here fifty year’!”
“What is your name, lad?” then said he.
“Why, Roderick,” I said.
“My great-grandfather spoke of you,
But you were thought long dead.
20
For you went out to quarry stone,
And long they searched in vain.
Now Roderick, from times of old
Has wandered home again.”
Long the sycamore may live
And faerie spells prevail:
Long as last the lilting songs
Of the nightingale.
Source material: Eirwen Jones, Folk Tales of Wales, London, 1947, pp. 66-68.
21
LARCH AND ALDER
Alder in the river, Larch among the crows,
Here the catkins quiver, thither blooms a rose.
Alder, Bran of branches, broadleaf with a cone,
Ruptured bark a-bleeding, roots in silt and stone.
Larch of downswept boughs, ascending at the tips,
Yellowed now and falling, sered as winter grips.
Alder bark a whistle, Larch wood makes a gate,
Both will build a boat: sail to meet with Fate.
Fare thee well Calypso; I chase the yawling gull.
Larch become my mast; Alder be my hull.
Source material: The poem is inspired by the deciduousness of larches, and the
“cone” bearing of alders. I have always associated the two trees: both of them
contradict the normal rules.
22
BEECH POLLARDS
Long Plantation, February 2009
Cut off crotch-high, beech boles sweat
Their reeking love-juice, rank, wet:
Black runnels marking bark,
Sweating waters, gleaming dark.
Limbs spread upward, arched and green
With algal bloom. Groins between
The branches, each slit a stoup
Of fecund spunk, thick as soup,
Slimed by snails, who lodge asleep
Where the fissures gouge in deep.
Here the deer laps, cloven foot
Marking moss about the root,
Cranes her neck to reach the brink.
The trunk agape, bids her drink.
Source material: Long Plantation is a hanger of pollarded beeches on the White
Horse Downs.
23
THE OAK AND THE LINDEN
So. It has started. It is good that it should happen
Whilst we are naked. I can look upon your skin
One last time, and as your toes are rooted to the soil
I can stare at the ankles I held in my hand, when first
I removed your shoes. Your shins are bark, and yet
My eyes linger over thighs I licked, all the way
Up the inside, to make you tremble, and, though you
Are old, your hairs are black as ever, where I went down
And drank your juices, to make you writhe.
Now it is a crotch of twigs, and a furrow of wood.
There is the navel I have mouthed (how strange
My legs feel, joined in one trunk), and lichen
Grows on it already, the alveoli round your nipples
Are a soft and darker bark. The curve of you
Which I have cupped in my palm, and slept,
Is not so soft, now. And that blessed little goblet
Where your throat joins your collar – oh! Fashioned
For drinking honey! – is a place where moss might grow.
How often I have kissed the curve of that neck,
The twist of that ear. Your lips and tongue
Speak gentle, woodwind consonants. Our roots
Shall grow together. Let down your hair,
That the winglets of your passion may fall upon
My ground, to be scattered with my acorns.
We were ever simple folk. How fitting to be trees.
Source material: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 8, the story of Baucis and Philemon.
The two elderly lovers welcomed the gods into their house even though they had only
the most basic fare to offer them. For their reward, they were made guardians of a
temple, after their valley, inhabited by people who turned the gods away, was
flooded. Their wish was that neither one of them should outlive the other, so that
neither of them would grieve. The gods answered their prayers, at the end of their
lives, by transforming them both simultaneously into trees.
24
HOLLY
The King of Oak,
The Holly King,
Forever they shall fight,
For one brings on the summer’s morn,
The other winter’s night.
At New Year comes the Holly King
With green staff in his hand,
And then the unsheathed swords will sing,
As the Oak King takes his stand,
And off will come the Holly King’s head,
He will not blench, not fall down dead,
Though bright red blood sprays all around,
Like berries on the ground.
And half the year the King of Oak
Laments the brash beheading:
He worries through the Beltane smoke
And mopes at every wedding,
For he knows the jolly Holly King
Will serve him just the same,
And long shall all the poets sing
Of their gruesome game.
He rides out on a pale morn,
The ground is caked with frost,
The Oak King’s face is all forlorn
As he counts the cost.
He comes upon a cleft ravine,
Each crevice filled with ferns,
His grim foe’s face is dark and green;
He hails him, and he turns.
And bare the Oak King’s neck is laid
Upon the mossy ground;
All the Oak King’s debts are paid,
And gruesome is the sound.
The Holly King through winter reigns,
And Oak hides ’til the spring;
Then he shall repay his pains
And bladed steel shall ring.
At New Year comes the Holly King
With green staff in his hand,
And then the unsheathed swords will sing,
As the Oak King takes his stand,
25
And off will come the Holly King’s head,
He will not blench, not fall down dead,
Though bright red blood sprays all around,
Like berries on the ground.
Source material: The poem is a reconstruction of the ancient legend of the
perennial battle between the Oak King and the Holly King (personifying the summer
and the winter respectively). The battle motif is a common element of pre-Christian
tree-lore; it has been immortalised in the fourteenth century Staffordshire-dialect
poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Gawain poet was a devout Christian, as
is testified by ‘Pearl’, the other major poem attributed to him. He even manages to
interpret the Pentagram, which is inscribed on Gawain’s shield, as a Christian
symbol, and conveniently devotes his hero to the Virgin Mary, rather than to a
pagan goddess. However, it seems obvious that his Green Knight is none other than
the Holly King, the overlord of the dark winter months, and Gawain is the Oak King,
who must, whether by the laws of chivalry or of nature, receive a blow in return at
the end of his reign. The transparency of the Gawain poet’s folkloric whitewash is
testified by the fact that Morgan la Fae, a pagan goddess if ever there was one,
presides over the whole affair. The trysting place of Gawain and the Green Knight
has occasionally, and remarkably convincingly, been identified as Lud’s Church (the
‘cleft ravine’ of this song), a natural geological feature with a far-from-natural
atmosphere, only a bracing winter’s walk from the Roaches in north Staffordshire.
26
IVY
Adorn the final harvest sheaf
With ribbons, ivy-bound,
And give your thanks for all the green
That grows in goodly ground.
Adorn the final harvest sheaf
With ivy twine and ivy leaf:
Dry leaves fly in the wind, and whirl,
As we bring home the Ivy Girl.
The light has changed; the nights grow long;
The cold gusts fade. The golden crowns
Of maidens, manes of laden mares,
Glimpsed through yellowed leaves,
As they bring in the harvest sheaves.
Leaves stir, all bronzed, the burnished orb
Lights all with long rays: auburn glades,
The sheep, the style, the sharpened scythe,
The bundled straw, the swathe, the broom;
Through window panes, the lamp, the loom.
In stillness, silence, sylvan shadows,
The unheard sigh from earthen mould,
Wood-ear fungus, wet and pungent,
Croaking crows, and creeping cold,
Black, grey and brown: gone green and gold.
Source material: Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, Princes
Risborough, 1996, p. 83, remarks: “In some counties the last harvest sheaf carried
home in any parish was the ‘Ivy Girl’, bound with ivy, dressed in lace and ribbons
and carried in triumph as the instrument of continuity and increase for the farm.”
27
BIRCH
“Father, you are growing pale,
The lustre’s left your eyes,
Your breath is weary, voice is stale,
Your words are trite, that once were wise,
And long you stare at yonder tree;
I wonder what it is you see
But golden leaves and papered bark?
You watch that weeping tree ’til dark,
And I am filled with anxious fear
At the waning of the year.”
Tears brimming in her eyes of blue;
Birch, drive out old and bring in new.
“The loamy ground is calling me,
For time has passed me by.
By yonder birch tree bury me,
My daughter, when I die.
Put me in a wicker cage Stilled my laughter, stilled my rage,
Spent my heart and spent my toil Upon my head pile leafy soil,
And on the birch boughs, weeping low
I shall return a darkling crow.”
A crust of frost replaced the dew;
He died before November cold
The leaves lay deep like flakes of gold;
They took his body from the church
And buried him beside the birch.
Springtide soon dispelled her grief;
The dark-veined birch burst into leaf.
The catkins hung in summertide
And seeds were scattered far and wide.
And when the branches cracked with snow
The girl looked up, and saw a crow.
And on the ground, green saplings grew,
Source material: See J.M. Paterson, Tree Wisdom, p. 96.
28
HONEYSUCKLE
Woodbind, wind and hold her,
Woodbind shall enfold her;
Hawk-moths hover in the night—
Love her and behold her.
All about the hazel wind,
Like lovers in their beds entwined.
Flowers, clothe my love in white;
Honeysuckle, twist and bind.
I loved her, but she knew me not,
Distracted was my mind;
I watched her in the garden
Where the honeysuckles wind.
I went to where the coppice grew,
A love-wand for to find;
I wandered to the tangled wood
Where honeysuckles wind.
I cut a wand, by woodbind grooved,
To hunt the fleeting hind,
But she caught me when I turned around
Where honeysuckles wind.
She married me, now we are old,
Our faces aged and lined,
And I shall hold my love so long
As honeysuckles wind.
Source material: Katherine Kear, Flower Wisdom, London, 2000, p. 89, reports a
folk belief which held “that a walking stick made from a hazel stick which had been
encircled and marked with honeysuckle would enable its owner to court the lady of
his dreams.” Gerard’s Herbal (1636 folio) affirms that “The Woodbinde groweth in
woods and hedges, and upon shrubs and bushes, oftentimes winding it selfe so
straight and hard about, that it leaveth his print upon those things so wrapped.” (p.
215.)
29
SPINDLE
Spindle spin and Spindle grow;
Mirth and magic overflow.
Ruddy seed and fine-toothed leaf,
Spindle, dispel gloom and grief.
Her father died when she was seventeen,
And wicked was the man who wed her mother,
And all her hopes and dreams he sought to smother,
Forbidding her to walk amid the green.
The old man cursed and locked her in his keep He hoped to drive her slowly to despair The floor was earthen, clammy was the air;
She sat alone, and watched the spiders creep.
And nought she had, to pass her empty time,
But a spindle, fashioned by her father.
No wool, but only cobwebs could she gather,
The windows dim, and caked with moss and grime.
She thrust her spindle fast into the ground,
And whispered, “All is not as it appears.”
She watered it forlornly with her tears;
But for her sobbing, made no other sound.
And buds grew on the spindle in the morning;
A pair of smooth, green leaves were sprouting soon.
Her delighted eyes beheld, by afternoon,
A little Spindle tree, with leaves adorning.
And overnight grew flowers greenish-white,
And after, clustered fruit as red as roses.
And behold, what morningtide discloses:
Beneath the tree, she’s dancing with delight.
The old man came to gloat and make demand,
And thought he’d find her grieving on the ground;
Bemused by her sweet laughter, nought he found,
But spiders’ webs, and a spindle in her hand.
Spindle spin and Spindle grow;
Mirth and magic overflow.
Ruddy seed and fine-toothed leaf,
Spindle, dispel gloom and grief.
Source material: The lyricist’s imagination, and a variety of folk traditions.
30
HEATHER
Bells of heather, howling wind,
And honey bees upon the heights
Accost the Queen—a dozen drones.
The days grow long, and dry the nights.
And as the lovelorn insects fly,
Garbh Ogh goes homeward,
Home to die.
Ancient, ageless giantess,
Her cart by great elks drawn;
She dines on milk of venison
And breasts from eagles torn.
And hard she’s hunted mountain deer,
Three score and ten her hounds,
All with birds’ names. Each hound’s foot
The peaty hillside pounds.
She gathers stones to build a cairn
As drones draw stings for swords;
She builds it threefold, with a chair
Too great for kings, or dukes, or lords.
A threefold cairn, stone piled on stone,
A threefold woman’s womb—
The Drone is coupling with the Queen—
The cairn becomes her tomb.
And scattered all the Irish elks,
Her wolfish hounds hunt still.
The Drone has died, his nuptials spent.
The Queen has loved; her love must kill.
Source material: According to Robert Graves, The White Goddess, p. 192, “The
eighteenth century antiquary Winslow took Dean Swift to Lough Crew to collect local
legends of the Irish Triple Goddess. Among those collected was one of the death of
Garbh Ogh, an ancient ageless giantess, whose car was drawn by elks...”
31
BEECH
I am Passienus Crispus, orator of Corne,
I am married to a Beech, Diana’s sacred tree.
So oft have I embraced her—look how her bark is worn,
For she is my oracle—my goddess, shelter me.
I have watered her with wine, I have kissed her arching trunk,
In Diana’s sacred grove, on the summit of the hill,
I’ve sipped dew from her leaves, and my ardour made me drunk,
Her fallen leaves my pillow when the night was dark and still.
I have rested in her shade when the new leaves filtered sun,
I have eaten of her nuts, and her wisdom have I found,
She has sheltered me in rainstorms, I’ve watched the water run
From her branches, down her trunk, and into the loamy ground.
I am Passienus Crispus, orator of Corne,
I am married to a Beech, Diana’s sacred tree.
So oft have I embraced her—look how her bark is worn,
For she is my oracle—my goddess, shelter me.
Source material: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, xvi, c. 91. Sir James Frazer, The
Golden Bough, p. 8, argues that priests of the goddess Diana, seeing the Beech tree
as her aspect, may have physically married the tree. If so, it is hardly appropriate to
characterise modern “tree huggers” as “New Age”, though one might well insist that
the level of their commitment is not quite the same as it used to be. See also
Alexander Porteous, The Lore of the Forest, London, 1928, p. 70, and Margaret
Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, pp. 26–27.
32
OAK
I walked within the oaken wood,
The branches black with rooks,
And all was still; I silent stood,
Where the grove grew green and good,
And looked where no one looks.
I looked where no one looks, my friend,
Into the heart of oak;
Before my weary way could wend
I saw her budding branches bend,
And unto me she spoke:
“Both ways I look, my bard of lore,
To first things and to last,
For, behold, I am the door
To what will come; what came before,
To future and to past.”
I gazed at where one branch had grown
About another limb;
I gazed at where, like dryad’s throne
The darkened wood was hard as bone;
The light was dappled, dim;
I gazed at moss, which greenly grew
Upon the fissured bark,
And marvelled then at all she knew,
While the black birds flapped and flew,
And waited until dark.
I saw the armies of the past
Beneath her boughs a-marching,
And then returning home at last,
And on the ground their blood ran fast,
Her branches over-arching.
I saw the mages take her flowers
For the making of a maiden,
Saw children dance in summer showers,
And lovers use her for their bowers,
’Neath limbs with green leaves laden.
I saw a line of mortal men
Returning to the earth.
I saw my children’s children then;
I saw each die, and rise again,
All bound by death and birth.
33
“Oh, gnarlèd oak, who looks both ways,
And needs nought but the sun!
All things pass, and yet she stays,
Whose wisdom counted all our days
Ere they had begun.”
Source material: Based on a well-established folk-tradition that the Oak is the door
to the past and the future.
34
BROOM
With flowers of the Oak,
With flowers of the Broom,
Gwydion made Blodeuedd
Without sperm nor womb.
With flowers of the meadowsweet,
Math caused her heart to beat.
He watched the flowers upon the floor
Arranged in woman’s form,
And as he knelt and stretched his hand
He felt that they were warm.
He watched them turn to woman’s flesh,
The leaf-veins turning red;
He saw the petals turn to hair
About the woman’s head.
He watched as breasts, and hands, and limbs,
And joints grew all as one;
She opened wide Broom-yellow eyes,
Him to look upon.
He breathed upon her open lips,
Like wind upon a rose,
And, though he’d made her, set her free,
To wander as she chose.
Blodeuedd, with eyes of Broom,
With heart of Meadowsweet,
Each cell the smallest part of Oak,
Went forth on silent feet.
Source material: The fourth branch of the Mabinogion. Although Blodeuedd was
made in order to become a “consort to the great god Llew”, she had other ideas.
35
GORSE
Kissing’s out of fashion when the gorse is out of bloom;
Whin flowers brought within a house will bring but death and doom.
A dragon’s born within each flower,
Each gorse bush is a witch’s bower,
And quarreling will staunch a friendship—
They shall part, perforce—
If one should give another a gift of blooming gorse.
He met her on a windswept hill
Where none could see their tryst,
And as she turned towards the furze
He grasped her by the wrist.
He kissed her on the hand
And his lust and love confessed;
He plucked three yellow flowers
And he pinned them to her breast.
Her eyes were blue as cornflowers
And she looked into his heart;
“O you have given gorse to me
And ’twill tear us apart.”
He turned and sidled down the hill,
Now let your tears begin:
She blew the lad a single kiss
And crept within the whin.
And when they took her out in chains
And tied her to the pyre,
They charged her soul with devilry
And courting demons dire.
And every man and woman, child
Accused her all as one;
She whispered then, “Where are your hearts,
And where has my love gone?”
They dragged him to the faggots
And they made him taste the dust—
’Twas then that he repented
Of his wanton, wayward lust.
“I saw her dance with demons,
Skyclad, wearing not a stitch!”
The flames leapt up the wicker wildly;
All the crowd cried, “Witch!”
And when the girl was all consumed
And rendered into ashes,
They strung her lover to the pole
36
And gave him forty lashes.
Then sorely did the lad repent
For loving out of turn;
The embers glowed with yellow flames;
He sat and watched them burn.
He sat and watched them burn, my child,
Then went away to live
A lonely life amid the gorse,
For no one dared forgive.
He died; she came and touched his hand,
And as he reached for hers,
She impaled his open palm
On a sprig of yellow furze.
Source material: The opening verse is derived from a variety of folk traditions
described in Roy Vickery, A Dictionary of Plant Lore, Oxford, 1995, pp. 156–158, and
the opening line is a widespread popular saying. The remainder of the song is the
lyricist’s invention. Whin and furze are synonyms for gorse.
37
ASH
An ash-tree spreads
called Yggdrasill,
High-standing,
soaked and shining,
And from her drip
the dews of dawn
Fate’s flux
from wells refining.
Three maidens come there,
three all-knowing,
From the lake
which licks the tree;
One is Fated,
one is Future—
These their names—
the third: Must-Be.
They scribe their laws,
they steer the lives
Of fettered slaves,
sons of the free.
Kormt and Ormt,
Kerlaugar rivers:
Thor wades each day
their waters wide
When he goes
to watch and judge,
The Yggdrasill
ash at his side.
The bridge afire,
burnt with flames,
The waters boil,
and woe betide!
Glad and Golden
go with Glassy,
Silvertuft
and Skeidbrimir,
Goldtuft, Lightfoot,
Gone and Gleaming,
The Æsir’s horses,
and Sinir:
These they ride
to sit as judges,
And Yggdrasill
is standing near.
Three roots grow
in three directions
Beneath the ground
from Yggdrasill;
One for the dead,
one for the living
One for frost-giants,
growing still.
Ratatosk
the running squirrel,
Scampers over
Yggdrasill;
He drags a message
to the Dragon
Each day: it is
the Eagle’s will
Four Harts there are,
with heads thrown back,
Four Harts who browse
her highest boughs:
Dain is one,
and one Dvalin,
One Duneyr,
one Durathror.
More serpents sleep
’neath Yggdrasill
Than any fool
could ever fight:
Grafvitnir’s minions,
Goin and Moin
Grabak black,
Grafvollud white,
Ofnir, Svafnir,
odious serpents
Yggdrasill’s
bare branches bite.
38
Yggdrasill
she groans in anguish
More than any
man can know:
Harts bite her branches,
mould makes marks,
And Nidhogg bites her
from below.
Yggdrasill,
she stands and shudders!
The great tree groans,
the giant grins,
Down roads to hell
they run, in horror,
Devoured by fire—
demon’s kin!
Source material: The Poetic Edda: paraphrases of ‘The Seeress’s Prophecy’, 19–20,
47; ‘Grimnir’s Sayings’, 29–35.
39
APPLE
Captain Spratty Knight
Wassails left and right,
Spreading fecundity
To every dormant apple tree;
He blows his horn at night
To scare off evil sprites;
We dance with delight,
And sing with Spratty Knight:
Stand fast, root, bear well, top,
Pray, good God, send us a howling crop—
And a little heap under the stairs—
Hulloa, boys, hulloa, and blow the horn!
Spratty’s got a gun,
The wicked sprites to stun;
Never taunted by their tricks:
He beats the wicked sprites with sticks;
They scurry under stones
To nurse their broken bones.
Pray, good God, send us a howling crop,
Every twig, apples big—
Spratty has a lamp
To dispel dark and damp,
Green crab apples, cored and roast,
And, soaked in cider, crusty toast;
He gives, with gaping glee
These good gifts to the tree.
Every twig, apples big, every bough, apples now—
Spratty gives a shout
To bring good faeries out;
About the tree they rush
40
And the robin, and the thrush
Will come, when it is day
To steal the crumbs away,
While we dance with delight
Every twig, apples big, every bough, apples now,
Hats full, caps full—
Spratty has a tankard,
He is a happy drunkard,
He’s a chuckler, he’s a charmer
And he’ll ask the merry farmer,
For cider, in full payment
For wassailing entertainment,
And we’ll dance with delight
Hats full, caps full, five bushel sacks full—
When winter turns to spring,
Spratty shall not sing.
When the summer sun is glowing
He’ll watch the apples growing,
But when the light is failing
He’ll once more go wassailing
And we’ll dance with delight
Hats full, caps full, five bushel sacks full—
Source material: Roy Vickery, A Dictionary of Plant-Lore, Oxford, 1995, pp. 6–7. The
chorus is the wassailing song attributed to Spratty Knight, Captain of a wassailing
band from Duncton in West Sussex in the 1920s. The gifts given to the apple tree
and faeries are described by Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants,
Princes Risborough, 1999, pp. 14–15. It is a common folk custom to fire guns into
apple trees. If aimed at the branches, the intention appears to be the scaring-off of
41
evil spirits. On other occasions, apple trees which have given poor crops are
threatened, and shot in the trunk to make them more fertile next year.
42
HAWTHORN
Beware, beware the hawthorn,
Lest it strike you down,
For if you take an axe to it
You’ll rue that you were born.
At Redmarley farm in Worcestershire
A faerie hawthorn stood,
And folk would come from miles around
To see the gnarlèd wood;
Its faerie blossoms filled the air
With an erotic scent—
The farmer took a mighty axe
And to the tree he went.
Oh, the farmer took a mighty axe
“I’m sick of all these nosy-parkers!”
The angry farmer cried.
He chopped it down; the jagged leaves
Withered all and died.
First the fellow broke his leg
And then he broke his arm,
And not long after that, ’tis said
That lightning struck his farm.
And not long after that, ’tis said
That lightning struck his farm.
At Clehonger, I know it’s true,
A faerie hawthorn stood
A farmer took a mighty axe
Oh, a farmer took a mighty axe
“I need this land to grow good rye,
This tree is in my way!”
But with one blow he dropped the axe
And screaming, ran away,
For blood ran out the cleavèd trunk
As from a severed neck,
And I’ve heard tell that ever since
He’s been a nervous wreck.
And I’ve heard tell that ever since
43
He’s been a nervous wreck.
In County Meath, last century,
A farmer took a mighty axe
Oh, a farmer took a mighty axe
“I shall dispense with rituals,
I need to plough this land!”
He stopped and leant against a thorn
And drove it through his hand.
He died of septicaemia
Not many evenings after;
The churchyard, at the funeral
Was filled with faerie laughter.
The churchyard, at the funeral
Was filled with faerie laughter.
In Berwick St John, it is said,
A farm-lad took a mighty axe
Oh, a farm-lad took a mighty axe
“I need this thorn for firewood!”
And on the earthen hill;
He raised his axe and chopped all night
The hawthorn for to kill.
And from that day no hen would lay,
No fawn born in the wild,
No cow would calf, or so they say,
And no woman bear a child.
No cow would calf, or so they say,
And no woman bear a child.
On a scenic bit of real estate,
44
A builder took a mighty axe
Oh, a builder took a mighty axe
The branches soon were cleared away,
The trunk was chopped and piled;
He built a mansion for a lord,
His lady, and their child,
But all were dead, I’ve heard it said,
Before the Mayday morn;
And thus the May shall do to you
If you chop down a thorn.
And thus the May shall do to you
If you chop down a thorn.
Source material: The hawthorn is notorious for avenging itself against over-zealous
axe-wielders. The large number of folk narratives in which a felled hawthorn gains
its revenge by striking the surrounding land with infertility may well point to the fact
that the May is itself a symbol of fecundity. Many observers, Robert Graves amongst
them, have noted that the flowering hawthorn carries a strong scent of female
sexuality. In my own opinion, the flowers smell identical to the combined sex odours
of a man and a woman after intercourse. See Margaret Baker, Discovering the
Folklore of Plants, p. 70.
45
ROWAN
Bare, each branch, as I walk by,
The sky like tarnished steel,
And underfoot, brown, frozen earth,
A dearth of herbs that heal.
Bent, each bough, with weight of snow;
Winds blow, the land lies bleak,
And inspiration’s wrapped in shrouds;
Dark clouds hide all I seek,
Until I climb the highland hill
Where Rowan stands alone,
And though the winds are squalling still—
All white, the branches blown—
The stars of heaven have come down:
The Rowan wears them like a crown.
It seems the constellations glow
In facets of the flaking snow.
Damp with dew, each breaking bud;
The flood breaks banks below,
And bleary-eyed, the badgers wake,
The snake is lithe, but slow,
And though the ice begins to thaw,
Once more the cuckoo calls—
Inspiration’s dormant still;
My will yet stops and stalls,
And though the air still bears a chill
Her milky flowers have grown,
And all around the fecund tree
Flies the midge and hums the bee,
The ground still clammy, cold and bare—
And yet her perfume fills the air.
Fledglings fly, the ground grows dry,
And high, the skylark sings,
And butterflies on bell-flowers settle
With brittle brimstone wings.
But parched and thirsty is my heart,
My art by bindweed bound,
And sound nor sight can waken words;
Birds scratch the dusty ground,
46
And soft and dappled shadows spill
On lichen-covered stone,
Her pinnate leaves, which filter sun,
Convince me that, ere time begun,
The first man from the Ash was grown,
The first woman from the Rowan.
Flowers fall and brown leaves curl,
And whirl, in eddies chill,
And cider apples, fed by rain;
Gold grain, the baskets fill.
But though the berries, black and bruised
Are used to brew rich wine,
And fieldfares fly, the fates refuse
The muse that once was mine,
And red-lipped Bridget’s sitting still
Upon her Rowan throne;
The fieldfares come to kiss her mouth
Before their flying for the south.
Her inspiration fills me now;
Red berries weigh each burdened bough.
Source material: No tree has inspired more folkloric associations than the Rowan.
See Robert Graves, The White Goddess, pp. 167–8; J.M. Paterson, Tree Wisdom, pp.
225–242; Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, London, 1980, pp. 133–
136; Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant-Lore, Oxford, 1995, pp. 319–322.
47
WILLOW
Bind willow leaves about him, singing,
Garlanded Green George,
All your goodly gifts a-bringing,
Garlanded Green George,
Bow down to him and call him king,
Go to the river, fling him in,
And let the rites of spring begin
With garlanded Green George.
Dance about the willow tree,
A leaf for you, a leaf for me,
And all that’s left of leaves shall be
For garlanded Green George.
Lass with child, spread on the ground
Your mother’s garments, all around,
“If they catch leaves, your child is sound,”
Says garlanded Green George.
Old and infirm, spit on the root;
Good health to you when grows the shoot,
And let the revellers play the flute
Bedecked with leaves from toe to top,
Green George blesses beast and crop,
Goes to the tree and nought can stop
Good garlanded Green George.
Then he takes iron nails three,
And knocks them fast into the tree,
Then pulls them out, for all to see,
Does garlanded Green George.
And as he pulls them out again,
He calls on the river and the rain
To grow the hay and feed the grain,
Our garlanded Green George.
And by the river he alights;
He drops them in for the water sprites,
And every grown man grasps and fights
They grab Green George, the willow-lad,
Willow-bound and willow-clad,
The greenest George they ever had,
Good garlanded Green George.
They throw him in the waters wide
48
Where willows bend on either side,
And cow gives calf and man takes bride
From garlanded Green George.
Source material: The song describes a spring fertility ritual celebrated by the
gypsies of Transylvania and Roumania, as described by J.G. Frazer, The Golden
Bough, pp. 126–127. The garments of pregnant women are spread beneath the
willow, and if leaves are lying on them in the morning, the mothers will be granted
safe deliveries. The old and the sick spit on the tree in order to prolong their lives.
Green George himself embodies the spirit of the willow tree, and by throwing the
nails into the river, and by being thrown into the river himself (Frazer suggests that
an effigy is used), he “ensures the favour of the water-spirits by putting them in
direct communication with the tree.”
49
ELDER (ROLLRIGHT ROCK)
An ancient Elder stands alone
With dark-leafed ivy overgrown:
Thick perfume, and the milky white
Flowers in the growing night,
Here in the bark your eye may trace
The outline of a wizened face,
But few are those who’ve lived to see
Who lives within the Elder tree.
A Danish king with men four score
Came to England to make war;
They fought their way up to the wolds,
Pillaging and stealing gold,
Until at last one summer’s night
He came to camp in old Rollright.
He came there shouting, Stick, stock, stone!
As England’s King shall I be known!
Three of his men were less than sure
That he was right to thus wage war;
A wee way off they stopped to stoop,
And huddle, in a little group.
But up the hillside forged the king,
His other men stood in a ring;
They stood there chanting, Stick, stock, stone!
As England’s King shall he be known!
But as the King climbed up the hill,
All down his back he felt a chill;
He turned around: nought could he see
But a gnarled old elder tree.
He shrugged his shoulders and he grinned,
“Why, it was nothing but the wind!”
He climbed on, laughing, Stick, stock, stone!
And yet it seemed the air grew colder;
He felt a hard hand grasp his shoulder.
He whirled about, and who was there
But the Elder Witch! She gave a glare,
And as she spoke, the King did shake:
Seven long strides shalt thou take,
And if Long Compton thou canst see,
King of England thou shalt be!
The King looked up the gentle slope,
He laughed, “Why, Witch! You have no hope
50
Of stopping me! In seven strides
I’ll see around me on all sides:
In six I’ll be atop this hill,
And you’ll be forced to grant my will!”
He strode on, snickering, Stick, stock, stone!
But as the King began to stride
Before him rose a barrow wide;
It hid Long Compton from his view.
His sword upon the ground he threw,
“You Witch! You hag! That isn’t fair!
Curse you and your tangled hair!
He grabbed her wrist, cried, Stick, stock, stone!
The Elder Witch laughed hard and long,
And at last she sung her song:
Long Compton town thou canst not see,
So England’s King thou shalt not be.
Rise up stick, and stand still stone,
For England’s King thou shalt be none.
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be,
And I shall be an eldern tree!
An ancient Elder, now a hedge
Blooms along the pathway’s edge:
And beyond, a ring of stones,
With moss and lichens overgrown.
And higher up the gentle slope
Stands the King, bereft of hope,
And another, huddled group of three:
Rollright stones, and Elder Tree.
Source material: Local Cotswold legend about the Rollright Stones. The refrain is
traditional.
51
YEW
A yew grew in a forest glade
Why am I dressed so darkly?
Her fingers stretched where faeries played
Your clothes last all the year.
She wept and pined, for leaves of gold
Lamenting needles short and cold
The faeries sat amongst her roots
And flew with wands to touch her shoots
They gave her leaves both gold and fair
But robbers came and stripped her bare
The faeries sat upon her bough
And gave her leaves of crystal now
They grew and gleamed with magical spell
But hailstorms came; the crystals fell
The faeries fluttered high in her crown
Her russet trunk wore such a frown
They gave her leaves both broad and green
But deer came browsing ’til no leaves were seen
So they gave her needles short and stout
The winter winds whirled about
And not one needle fell to ground
The faeries laughed, and danced around:
Source material: J.M. Paterson, Tree Wisdom: The definitive guidebook to the myth,
folklore and healing power of trees, London, 1996, p. 20.
52
Yew Auguries
I dreamed I sat beneath a Yew,
Ivy and dog’s mercury, toxic companions,
Scrawled across the red and powdered earth,
The great bole’s girth growing branches,
Tree trunk thick, each of them,
Bristling with half-started shoots.
The needle-scattered roots enveloped me.
Great tufts of red twigs, peppered
With fallen fruits, nut-hard,
And browned needles, like ants’ nests.
A green curtain, black by dusk,
Hanging almost to the ground.
Skulls must be buried here,
Root-strangled, in graves
Deprived of sky.
I dreamed I sat beneath a Yew,
And I shall die.
I dreamed I stood before a Yew,
Beside a lichened gravestone in the sun,
The trunk a hulk beneath a shield of green,
Leaves silvered by sunlight, and dull in shade,
Splashed with specks of blood,
Which fall and turn ruddy brown;
Dried warrior blood, woad and ochre,
Draining through the ground.
Longbows have been bent here,
Potions made by men
Who can’t forgive.
I dreamed I stood before a Yew,
And I shall live.
Source material: Zadkiel’s Dream Book, p. 138: “If you dream that you sit under a yew-tree,
it fortells that your life will not be long. But if you merely gaze upon it, and admire it, it is a
sign that you will live long.”
53
PART 3: Alternative Energy:
Parasitic, Saprophytic and
Insectivorous Plants
LOUSEWORTS
I have become an admirer of lopsidedness
In louseworts; it is one of nature’s little joys.
The hood, a ruddy cowl, stands askew
Above the lower lip. The bees the plant employs
As couriers, unwitting, stand aslant,
And brush the poking stigma with their pates,
Then push the plant’s pink labia aside
To suck the nectar. The lousewort waits
As anthers, brushed by hairs, release
Their load; and all around the fenland seems to pant.
While sundews flinch and butterworts exhale,
The bee, bewildered, seeks another plant,
For parasites caress before they harm,
And stealth knows all the perquisites of charm.
Source material: There are two species of Pedicularis in Britain: the meadow
lousewort (P. sylvatica) and the marsh lousewort or red rattle (P. palustris). Both
have slightly asymmetrical labiate flowers which allow bees to land on one side of
the lower lip without colliding with the hood. The stigma protrudes beyond the hood,
so that it brushes the head of any insect that lands on the lip, picking up the pollen
grains adhering to it from an earlier visit to another flower. Inside the hood, the
stamens are exactly positioned so that the bee cannot access the nectar without
being smeared with more pollen. Louseworts are also partially parasitic, deriving a
portion of their nutrients from the roots of other plants. They were once blamed for
transferring lice to sheep, but in fact, the opposite is true: louseworts contain a
natural insecticide. I wonder whether this is produced to prevent bees from chewing
at the outside of the corolla and stealing the nectar without coming into contact with
the anthers; this is certainly their habit with plants such as monk’s hood. See G.
Clarke Nutall and H. Essenhigh Corke, Wildflowers as they Grow, London, c. 1914,
pp. 21-22.
54
DODDER
With dodder and with dead men’s hair
My bare stick nest is thatched,
My young ones hatched in spools
Of devil’s silk, spun with dew-falls
Over clover and ling, plucked
By my black bill, wax flowers
Dangling. Thanks shall I give,
By my craw, to the horned one
Who wove you, and the white worm
Of your root, which drinks green blood
And never touches soil.
Source material: Dodder is an entirely parasitic plant with no chlorophyll. It
attaches itself to a range of host plants, its haustoria tapping into the sap. The
Welsh name for dodder is Sidan y Brain, or “the crow’s silk”, and legend has it that
the plant is spun at night by the Devil.
55
VENUS FLY-TRAP
Out of one multifaceted eye
She perceives, in fading light
The world beyond her cage,
Where once she flew, mated,
Ate dung, dropped living maggots.
She can poke a single,
Scrabbling leg between the bars,
Wave it ineffectually in air,
But green and fleshy lips
Kissed the buzz from her.
Trigger hairs dig into her, and
She cannot squirm, cradled alive
In her own little charnel house.
Her other eye gazes into the haze
Of its green and hungry metabolism.
Stasis. Dissolution.
She perceives, in fading light
The world beyond her cage.
Source material: Based on personal childhood observations of home-grown Venus
Fly Traps.
56
SUNDEW
Don’t struggle, dear
It only makes it worse,
Like being entangled
In sticky toffee:
Striving only serves
To stick you faster.
Now, if ever, is the time
To learn detachment,
Suspended, as you are
Between earth and heaven.
You have no need
Of earthly things:
None of them
Can aid you.
There is solace
In this death:
Towering above you
A white flower.
Source material: Based on observation of Sundews in Albany, Western Australia,
where the species are spectacularly diverse. All sundews kill their prey in the same
way, and many have beautiful flowers.
57
BLADDERWORTS
The moss draws water, a thirsty sponge
Plastered over granite, inches thick,
The air above it slick with moisture.
Flowers, gorged as arteries, hang
Like heads of sanguine puppets
From stems pulsing with redness,
And like the scales of some reptile,
Green but blushing, bladders
Cobble the moss, gleaming
With a film of wetness. Beneath,
Crustaceans swim among the moss stems,
Microscopic. Bladder mouths
Gape like jaws, toothed with bristles:
One brush with a branched antenna,
And the valve-trap springs.
Sucked inside, the sealed door slams.
Prison walls exude
The juice of death.
Source material: Bladderworts (Utricularia spp.) are aquatic and semi-aquatic
insectivorous plants. This poem describes an Australian species, Utricularia
menziesii, observed near to the Point Possession walking trail, Albany, Western
Australia.
58
BUTTERWORT
1. Look in mossy groins for curling leaves
Of butterwort. Pull these up, and for the sake
Of the squeamish, pick the flies off them.
2. Milk one reindeer (a cow may be substituted,
But is not as spectacular). Hurry; you must
Use it warm and fresh. Cooling spoils it.
3. Line a strainer with butterwort leaves,
Slimier side up. Pour milk through them,
Let it drip. Stand until sour.
4. Eat it with relish: compact and tenacious,
Delicious in taste, but setting a little aside
To use as leaven for a second pail.
Source material: Butterwort is a carnivorous plant which traps insects on its
adhesive leaves. Laplanders use the leaves as a sort of rennet for solidifying milk.
“Linnaeus says that the solid milk of the Laplanders is prepared by pouring it warm
and fresh from the cow over a strainer on which fresh leaves of Pinguicula have been
laid. The milk, after passing among them, is left for a day or two to stand, until it
begins to turn sour; it throws up no cream, but becomes compact and tenacious,
and most delicious in taste. It is not necessary, that fresh leaves should be used
after the milk is once turned: on the contrary, a small portion of this solid milk will
act upon that which is fresh, in the manner of yeast.” (John Lindley, The Vegetable
Kingdom: The Structure, Classification and Uses of Plants, London, 1853, p. 686.)
59
CHRISTMAS TREE
After the burning, grass tussocks are charcoal clumps
That crunch underfoot; blackboy trunks crumble
Into gummy, blackened scales, and Banksia cones
Puke out seeds. Hakeas are knotted scribbles,
Their pods split and blistered, waiting for rain.
The land is torpid, weak after shedding its skin.
But the season is like a new instar, or an imago
Emerging, and the grey-leaved Christmas Tree
Sprouts flowers in saffron fingers, striving
For sun. Beneath the blackened earth, hungry
Runners seek foreign roots. Unsuspecting hosts
Supply her food, assist her strange rejuvenation.
Source material: The Western Australian Christmas Tree is an arborescent
mistletoe, the roots of which parasitize a wide range of hosts, both annual and
perennial. It produces spectacular clumps of yellow flowers in terminal fascicles up
to 25 cm long, and blooms more prolifically in the season after a fire.
60
BROOMRAPE
Blanched as blood-drained flesh,
Broomrapes grow in deepest shade
Despising the sun. Their leaves
Are scales, their racemes rise
From soil, like vampires’ fingers,
The flowers shadowed, bruised
Like vampires’ eyes.
Hidden from sight, roots
Clamp round roots, suck
From the flux of life.
No need to grow green:
Flourish, rather, on others’ juices.
Source material: Broomrapes are distributed worldwide in temperate regions. They
do not produce chlorophyll, but are wholly parasitic, the roots clamping onto those
of other plants. Their colloquial name arises from the fact that in Britain, the host
plant of the Broomrape is normally Broom or Gorse.
61
PITCHER PLANT
The enticement is a gift of honey; the whole thing
An elaborate seduction; her red pigment
Like blotched flesh, fresh from exertion.
Lick the sweet nectar from the lip; suck it down.
A foretaste of pleasures within, you assume,
And one slip, one flail of hinged chitin
Drops you into it. Flies’ eyes bob like buoys,
Detached wings are gleaming rafts
On a sea of your own soup, welling
In waxen walls.
You might as well
Drown now. The nuptials are ended.
Source material: Based on personal childhood observations of home grown Pitcher
Plants.
62
Cow Wheat
Beneath the beeches, wood ants spread seeds,
Grappling the grains in champing mandibles,
Hoarding their own bread, black and bitter,
Between the grass stems. Crickets stridulate.
Women would have them for their cows,
Browsing the purse-lipped flowers, making
Milk more yellow, by the coarse sympathy
Of ingestion, and the belch of churning cud,
But banish them from wheat fields. The bane
Of blackened flour bakes as pauper’s bread.
The roots entwined will not untangle.
Black seed will not winnow, in any wind.
Source material: Cow wheats (Melampyrum spp.) are semi-parasitic plants which
derive water and minerals from the roots of grasses. The seeds are spread by ants,
and bees are the only insects strong enough to open their flowers and pollinate
them. The seed is reminiscent of wheat grain, but black in colour, and it is said to
make bread black and bitter. As a result, it has been known as “poverty weed”,
because it reduces the market value of cereals. However Linnaeus asserted that the
best and yellowest butter is made when cows browse on cow wheat flowers. See
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, London, 1996, p. 334, Macgregor Skene, A Flower
Book for the Pocket, Oxford, 1935, p. 281, and C.A. Johns, Flowers of the Field,
London, 1949, pp. 201–202.
63
PART 4: Orchids
FRAGRANT ORCHID
At twilight, moth wings quiver among vetches.
Hawkweeds fold inward, suns imploding,
And blackbirds chink in monotone,
Abandoning song.
Pollen, chalk-dust, haze the hill;
In a lamb’s eye, a glaze of sleep,
And on the wind a fragrance stirs
The residue of day.
By moonlight, moth tongues probe the flowers
And curling tubes receive them, musk-pink
And translucent; nectar-titred,
Candied receptacles.
Moth tongues caress the moist viscida.
Pollinia drag as they withdraw,
Nature’s anti-prophylactics,
Slim packages of sperm.
Source material: David Lang, Orchids of Britain: A Field Guide, Oxford, 1980.
64
FLY ORCHID (Ophrys insectifera)
I am more prized for being concealed
By dog’s mercury, in an unwalked wood.
Kneel before me when the dew dries
In clear globes on my green hood.
A single spike from the dark mould
Thrusts through leaves of beech and birch,
The cold fled, and you shall find,
Upon the spike, we flies perch.
Others shall be men, or bees,
Or purple maids, in spotted frocks,
Slippers, lizards, monkeys. Leaves
Coiled like springs of wound clocks.
My ruse is simpler: male flies
Mistake me for a sleeping mate,
My pollen spread, I multiply
All thanks to those I imitate.
I am more prized for being concealed
By dog’s mercury, in an unwalked wood
And yet my lover is reviled,
And you would kill him, if you could.
Source material: Fly orchids are comparatively difficult to find, appearing on single
spikes amongst the ground vegetation on the edges of woodlands. Like the bee
orchid, it is thought that they evolved to resemble flies in order to entice the insect
they imitate into “mating” with them, thereby spreading their pollen. This does not,
however, account for the wide range of other orchid forms, which so excite the
imagination.
65
BEE ORCHID (Ophrys apifera)
Well, you can’t do it for everyone, I suppose.
I know I made all the right moves, having
Been successful on previous occasions, but she
Mustn’t have been in the mood; she didn’t
Make the right sorts of noises, not a hum,
Let alone the high-pitched buzz of ecstasy
I had been expecting. I grappled with her
Expertly (she looked fetching through my
Multifaceted lenses), but she wavered
Like a wet foxglove in an autumn wind,
And try as I might, I could not bring on
Consummation, though my hardware
Seemed in working order. I could handle
Failure, if it wasn’t for the insult, but these
Custard-coloured horns make me look
A cuckold. It’s the mockery I’m
Bound to get from all the other drones
That makes me wish I never met her.
Source material: Bee orchids imitate the size, shape and colouration of a female
bumble bee. Male bumble bees attempt to copulate with the orchid lip, only to
discover that yellow pollinia have been plastered to their heads. See W.B. Turrill,
British Plant Life, London, 1962, p. 163.
66
EARLY PURPLE ORCHID (Orchis mascula)
Salop, semen-thick with starch:
Wipe it from the lip. Let the dregs
Drip on the table. Organs
Of generation grew in the mould,
Spliced with shoots, gave rise
To flowers on proud stalks
And fingers flecked with blood.
Grubbed up and ground,
Laced with spirits, eaten
With a spoon, licked out
Of the corners of the cup.
Provocative to venery:
Enough grew in Cobham Park
To pleasure every seaman’s wife
In Rochester. Has grown
Scarce lately, alas.
Source material: Norman E. Hickin remarks that in 1968, he did not see a single
bloom of the early purple orchid in the Wyre forest, and contrasts this experience
with a spring forty-five years earlier when the meadows around Dowles Church were
full of them. “This can only have been caused,” he surmises, “by what was
apparently a harmless and attractive pastime of little girls picking flowers.” (See The
Natural History of an English Forest, Newton Abbot, 1972, p. 101.) However, given
that the tubers of this orchid, which contain bassorine, a starch-like substance,
have long been regarded as a highly efficacious aphrodisiac, it is tempting to
attribute the decline in numbers to its reputation, rather than to little girls. Salop, a
soft drink made out of the dried and ground tubers, was a popular drink in Britain
before the introduction of coffee and tea, and was consumed in establishments
devoted to the purpose. Salop appears to have been a common refreshment for
Victorian labourers, perhaps because it is highly nutritious. Richard Mabey (Food for
Free: a Guide to the Edible Plants of Britain, Glasgow, 1972, pp. 72-73) claims that
one ounce of bassorine is “sufficient to sustain a man for a whole day”. The quip
about Cobham Park is quoted by Mabey from an unidentified seventeenth century
botanist, and the Royal College of Surgeons included orchid roots in the aphrodisiac
mixture recommended in their Pharmacopoeia. The early purple orchid has
presumably gained the more ominous folk names ‘Gethsemane’, ‘king’s fingers’,
‘bloody man’s fingers’ and ‘dead man’s thumbs’ because the leaves have red
markings which look like drops of blood.
67
PYRAMIDAL ORCHID (Anacamptis pyramidalis)
Come out from the shade of the yew;
The oaks are done flowering, the broom
Is in full bloom at the edge of the Dene.
Grassland on limestone, a stippled swathe, over
Sheer cliffs, and ocean, smeared grey as oyster-flesh,
Meadowsweet, ruddy stemmed, half grown.
Eyes blurred by sunlight. Orchid spikes
Are smudged purple, applied with palette knife,
Interpunctions in colours of contrast.
The wind is dabbed with butterflies,
Wing-eyes impressionistic, blinking blue.
Little pointillisms, pollinia line their tongues.
Source material: Based on observation of orchids in flower on the magnesian
grassland at the edge of a coastal dene, county Durham, in 1996. Pyramidal orchids
favour lime-rich soils, and are pollinated by butterflies and moths, the pollinia
attaching themselves to the insect’s proboscis. Summerhayes (Wild Orchids in
Britain, p.50) reports “as many as eleven pairs [of pollinia] having been observed on
the proboscis of a single moth”.
68
EARLY MARSH ORCHID (Orchis latifolia)
Another leaf in yawning spring,
Tapering tubers the first cause.
The final upward thrust gives
Orchis incarnata, the Earth
Made flesh, to a world of air.
For a fleeting time, it dwelt
Among them, those blemished
Cousins, common, spotted,
Wrinkled in the unfolding, wantonly
Opening tongues for humblebees.
But this is the hybrid’s hour,
And Earth has spawned
A swarm, a host of drones,
Not fleshlike, but bearing
The taint and signature
Of contingent flowers.
Source material: My father notes in his list of updated names for orchids illustrated
in John Curtis’s British Entomology, vols 1-12 (1824-1835), that “Summerhayes
(1951) accepted Orchis latifolia – the ‘Early Marsh Orchid’ – as a common British
species, and provided a colour photo closely comparable with Curtis’s beautiful
engraving [of Dactylorhiza maculata]; but neither the binomial nor the English name
are traceable in either Clapham, Tutin and Warburg (1962) or Stace (1997)! ‘Orchis
latifolia’ has evidently been ‘lost’ among the dactylorchids, where hybridization has
contributed to a taxonomic and nomenclatural mess.” (See the British Insects link on
the Delta website.) Many species of orchid worldwide are capable of hybridising to
produce fertile offspring, which exhibit variable combinations of the characteristics
of the parent plants. Often, large swathes of ground can be taken over by the hybrid
forms, resulting in what is known as a hybrid “swarm”. The name Orchis incarnata
was sometimes applied to a variant of Summerhayes’s ‘Early Marsh Orchid’, which
was so named because it had flesh-coloured flowers.
69
BIRD’S NEST ORCHID (Neottia nidus-avis)
Nine years underground
Garnering from mould;
Nine autumns’ windfalls
Blanket out the cold.
Dews of nine summers
Between the sods seep;
Nine spring awakenings
Leave her still asleep.
Then she will awake
Deep within the shade,
Beneath the green beech,
Never in the glade.
Upon a single stem
Away from human eye
Brown flowers open
Inviting the fly,
Except when the root
Unawares has grown
Twining her tangles
Underneath a stone.
She cannot break through;
She cannot grow around:
Then shall Neottia
Flower underground.
Source material: The bird’s nest orchid is entirely saprophytic, subsisting on
nutrients derived from the soil by the mycorhizal fungus with which it enjoys a
symbiotic relationship. It has little or no chlorophyll, and is incapable of
manufacturing food through photosynthesis, but this enables it to grow in deep
shade, such as that encountered in beech woods. The orchid remains as an
underground root for around nine years, gradually building up enough food reserves
to send forth a flower spike, which is pollinated by insects. Like many orchids, the
flowers are also capable of self-pollination. Occasionally, specimens have been
recorded which have met some obstruction, and yet have successfully flowered and
seeded without ever breaking the surface of the soil. (Summerhayes, Wild Orchids in
Britain, pp. 193-198.)
70
FROG ORCHID (Coeloglossum viride)
Little, green, unfroglike flowers,
Unnoticed misnomers, frog orchids
Spawn themselves gratuitously,
Where the turf is close-cropped,
Missed by the brushing mouths,
Shaken by the cudsweet breaths
Of occasional cows. No rhizome
Serves in their duplication, only
Seeds so miniscule a gust of wind
May send them to the stratosphere,
And, earlier, surprised ichneumons
Plastered with pollinia, in spidering
Flight, from flower to insignificant
Flower. Nectar enough to spire
The spindled fly to indifferent sky
And back again to ground, to stab
Some grub, with needled ovipositor
Primed and throbbing. Thence to return
To flowers high as cloven hooves,
Lured to green stigmas by honeyed airs.
Source material: Frog orchids do not look especially like frogs, and are easily
overlooked because of their small stature, and because of the colour of their flowers,
which is the same shade of green as the stems and leaves. Many orchids reproduce
through the production of enormous numbers of very small seeds, but unlike other
species which also reproduce by rhizomatous growth, frog orchids are almost
exclusively dependent on sexual reproduction. Ichneumon flies are hymenopterous
insects which deposit their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars. After the eggs hatch,
the larval ichneumons devour the caterpillars from the inside, emerging from their
corpses after their hosts have pupated.
71
GREEN MAN ORCHID (Ophrys anthropophora)
Tubers twinned, like testes,
Seeding gibbets, for strung-up
Homunculi, vegetable
Marionettes, swinging
Like hanged men turned green.
An exceeding great host
Their strings held by the wind.
Source material: Man orchids bear spikes containing as many as ninety flowers.
The lip of each flower is shaped like a minute human form.
72
JUG ORCHID (Pterostylis recurva)
The loam sinks and oozes beneath my foot,
Mottled with sundews, raw coloured,
Like fresh bruises. Mosquitos swarm
To suck my blood: so many of them
Each move squashes some, in their lust
For drinking. The orchid hangs green veined
In my viewfinder, the focus shifting.
It is hard to stay still, inhale to press the shutter,
Restrain the urge to slap.
I would curse
The whole whining multitude, but for this:
One brush, by one of these bloodsuckers,
Against the labellum, and it is trapped,
Spreadeagled against the column. The exit route
Is narrow, smears pollen over glistening wings;
The orchid perpetuated by this.
One of them is on my hand now, proboscis primed.
I steel myself to press the shutter; let it suck.
Source material: Pterostylis recurva is a native of southwestern Australia, and is
fertilised by small insects such as gnats and mosquitos. It is difficult to ascertain
what benefit is gained from the transaction by the insect, or indeed, what attracts it
to the flower in the first place, unless the petals somehow remind it of living flesh.
However, when I photographed a specimen at Cranbrook, near the Stirling Range,
the air was so full of mosquitoes that it seemed quite believable that they should
become trapped within the flower purely by accident.
73
PINK FAIRIES (Caladenia spp.)
Burning raises them
Springing from stones
The hue of rusted iron.
Sunlight opens them,
Impertinent blushers
With gaping mouths.
Insects serve them,
Winged little waiters
Attending lapping tongues.
Source material: Caladenia latifolia, and the lower-growing Caladenia reptans, both
of which are native to South-Western Australia, bloom in profusion in the spring
following hot summer bushfires.
74
DONKEY ORCHID (Diuris brumalis)
Without the ears he would be
Convincing. Anyone would take him for what
He is not, but he is belied,
And only bees would believe him.
Perhaps he too believes
Like an emperor in illusory clothes,
But nothing he has touched
Has ever turned to gold –
Nothing – except himself.
Source material: Donkey orchids imitate the forms and colours of native Australian
pea plants, thereby attracting bees which pollinate them without gaining the nectar
reward. It seems that the bees are blind to the vastly exaggerated lateral lobes,
which look to human beings rather like donkeys’ ears. Ovid recounts that after
Midas had his disagreeable adventure with the golden touch, he received an ass’s
ears after presuming to dispute the musical discernment of the gods.
(Metamorphoses, Book 11.)
75
COWSLIP ORCHID (Caladenia flava)
A single seedling
clones
a swathe of colour,
each flower
bearing
a little bleeding signature,
a rash of authenticity.
Source material: Each group of cowslip orchid plants is genetically identical, the
individuals having cloned themselves from an individual seedling. See Andrew
Brown, Orchids of the South West, Western Australia, 1999, p. 10.
76
LEEK ORCHID (Prasophyllum spp.)
My eyes have grown attuned to muted colours;
The scrub resolves itself into infinite shades.
I am looking for pitcher plants, and find none,
Though their pert and purple lids I know
Must hide behind every next tussock, if only
I could look forever. Without solicitation,
The marvel unsought is there: a single spike,
Red as liver, with flowers white as a corpse’s
Eyes. They stare back, like blood-drained
Blooms of Orobanche, criss-crossed
By cobwebs. Not flamboyant, but resolute
As Death. In the long grass, tiger snakes
Coil unnoticed.
Source material: I encountered my first leek orchid whilst out walking with my
parents a few minutes from their home in Little Grove, near Albany in Western
Australia. My father and I thought for a few minutes that the single flower spike was
that of a broomrape (Orobanche spp.), to which it bears a superficial resemblance.
The poem also refers to the Albany Pitcher Plant (Cephalotus follicularis), which
undoubtedly once grew in the region, but is increasingly scarce, perhaps due to the
impact of grazing by rabbits. The dense scrub of the region is inhabited by a variety
of poisonous snakes, including the handsome but lethal tiger snake.
77
JAMES BATEMAN’S ORCHIDACEAE OF MEXICO AND
GUATEMALA
A librarian’s nightmare, even the frontispiece
Shows workmen crushed by its weight, hauling
On a block and tackle, Cruickshankian angst
Written on every feature. Each page is the size
Of an elephant’s ear, each orchid a monster
Comprising multiple darkened gullets, withered
White roots, glabrous leaves with longitudinal
Veins, and everywhere, fleshlike spots and dapples.
Mrs Augusta L. Withers and Miss S.A. Drake
Are almost lost to history, but their designs
Leer at us through panes of glass, writhing
Their way from Guatemala, via lithography
To the Ashmolean, under incandescent lights.
I remember, aged ten, reading Wells: ‘The Flowering
Of the Strange Orchid’, a Strand Magazine
Facsimile. Unconsciously, I am stepping
Backwards, fearful that some tendril will shoot
From the page, and flexing, smash the glass.
Source material: The archetypal coffee table book, James Bateman’s The
Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala, London, 1837–43, was so enormous that
when George Cruickshank was asked to produce a vignette for the title page, he
chose to depict a group of workmen lifting the book with block and tackle and
getting crushed in the process. Of the book’s forty illustrations, thirty-seven were
made by Mrs Augusta L. Withers and Miss S.A. Drake, about whom little further is
known. The book was on display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 2005 (see
Shirley Sherwood, A New Flowering: 1000 Years of Botanical Art, Oxford, 2005, pp.
142–143).
78
VANDA SANDERIANA
Three degrees of initiation
For the one who seeks the Vanda:
First: a hurricane, wrecking
One’s sampan half-way up river;
Rescued by some tribe.
Second: war. Trumpets warning
Of the onslaught of savages;
Deliverance by gunpowder.
Third: the earthquake, rending
Walls with airborne bodies;
Protected by a pith helmet.
Then is Vanda revealed, bearing
Flowers the size of dinner plates
Mauve enamelled, gilded, glazed,
Etched with brown and purple veins.
Great stacks of them aligned on stems,
Through holes ripped in the floor.
Source material: During the late nineteenth century, Frederick Sander built a
veritable empire out of the orchid business. He employed almost a score of
collectors, whose adventures read like colonialist fantasies from a Boys’ Own
annual. The most remarkable find was perhaps that made by Carl Roebelin on
Mindano in the Philippines: an orchid which Reichenbach described as “The
grandest novelty introduced for years... From the top of the odd sepal to the top of
the lateral ones, the flower measures five inches... Some plants bore five peduncles
at one time. One had three spikes with forty-seven flowers and buds, thirty-four
being open at one time, thus presenting the appearance of a bouquet.” Roebelin had
made his way by sampan up a river to the interior of the island, only to be
shipwrecked by a hurricane. He was rescued by tribesmen who were kindly disposed
towards him because they wanted his help in defeating a rival neighbouring tribe.
After assisting his hosts in battle, Roebelin was given a place for the night in the
chief’s tree house, only to find himself in the midst of a horrendous earthquake. As
Roebelin clung to the wreckage of the house, dawn disclosed a specimen of the
stupendous orchid, soon to be named Vanda sanderiana, sticking through a hole in
the floor. See Peter McKenzie Black, Orchids, London, 1973, p. 67.
79
STANHOPEA
Flower-flesh, slick with scent,
Stippled with blood blisters.
The lip, elaborate beyond recognition,
Drips oiliness; the sepals
Seem to sweat it. Even the bees
Who service it
are iridescent,
Flitting
from flower to flower,
Enslaved
by the aphrodisiac power
Of perfume, pungent or sickly only
To the unaroused.
A hidden trigger
Sparks an explosion,
The plant’s own
Victorious orgasm:
The green bee,
Plastered with pollen,
Knows fear, and flees
To another flower.
Source material: This poem was inspired by Episode 3 of David Attenborough’s The
Private Life of Plants, and by Franz Bauer’s painting of Stanhopea insignis,
reproduced in Joyce Stewart and William T. Stearn, The Orchid Paintings of Franz
Bauer, London, 1993, p. 147. Instead of offering a gift of nectar, Stanhopea species
attract their pollinators, iridescent green bees, by exuding a highly perfumed oil with
which the drones anoint themselves in order to entice prospective mates.
80
POLLINIA
Norbert Boccius, prior of the merciful brothers
At Feldsperg, taught me patience, poring over
Two thousand, two hundred and fifty illustrations.
I need it now: I shall walk, I am sure, with a stoop
After painting this; my eye has gained a habit
Of squinting, and at night I will see pollen grains
Teased out and glutinous in water, as gardeners
See dandelions in their sleep, after too much weeding.
My painting will be an essay in the sublime writ small:
Four pollinia squashed into water, each grain awash,
Adrift from its conglomerations, floating free
From a network of elastic, magnified a hundred times
Down the barrel of my microscope. Across the channel
Lieutenants too look down barrels, seeing men as so many grains.
At Kew, my ticking watch, a burning light, a glint of brass.
Source material: Franz Bauer was employed by Sir Joseph Banks at Kew, where he
painted many beautiful and meticulous pictures of orchids. He was a talented
microscopist, and his painting (1801) of four pollinia of Bletia purpurea, with their
thousands of individual pollen grains, is testimony to his patience. See Joyce
Stewart and William T. Stearn, The Orchid Paintings of Franz Bauer, London, 1993,
pp. 22, 152. Bauer always wrote p as b, and vice-versa, hence his unusual spelling
of Feldsberg.
81
LADY’S SLIPPER
The way in was wide; a gaping
Invitation. The glade was ripe
With humming when he came within.
Hemmed in his chamber, he cannot
Turn around, nor back out.
The only way is onward, through
A gate he cannot evade
And which won’t admit him.
He can smell the reward but
Cannot taste it, can see
The way out, but cannot
Breach it; must die here
In her cradle, neither
Lover, thief nor foe.
Source material: The Lady’s Slipper orchid is pollinated by insects such as bees,
which are presented with a wide and inviting entrance. In order to escape from the
flower once inside it, a bee is compelled to push through a narrow constriction, thus
brushing against the pollinia and carrying pollen away with it when it departs.
Difficulties arise when the bee is too large to pass through the constriction, since it
is then doomed to die within the slipper-shaped portion of the flower which gives the
orchid its name.
82
PART 5: The Mermaid’s Tresses:
Seaweeds
CODIUM
Velveted and branched as antlers,
Swaying slightly with the tide-flow,
I reach for them, bare
To the elbow.
And the touch of them is algal,
Like sodden felt, gloves
Covering blunt fingers.
I pluck at them where
Their ends probe.
Nip off the tip, and the scar heals.
Last digit of a mangled thumb,
Lost long ago.
Source material: Personal observation of Codium plants on the Isles of Scilly.
83
ULVA LACTUCA
In the pressure-lantern light
it was the filmy greenness
beneath the ripples, where the fishes
hid, when we dipped our knives
and enameled plates, to wash them:
Sea lettuce. I lay awake
thinking of it all night.
And in the morning, we harvested
the flaccid Ulva, and it clung
to our fingers as we crammed it
into plastic bags. I stuck
some in my mouth and chewed it tasted salty and would not be swallowed and we carried it to camp, pounded
it with oatmeal flour, baking laver
over a spitting fire of eucalyptus
and Banksia cones, open mouthed
and glowing.
In the smoke
we ate them, and the spitting embers
made them taste better
than they might have been:
a bright green pungency
breathed out through my nose
with each mouthful.
It was a cunning way to persuade
a boy to eat his vegetables:
I even forgave the crunch
of sand against my tooth.
Source material: Ulva, or sea-lettuce, is delicious when cooked. It grows in
rockpools both in Britain and in Australia, and like the red seaweed, Porphyra, it
makes excellent laver bread. This poem is based on memories of camping with my
parents when I was a small boy, at Picnic Point, south of Bermagui, N.S.W. To make
laver bread, simmer Ulva or Palmaria for up to five hours in a little water, until there
is very little liquid left. For every four parts of the boiled seaweed, add one part
oatmeal and stir. Form the resulting mixture into cakes two inches in diameter and
two thirds of an inch thick. Fry rapidly in butter until golden brown, and eat.
84
HOLDFASTS
Weed-flesh, wind-wracked, unbleeding
Clumped and kicked along the strand.
The stench and slickness of it;
Holdfasts clench like claws.
Encrustations craze them, salt caked,
Calcareous. Crabs scuttle, crustaceans
Jerk their joints within them. Stalkeyed,
Secretive; jostling for space.
You should have seen the storm
That wrenched them from rocks
Fathoms down, their forests
Of leathered leaves whirled
By ocean winds. Water
A flurry of whiteness, then
Browned by shreds of weed.
Lifted, cliff high, and dumped,
With shrimps - bug-eyed,
Planktonic, air-drowned
And spasmodic - the holdfasts,
Amputated from concretions,
Writhe in wind, like severed worms.
And all our glib presumptions
Wither with them: we too toil
To build on rock – and wind
And water ruin us.
Source material: Written after a Force 9 gale on St. Mary’s on 27th August, 2004.
The holdfasts of brown seaweeds look like roots, but their function is limited to
anchoring the plants to rocks; they do not absorb nutrients like the roots of land
plants.
85
KILP BURNERS
One woman smokes a pipe, superfluous
as watering petunias in the rain, for both
are shrouded in kilp smoke, like black
and white ghosts. She has no feet, floats
above the fuming pit with a look on her face
which tells all a historian needs to know
about the smell. The other’s head is half
obscured, but she is past coughing, past
involuntary weeping.
It is almost the end
of the women’s shift, soon the men will come
with rakes to sift the steaming heap,
to work it up like molten lead. By dawn
it forms a hardened clump, ready
for the breaking. Thirty shillings a ton
in this waning age, and fifty kilns
in which to burn it. A pother of poverty
hangs over the islands.
In Orkney,
As in Scilly, the industry is dying,
and the reek of burning
dissipates.
One-eyed, skinless,
veins pulsating
the Nuckelavee sinks himself.
The horses of Stronsay
freed
from Mortasheen.
Source material: Kilp burning was common in coastal Britain from the early
eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, seaweeds of the genus Laminaria being
particularly rich in the soda needed for pottery-glazing, glassmaking and soap
manufacture. Numerous old Scillonian photographs document the noisome nature
of the labour, and to this day the stone pits in which the kelp was burnt can be seen
on Toll’s Island and in various other places throughout the Scillies. The Scillonian
poet Robert Maybee gave a detailed account of the kilp industry in his Sixty-Eight
Years’ Experience on the Scilly Islands, reprinted in R.L. Bowley, The Fortunate
Islands, A History of the Isles of Scilly, Berkshire, 1968, pp. 81-82. According to
86
Maybee, kilp was worth ₤5 a ton when he first saw it being manufactured, but when
the last kilp was burned on the islands in 1835, it was worth only 30s. per ton. The
Nuckelavee was a hideous water-spirit, half man, half horse, which was said by
Orcadians to be so enraged by the stench of burning kilp that it would punish the
island population at the first whiff of the offending smoke, by spreading a mortal
equine disease known as Mortasheen.
87
WRACK CUTTERS
Nine canoes, by Acnascaul, go cutting wrack,
nine men reaping with long handled scythes.
Nine others wreak the wreck, raise the ribbons
on racks of wood. Nine canoes go low in water.
Nine women reap more wrack, hacking with hooks
where blisterweed grows from rocks, backs bent.
Nine horse cars stand along the strand
waiting to carry wrack to Acnascaul.
Source material: Before the advent of modern plastics which, in the form of floating
bottles, have made the practice impracticable, bladder wrack and other seaweeds
were commonly used as fertilizer on arable coastal land. This poem is based on an
eyewitness account of the activities of seaweed cutters collected by the Irish Folklore
Commission in 1941, and quoted by Roy Vickery in the Oxford Dictionary of Plant
Lore, Oxford 1995, p. 342. In Scotland, seaweed collecting for the purpose of
manuring the fields was known as “wrecking”.
88
KNOTTED WRACK
Grýla had a hairy chin,
A green-brown seaweed coat,
She had a broad and toothy grin
A body like a goat,
Fifteen tails of knotted wrack
With fifteen bags on each
Trailing in her dripping track;
Her laugh, a piercing screech.
And in each bag, the horrid hag
Stuffed children, in a hunch.
Behind her, on the ground they’d drag
Till it was time for lunch.
Gustur boldly married her,
Alas, he couldn’t hack it.
“You’ve squashed my tail, clumsy cur,
So get your bag and pack it!”
Boli pledged his troth as well He swore by all that’s holy But he preferred the fires of hell
To seaweed roly-poly.
She baked him scones from children’s bones
And guts with baby sauce.
The cave was filled with Boli’s groans:
“Oh, give me a divorce!”
Leppalúdi met her next
And he was not a shirker,
Some say Grýla had him hexed,
“I like a grim berserker!
I’ll chain you up with seaweed shackles,
Upon my seaweed bed!”
And when he heard her horrid cackles
He wished that he was dead.
And looking grave inside her cave
He sat the whole year through
And though it made him sick, he gave
Her children seventy-two.
Source material: Legend from the Orkney Isles.
89
DILLISK
Shawled in ragged wool, she bends hunchbacked
over rocks, Corallina-crusted, when the full moon
sucks the sea from the shore; plucks with scrabbling
fingers the limp Dillisk from the stone, or rolls up
her grubby sleeve, and picks it where it swells
in swirling ribbons underwater. It clings to her skin
as though it has been smeared with bacon-grease.
Hanging in the kitchen, it withers at the edges, grows
a powdery crust of salt, stiffens like red parchment, till
wet weather leaves it hanging flaccid. Her husband
stomps mud from his feet, sinks into his armchair.
Horsehair stuffing pokes out at the arms. “The sweet smell:
It is here.” Cloying all down the valley. The crisp
white flesh all turned to grey and noisome sludge.
Now, there is only Dillisk.
Source material: Lily Newton, A Handbook of British Seaweeds, London, 1931, p.
435, says of Rhodymenia palmata: “This is the Dulse of the Scots and Dillisk of the
Irish, used by the peasants after having been dried. It was eaten uncooked, and
among the poorest peasants of the west coast of Ireland has been said to have been
the only addition to potatoes in many of their meals.” When the potato blight
arrived, it was presumably the only food available.
90
DILLISK II
Seal ag buain duilisg do charraig,
seal ag aclaidh,
seal ag tabhairt bhídh do bhoctaibh,
seal i gcaracair.
Some time cutting dillisk from the stone,
some time fishing,
some time feeding dwellers alone
some time praying.
Some time rinsing salt from fronds,
some time boiling,
some time singing silent songs,
some time toiling.
Some time watching red leach out
some time dreaming,
some time stirring all about
some time steaming.
Some time grinding oatmeal coarse,
some time bending,
some time worshipping the source
some time blending.
Some time frying wholesome bread,
some time carrying,
some time by the sick man’s bed,
some time tarrying.
Some time tasting, some time still,
some time weeping,
some time surrendering the will,
some time sleeping.
Source material: The italicized Gaelic text is from a twelfth century description of
the daily activities of an Irish monk, and the first stanza is a paraphrase of it.
91
CORALLINA
Jointed like a crinoid, or some
cemented arthropod, crusted
with pink lime, a standing
string of beads.
Your armour
makes you seem more delicate,
and surely the next wave
must shatter you.
Pick a piece of you,
nip fingernails through
your cuticle, lift:
and you go limp.
Perhaps the same
happens when waves
strike.
Once, I had
a little wooden puppet
on a round pedestal,
just like you,
articulated
with string.
A fawn,
it was,
spotted,
on spindly
legs.
Push the button
beneath it;
the whole thing
fell. Twitch
it only, and it
twiddled
its tail.
Source material: Corallina species all secrete a calcareous armour, making them
seem less like plants and more like zoophytes.
92
TROW
“How looked he?”
“Very ill-looking he was, if I
May say so. I liked him not.”
“How walked he?”
“Hung like a horse, he was,
And his bollocks bumped
Along the ground, the scrotum
Calloused like an old man’s sole,
So that the whole man waddled,
Hunchbacked from the closeness
Of his stark abode.”
“How dressed he?”
“In red weed, with dark midribs,
Which hung from him like ribbons,
And dripped brine upon dust,
Each frond translucent, but clumped
Layer upon layer, thick
As clotted blood.
His eyes the same colour.”
“How did he?”
“How in his hollow hill he fared
I do not know. Some say he lives
On souls, though if he does,
I did not see them, nor had it in me
To offer him mine.”
“How spoke he?”
“Not at all.”
Source material: The Norse settlers of the Orkneys buried their dead in mounds, in
keeping with the practice of the Neolithic inhabitants of the islands. These were later
identified as the homes of Trows, semi-aquatic monsters who preyed on human
souls. Tradition has it that a person who is enticed into a Trow’s mound will emerge
the next morning to discover that several years have elapsed. Jo Ben, writing his
Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum some time between 1529 and 1657, added that in
Stronsay, “sea-monsters called Trowis very often go with the women living
there…..This is a description of that monster. It is clad in seaweed, in its whole body
it is like a foal, with curly hair, it has a member like that of a horse and large
testicles.”
93
PART 6: Cryptogams: The SporeBearing Plants
There can be few more fertile interchanges between science and lore than that which
has revolved for centuries around Cryptogams. The name itself is inspiring, for while
on the surface it tells us, rightly enough, that the sexual lives of these plants are
hidden and mysterious, the novice who begins to pay attention to them will quickly
realise that so much more than this has been encrypted.
For an amateur naturalist trained to identify flowering plants, there is the fact that
Cryptogams are much more difficult to pin down. In the case of fungi, of course, we
are apt to overstress the difficulty, for whilst the misidentification of a species of
Geranium may occasion some embarrassment (if, indeed, it is ever noticed), a similar
error applied to species of Amanita can have far more distressing results. Ferns,
with the exception of a few very common or very remarkable species, are rarely
differentiated in the lay person’s mind at all, so much so that most of their ‘common
names’ are simply translations of their generic and specific ones. Mosses, for most,
are simply padding for plant-pots, and the Club Mosses, despite their name, are
only vaguely related. In order to become authoritative, one must be initiated into the
mysteries, and this can only happen when one can speak the language, and
distinguish a decurrent gill from one that is adnexed, or determine whether a rachis
is branched or unbranched. And just when the arcane discipline seems to be
mastered, more fundamental questions begin to vex the enquirer, such as whether
fungi are really plants in the first place.
Nor is it surprising that Lewis Carroll placed his hookah-smoking caterpillar on top
of a Cryptogam, for when it comes to exploring the secret lives of these plants, or
researching the narcotic effects of a few of them, we really are through the lookingglass. Most of us feel out of place in a world in which whales can be carried on one’s
upturned finger, or in which the thing that emerges from a chrysalis is not a moth,
but a sort of toadstool. Fear has a role to play too, and largely, it seems, it is a fear
of something primeval, which may kill us if we are incautious, and which may yet
outlast us in any case.
All of these reactions of the recently initiated are, of course, so much better than the
indifference of the many, who for the most part are unaware that the mysteries even
exist. These poems have been written not in an attempt to decipher the code or
unravel the mystery, for this is largely impossible. They are merely little celebrations
of the secret.
94
Section A: Fungi
Armillaria mellea
In the air, like dust, basidiospores
Hang, seeking for a point of invasion,
A million of them wasted on live wood.
But one shall choose this decomposing stump
And build itself a stronghold. Sporophores,
Honey yellow, sprout and gleam, like wet flesh,
And beneath the mould, rhizomorphs probe,
Long, black worms, seeking out the living roots.
Assassin hyphae crawl through the cambium,
Strangling the tree. Black bootlace strands
Split the bark and wood. Leaves curl, and die,
Buds fail in spring. Branches break and fall.
By the dark of the moon, by the hooting owl,
Green luminescence. The gleam of death.
Source material: The honey fungus, Armillaria mellea, parasitizes trees to death. It
begins life as a saprophytic mycelium, producing honey-coloured fruiting bodies on
the sides of dead tree-stumps. However, the fungus then sends out subterranean
rhizomorphs which seek out the roots of living trees, penetrate them, and gradually
kill them. A tree which has been killed by honey fungus is readily identified by the
looseness of the bark, which can be pulled away to reveal networks of rhizomorphs,
which look like black bootlaces. See C.T. Ingold, The Nature of Toadstools, The
Institute of Biology’s Studies in Biology, No. 113, London, 1979, pp. 52–53.
Armillaria is also a spectacular source of bioluminescence – an entertaining
discussion of this topic may be read in John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms and
Toadstools: a study of the activities of fungi, London, 1953, Chapter 14.
95
Marasmius oreades
Faerie-ring, faerie-ring,
With toadstool throne for faerie-king,
Watch them dance there in a ring,
But beware of faerie poisoning!
Don’t rely on smell or taste!
Are the gills quite widely spaced?
Are they whitish, as they ought?
Are some long and others short?
Is the cap shaped like a bell?
Is the stem quite thin as well,
And is it fibrous like shoe-lace—
Is it fuzzy round the base?
If so, they might be safe to try
(And if not, you might not die),
But just in case you get it wrong,
I’ll list the symptoms (won’t take long):
Blurry vision, lots of sweating,
Accompanied by nervous fretting,
A nervous twitch, too—oh! Poor dear!
And a spot of diarrhoea!
Delicious faerie champignon!
Delightful thing to dine upon!
Come! Sit down! Eat well! Devour!
You’ll know your fate in half an hour!
Source material: The delicious fairy ring champignon, Marasmius oreades, is not at
any costs to be confused with Clitocybe dealbata or Clitocybe rivulosa, both of which
also grow in fairy-ring formations.
96
Phallus impudicus
Gerard must have doubted the propriety
Of the creator, for he printed his diagram
Upside-down, so as not to offend. Yet
He named it without blushing:
“Pricke Mushrom, Fungus Virilis, Penis effigie”.
First, it is like one of the devil’s balls,
Which he dropped in his hurry.
Then it thrusts forth; the shaft lengthens,
The sticky head aspires to sky,
Grows foetid with the sweat of questing,
Quivers with the pulse of earth.
Listen. You can hear it groaning
With the burden of all that sperm.
At last, plied by flies, it is primed
For its own sickly orgasm; the glans
All green and engorged, as though
A breath of wind could make it blow.
Source material: Whilst my simile about the devil’s balls is, to my knowledge,
original, it has precedents in Dodoens (1563) who thought the undeveloped fungi
were the eggs of spirits or devils (“Manium sive Daemonum ova”), and in a tradition
amongst German hunters, who called the Stinkhorn “Hirschbrunst”, in the belief
that it grew where stags had rutted. See John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms and
Toadstools, p. 181. The foetid odour of the mature fruiting body is designed to
attract flies, which spread the spores, and whilst it is quite harmless, it has long
caused, in Ramsbottom’s words, “needless anxiety about sanitation.” A letter to The
Times in 1865 went so far as to blame the fungus for cholera epidemics.
97
Amanita muscaria
I am Big Raven of the Koryac, whale catcher
With the big grass bag, stranded with my whale
Miles from sea. In my bag are the whale’s provisions:
Jerk-bodied krill, ink-stained squid with human eyes.
It is too big for me to carry. So is the whale,
And the gallons of sea water I need to slurry his side.
I shall go unto Vahïnin for aid; he will answer.
“Go to the plains before the sea,” said Vahïnin,
“Look for the spirits of Wãpaq, white soft stalks
Wearing spotted hats. Eat of them, and they
Will help you.” I pulled them by their ground-venting
Volvas, ran my finger past each ring, folded
Like a white foreskin; sniffed, suspiciously
At the bleached and radiating gills, peeled
A little of the flecked and blushing skin,
Then ate, and the gills turned and whirled
Like a white kaleidoscope, combining
No colours, entrancingly. I went back
To the whale, and he had shrunk
To a hundredth of his accustomed,
Blubber-threshing size. I danced for joy,
And flipped up the travelling bag
With my little finger, poised the whale
On my upturned thumb-tip, and capered
For the shore, splashed by foaming surf.
I watched him breeching in the threshed brine,
Submerging with his brothers, and I said,
“Let the Agaric remain upon the ground;
And my children see what it may show.”
Source material: The Koryac revere the Fly-Agaric, eating it to achieve
transcendental states. They believe that the mushroom is endowed with particular
power, and the legend related above is described in detail by John Ramsbottom,
Mushrooms and Toadstools: A Study of the Activities of Fungi, London, 1953, p. 45.
Amongst other hallucinogenic effects caused by the alkaloid muscaridine, Fly Agaric
ingestion causes partakers to perceive surrounding objects either as very large or
very small. Any reader determined to test this should be warned that Fly Agarics
also contain muscarine, a poison which causes acute gastro-intestinal distress.
Devotees of the agaric, including the Koryac, claim that the muscarine may be
evaporated by baking or drying the mushrooms. Although classed in textbooks as
poisonous, the Fly Agaric is, according to Ramsbottom, eaten readily in the south of
France. It is possible that its level of toxicity is variable according to region; it is
certainly not as deadly as some other Amanita species. The Koryac legend offers no
explanation as to what Big-Raven was doing with a whale so far from sea.
98
Lycoperdon spp.
For the benefit of boys
With scabby knees,
These have evolved:
When white, we eat them,
Sliced with a penknife,
Spitting in butter.
When yellow, we kick them,
With gateways for goalposts,
’Til they split and spatter.
But it is best by far
When they are brown,
And the fat gleba
Is a-glut with spores,
And we squeeze
Their leathery skins,
And it all bursts forth
Like one stupendous fart—
All the better
For being visible—
And we are laughing
And pelting down the dale,
Elated by this brazen
Liberation.
We did this all the autumn;
Never knew you could
Smoke out bees with them,
Or staunch the flow of blood.
Source material: Puff balls, especially the Giant Lycoperdon giganteum, make
superb eating when they are still white. Gerard was clearly not ignorant of the windbreaking analogy when he called them Lupi crepitus. The last stanza refers to two
further uses for puff-balls, long known to country lore: the spores really do act as a
styptic, and can be used to stupefy bees.
99
Amanita phalloides
The membrane splits and hangs in shreds
Like milk-skin from a cooling spoon.
About the stem, the volva hangs, flaccid.
Torn up by a woman’s hand, and all
The olive peel stripped back, by fingernails.
“You shall have the largest of these dainties,
Dear; it was set aside with you in mind.”
And nothing happened, not
Until nothing could be done.
How your mind is haunted by those
White gills seethed in wine. Every time
You retch, you see visions of them.
Thirst etches your insides; cold sweats
Cling to you. And this remission
Is the cruellest ruse of all, for after
Comes the coma, and slick and clammy death.
Source material: Suetonius, Tacitus and Dio Cassius all maintained that the
Roman Emperor Claudius was poisoned with a dish of mushrooms. Some of the
sources add that the poisonous dish was prepared by Locusta, at the command of
Claudius’s wife Agrippina. In all likelihood, Claudius thought he was eating the
prized esculent Amanita caesarea, which has an orange cap before cooking. A
servant versed in elementary mycology would no doubt have found it easy to replace
one of these delectable mushrooms with a specimen of Amanita phalloides, the most
poisonous mushroom in the world. Around ninety per cent of recorded deaths from
mushroom poisoning are caused by this plant, and only a few grams are required for
a fatal dose. It is hazardous even to breathe the spores. The baleful effects of the
poison do not exhibit themselves for around twelve hours after ingestion; by this
time, there is normally irrevocable damage to the liver and other body tissues. After
two or three days, the symptoms seem to subside, but this is merely a prelude to
delirium, coma, and death. Readers desiring further information should consult
John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms and Toadstools, pp. 33, 39–44, Michael Jordan,
Mushroom Magic, London, 1989, p. 36, and Robert Graves’s novel, Claudius the God.
100
Cordyceps militaris
Would have emerged a white moth,
But for the spore that chanced
Upon her, while she was yet
A champing caterpillar on a leaf.
Now, by one of those ironies
Which is tragedy wrought tiny,
She herself is the root and food
For some red and slender plant,
Her guts and wings and compound eyes
A tangle of fungal hyphae, inside
Her withered coffin of a chrysalis,
Buried by her own toil; her grave
Marked only by this fleshy flower
Of her substance made. Only spores
Which catch the wind and fly
Tell ought of what she might have been.
Source material: Cordyceps militaris is an entomogenous fungus, parasitizing the
larvae of moths which pupate underground. Spores which land on a caterpillar
germinate whilst the host is still in the larval stage, and penetrate beneath the
insect’s chitin. After pupation, the fungus kills and engulfs its host before sending
up its fruiting body. See Ramsbottom, Mushrooms and Toadstools, pp. 149–153.
101
Hirneola auricularia-Judae
So delicate, it is almost veined, and across it,
some stray filament is like spit on a moistened mouth
opening to kiss. So changeable too; a goblet
of flesh when wet, a shrivelled thing when dry,
waiting for some rain to engorge it.
Nothing like
the ear of some Judas, whose kiss was dry,
the lips pursed, and holding back saliva. Think,
rather, of the Elder witch’s lips, which speak
from the pith into the hoary night, telling
women to become flesh, and men to turn to stone.
Source material: A rather repellent anti-semitic tradition has it that Judas hanged
himself on an Elder tree, and that the Jew’s Ear Fungus, Hirneola auricularia-Judae,
is the everlasting commemoration of his suicide. See John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms
and Toadstools, pp. 74–75. I prefer the myth, associated with ancient sites such as
the Rollright Stones, which holds that elder trees can transform into witches, and
vice versa.
102
Polyporus spp.
The dignified secession of a tree
back into soil, is assisted by this:
a squamous saddle of fungus, turning
solid wood to butter-soft mould.
But what a gainly death this is,
with its slow and graceful gnarling
at the limb! And what happier way
to die, than being ridden by a dryad?
Source material: Many fungi have evocative common names, but none more so
than the Dryad’s Saddle, Polyporus squamosus, which I have often admired growing
from the trunks of trees in Burnham Beeches. It is one of a family of fungi which
ably assist in the process of converting wood back into the mould from which it
invariably arises.
103
Coprinus comatus
Pick them under pines, before their shaggy caps have blotched themselves to ink,
Blooming from the needled ground, where pungent horses’ turds have mouldered,
And the long stems have risen like corporeal ghosts, bruised by your fingers.
I like them seethed in milk, as my father cooked them once, when I was small,
And I ate them with relish, then spat into my sleeve, compulsively, in fear
Of poison. I remember them so well, still sizzling in their buttered bath,
In a white dish, and the way their pink-white flesh slithered through my lips,
A paroxysm of sense. The melting in the mouth of my first initiation.
Source material: The Shaggy Cap, Coprinus comatus, is quite delectable, and never
poisonous, although it should always be eaten before the cap begins to wither and
the spores are released. Its near relative, the Ink Cap, C. atramentarius, is also
edible, but should never be consumed in combination with alcohol, as this causes
alarming symptoms, including nausea and palpitations.
104
Claviceps purpurea
First came the Mysteries: the vertigo
And the trembling, the chill and the sweat,
The wet sheets and the sights
That made all seeing blindness.
The brilliance met with silence.
Then, the visions turned to fire,
The delusions and convulsions,
The swollen blisters and the
Loathsome rot. Men hauled
Their mummified limbs
To St Antony’s shrine,
And beseeched with shrieks
While demons plied them
With glowing pokers ’til they died.
Those who listened to Tituba
Caught it; fitted and gibbered
In indecipherable tongues,
Named the ones who did the witchery
And watched them die.
Consumed by the ergot in the rye.
Source material: Ergot is caused by a fungus (Claviceps purpurea), and contains
the alkaloids ergotamine and ergotoxine, derived from lysergic acid. According to
Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann, Plants of the Gods: their Sacred,
Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers, Vermont, 1992, pp. 102–105, the Eleusian
mysteries were probably caused by Ergot poisoning, and the first stanza is a
description of the typical psychotropic effects of ingesting the fungus in infected
cereals. Aside from its hallucinogenic properties, however, ergot is also extremely
poisonous, either causing nervous symptoms such as convulsions, epileptic
seizures, twitching, spasms of the limbs, and abortions, or alternatively causing
gangrene resulting in the loss of limbs and usually death. During the middle ages,
outbreaks of ergotism were commonly known as St. Antony’s Fire, after the wealthy
Frenchman Gaston promised his fortune to the cult of St. Antony if the saint would
miraculously cure him and his son. It is also probably significant that medieval
portrayals of the “Temptation of St. Antony”, with their vicious-looking demons, so
often appear to be depictions of hallucinations. See John Ramsbottom, Mushrooms
and Toadstools, pp. 145–146. On more than one occasion, modern scholars have
put forward the theory that outbreaks of witchcraft persecution were often
responses to ergotism, the most obvious example being the Salem witch trials in
Massachusetts in the early 1690s. See David Pickering, Dictionary of Witchcraft,
London, 1996, pp. 230–236.
105
Section B: Ferns
Ophioglossum vulgatum
Buried among grasses, amid
Plantains, which I resemble,
You may find me, if you
Look hard, and are not fooled:
A fern whose frond does not unfold
Like filigree, but like the leaf
Of a flowering plant; armed
With a spike that is snake-like
To those unfamiliar
With the forked tongues of adders.
Notwithstanding, by sympathy I assuage
The serpent’s poison, and make a salve
For cows’ udders when inflamed,
Unblocking teats, mastitis clogged.
I am indicated, too,
For disorders of the tongue,
As a drink for wounds,
A balm for bruises,
A lotion for the weeping eye.
Follow the serpents to find me;
She who picks me, snakes pursue.
Source material: The doctrine of signatures, since it dictates that like cures like,
has been used to advance the hypothesis that the Adder’s Tongue fern heals a range
of maladies including snakebite, on the mistaken assumption that the plant
resembles the tongue of a snake. In fact, it does not; it superficially resembles a
plantain, with a leaf shaped like a rabbit’s ear, and the spore capsules mounted on a
single spike. See Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns, London, 1945, pp.
101–105; Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, pp. 58–59; Roy Vickery,
Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, p. 1.
106
Botrychium lunaria
Moonwort, bind and loosen metal,
Moonwort, open locks for me.
Mercury shall soon be silver,
Unshoed shall the horses be.
Near Tiverton, the Earl of Essex
Rode with horsemen o’er the down,
Moonwort clutched in moonlight pale,
Drawing out each farrier’s nail,
By fern and clod, each horse unshod
Before the riders reached the town.
The fertile part of moonwort’s frond
Poked through the keyhole stealthily—
Hear the latch click in the gloom,
Thus gain admittance to the room.
By fern and stealth, no guile nor wealth
Can buy a lock to hinder me.
From my retort the round flask hangs,
Quicksilver gleaming brilliantly.
Moonwort breaks the raised meniscus,
Watch the liquid grow more viscous.
With fern leaf warmed, ‘tis soon transformed
To silver, by my alchemy.
Source material: The story of the unshoeing of the Earl of Essex’s horses was first
recorded by Culpepper: “On the White Down in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there was
found thirty horse-shoes pulled off from the Feet of the Earl of Essex his Horses,
being there drawn up into a body, many of them newly shod, and no reason known,
which caused much admiration... and the herb usually grows upon Heaths.” See
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, London, 1996, p. 14. If gathered by moonlight,
moonwort is said to be capable of opening locks and loosening nails on hinges, and
the alchemists believed that it had the power to convert mercury into silver. See
Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, p. 58. Culpepper recorded that
the plant was colloquially known as “Unshoo the horse,” and it is known in West
Cumberland as “Shoeless Horse”. See Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns,
London, 1945, p. 107.
107
Asplenium marinum
Mirrored in water
in the depth of the well
sea spleenworts
with sori oblique
fracture reflections
with fronded shadows.
Roots inextricable
from cracks
in stone.
Source material: The Sea Spleenwort, Asplenium marinum, flourishes on the west
coast of England and Scotland. It commonly grows in sea caves, and is rarely very
far removed from the ocean. The specimens which inspired this poem were inside St.
Warna’s Well on St. Agnes in the Isles of Scilly. Edward Step, Wayside and
Woodland Ferns, London. 1945, p. 48, observes: “This is a tantalizing plant to the
fern collector, for so often it grows where it may be seen well, but where it is difficult
to attainment even by a very good rock climber. This is just as well, for the roots are
mostly left in the crevice when the rootstock has been secured, so that collected
specimens are commonly doomed on this account.” It also tends not to thrive when
removed from a maritime environment.
108
Hymenophyllym tunbringense
Not rooting, exactly,
but clinging; not breathing
through stomates, but through
a membrane so permeable
that not a glint, not a sunbeam
must fall, without she wither,
she is all delicacy, hanging
limp from a tree’s root.
Quivering eternally
on the edge of desiccation,
viable only
where air and water
are in equal titre,
the filmy-fern
is oh so like a soul.
Source material: Tunbridge Filmy Ferns (Hymenophyllum tunbridgense) are lyrically
described by Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns, pp. 23–25. He rightly
points out that most illustrators (including Sowerby, used here) felt the obligation to
depict each frond outspread, giving the fern an erect appearance. In fact, filmy-ferns
invariably hang limp from the sides of rocks and the roots of trees.
109
Ceterach officinarum
Wearing, in drought, the aspect
of Death, sinuous but withered,
you have chosen the desert places
in the dry stone wall.
One trickle is replenishment,
when the fronds curl back
from the rachis.
Red-hued
rustyback in the season
of generation. Leathered
for life in the days of dearth.
Source material: Ceterach officinarum, the Rusty-back Fern, is unlike other ferns in
its preference for dry places. The sori are rust-coloured, and from this it derives its
name. When deprived of water, it withers and appears dead, but soon revives after
rain.
110
Osmunda regalis
Osmund’s heart is white and cold
And buried under loam;
They come to dig it up at night
By the lantern’s glow,
And then they slice up Osmund’s heart
But nothing shall it bleed.
They pound it with a pestle stout
And let the juices seep.
Corked inside a bottle then
Osmund’s heart shall lie,
Though no one ever buried him,
And no one saw him die.
Soon he soothes the aching limb
When poured out from his urn,
Exhumed—before he beat his last—
From underneath a fern.
Source material: The Royal Fern (also known colloquially as the Flowering Fern on
account of its fertile fronds, which are so dominated by their sori that the upper part
of them looks similar to the flowers of the Dock) is known in Cumberland as the
Marsh Onion, because of the whitish mass which grows within its rootstock.
Folklore (documented in county Galway) has it that this “onion” is the “heart of
Osmund”, which, when sliced, pounded and left to macerate, is said to be efficacious
in cases of rheumatism. See Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, Oxford,
1995, p. 322; Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns, pp. 99–101.
111
Pilularia globulifera
Here, in this plant, all is hidden
under the aspect of grass, or of rushes
newly grown. It takes a keen eye
to spot that leaf, uncurling
like a frond; nor are there sori,
but one must dig about,
in stagnant water at the root,
to find the spores, enclosed
in receptacles, peppercorn-tough,
where the mysteries of its sex
hide enciphered: and solitary
in her cell the megaspore waits—
her prothallium emerging pale—
hopes for the crypt to crack
beneath the thrust of antherozoids
who’ll strive, and swarm
and strain to make her green.
Source material: The Pillwort (Pilularia globulifera) does not carry sori on the leaves,
but inside little capsules buried underwater with the rootstock. These are vaguely
reminiscent of pills, but much more so of peppercorns. This plant is unlike the “true
ferns” in that the megaspore produces a prothallium devoid of chlorophyll, and no
antherids. Instead, each microspore produces an antherozoid, and these swarm at
the funnel-shaped opening of the megaspore in order to fertilize the archegone. It
seems that no other Cryptogam takes the name to such extremes.
112
Phyllitis scolopendrium
The dry-stone wall is dripping
after rain, and campions hang
their pendulous heads, under
water droplets, that magnify
the many eyes of spiders making
loving gesticulations. Ivies
climb here, roots probing
like worms; green flowers
leave the air slick with nectar.
And spent rain falls in worldreflecting globes, and in runnels,
down these dark and fleshy leaves,
as though they had been waxed.
No wonder the Namers always
call them tongues, whether of
harts or horses, foxes or lambs,
for the rain is now their slaver,
and the stone-crack’s leer
lets them out to lap
around the corners of the day,
to taste the rising humours
of the mould.
There is more flesh
here, than in many louder tongues.
Source material: The Hart’s Tongue Fern, Phyllitis scolopendrium, has a number of
folk names which allude to its fleshy quality, including Hind’s Tongue, Fox Tongue,
Lamb’s Tongue, Horse’s Tongue, and, in competition with another plant in this
collection, Adder’s Tongue. It is also called the Seaweed Fern in Surrey on account
of its resemblance to Laminaria. The Greeks were reminded of centipedes by the
undersides of its fronds, with their parallel lines of sori; hence its specific name. See
Edward Step, Wayside and Woodland Ferns, p. 60. On the Isles of Scilly they grow
in profusion, sprouting both from the ground, and from cracks and crevices in rocks
and walls.
113
Section C: Mosses
Sphagnum spp.
1.
An early memory: the Sphagnum swamp
pockmarked with old tree stumps,
and punctuated by the gruff plonks
of pobblebonks mating. Each step
leaves the thuck of water oozing back
while brown frogs writhe inside the moss.
Tussocks slowly parted, safely,
with a stick. A black snake coils.
Locusts click singly in the heat.
Perhaps this explains, two decades later,
Why, walking among bog-moss
and navelworts, spiked by rushes,
near Burnham Beeches, where the ground
grows soggy—a hemisphere away—
I am longing for frogs and adders.
2.
First, perhaps, an injured hind,
her fetlock grazed by a clattering stone,
made her way through the heath
and hoary bilberries, to the edge
of the blanket bog, and half-knelt there
with the bloodstain spreading through
moss already purpled.
Later, at the battle
of Clonterf, the wounded, biting
on lead, stuffed their own gashes
with the whitened clumps of Sphagnum,
and at Flodden, with green bog-moss
and soft grass.
There has always been utility
in a simple that sucks up blood
more perfectly than dressings we can make.
From the hind’s graze to the shrapnel wound,
the virtue is the same.
114
Source material: The first poem is inspired by two encounters with Sphagnum bogs,
one in the Brindabella mountains, A.C.T., Australia, in the early 1980s, and the
other in 2003, at Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire. Pobblebonks are a
startlingly vocal species of Australian frog, and their name is accurately
onomatopoeic. The second poem alludes to the highly absorbent nature of
Sphagnum. The leaves are filled with tiny tubes which suck up fluids by capillary
action. The history of the use of Sphagnum as a surgical dressing is described in
Mrs. Grieve’s A Modern Herbal, p. 553–4. It has been used for this purpose into
modern times, and indeed, surgeons at the western front during the First World War
soon realized that it was superior to cotton wool, because “A pad of Sphagnum moss
absorbs the discharge in lateral directions, as well as immediately above the
wound... [and] the wounds of our men at the front were of such a suppurating
character as to require specially absorbent dressings...”
115
Leucobryum glaucum
Split cases of beech nuts form a crust six inches thick,
the insides squirrel-gnawed, their curled spines turning
into mould. Crows claw the branches; buzzards clamour,
their nest at the centre of this wood. The distant chunter
of mallards, half-tamed for shooting. In the grass, a snare.
Cushions of Leucobryum, turquoise coloured and crisp,
quieten my tread to a dry crunching, hunched like the backs
of hedgehogs. Beside one, a dirty-grey skull—a weasel’s—
cleaved half-open. Cartridge cases encased in soil.
And though gunshots have defiled the sacred space,
And crows hang, inverted, from wires, by night
the Leucobryum gleams where moonlight catches it,
and the fox pads past, avoids the snare by habit
long established. Dew falls. Spore cases rise,
the calyptra hooked a little, like tiny Devil’s horns.
Source material: Leucobryum glaucum forms high-domed cushions on acid soils,
and is capable of withstanding long dry spells. When dry it turns a turquoise colour,
or even goes completely white. It rapidly revives when moistened. Fruiting such as
that described in the poem is a comparatively rare occurrence; the plant more often
reproduces through rhizoids which grow from the upper leaves and develop into
small tufts which become detached and independent. See Arthur L. Jewell, The
Observer’s Book of Mosses and Liverworts, London, 1955, p. 57. I lived for a year in
Dropmore, near Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, and observed this moss regularly in
the neighbouring Bristles Wood, which was unfortunately the domain of a
particularly brutal gamekeeper at the time. Despite his depredations, a remarkable
diversity of wildlife was to be observed within the wood, especially at night.
116
Fontinalis antipyretica
... and where the fern’s tear dropped
into the stream that sprung from the stone,
it became part of the whole, swirling
from the mosses’ tresses, split
and rejoined, through the gills of a trout,
where the leafy island ended.
By the holes of voles and the heron’s bone,
with the stream-spun eddies curling,
echoes, waterborne, of the willows above,
where minnows swim, within, without,
are homes for flat-shelled snails.
And mingling in the whispering foam,
with the large-leaved bracts unfurling,
the water-moss, like faeries’ hair,
is weaving, flowing softly out.
And were I where the cold calves low,
or where the kettle sings me home,
where oatmeal mice are bobbing,
I’d seek where moss flows with the stream,
take flight, and slowly go about.
Source material: Fontinalis antipyretica is known colloquially as ‘Willow Moss’ on
account of its flowing attitude. It normally grows submerged in water, where it
reproduces by branching and detachment, but it can produce fruiting bodies when
exposed to air. It characteristically has larger leaves at the ends of the bracts. This
poem was written for Jeannie on her birthday, 10th October 2004, and in honour of
William Butler Yeats, whose poem, ‘The Stolen Child’ written in 1886, is answered
here.
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POLYTRICHUM COMMUNE
A little neat besom,
Pliant, well-combed,
Chestnut coloured
As maidenhair,
Dusts the wainscot
And chandelier,
Hanging and tapestry,
Curtain and rug:
A little neat besom
That grew in a bog.
A little tough basket
For gathering of roots,
Woven of Silk-Wood
Wound in a plait,
Carried the provender –
Oyster and snail,
Ripe hedgerow fruits –
For a legion five-score:
A little tough basket
That grew on the moor.
Source material: Maidenhair and Silk-Wood are vernacular names for the moorland
moss Polytrichum commune, which grows in tussocks to a height of twelve to
eighteen inches. The first verse is inspired by Gilbert White’s Natural History of
Selborne, Letter XXVI, November 1st 1775, which describes the besoms which local
people made using Polytrichum. Much of the vocabulary of this first verse is White’s.
Richard Mabey’s edition of White’s book mentions that a moss besom of this type
can still be seen in Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum. The second verse makes reference to
an archaeological find: a basket woven of Polytrichum, found in the Roman fort at
Newstead, Roxburghshire. It seems likely that the tradition of making baskets out of
this moss is of considerable antiquity, and it is thought that the Newstead find is of
native British workmanship, although it was no doubt pressed into service by the
Romans, whose culinary tastes are reflected in its imagined contents. (See Paul
Richards, A Book of Mosses, King Penguin, London, 1950, pp. 31-32.) Written at the
request of Anna Tambour.
118
Section D: Horsetails
Equisetum telemateia
Beside them, the skeleton of a dog, quite picked clean by crows.
The stems, too, are spent, a lattice of silica, thin silhouettes
against a shrouded winter sun. Everything is shades of beige,
the shadows a muted grey. Mirrored, too, are the skeleton’s
articulations, and instead of the skull, a catkin bends
sideways on a fractured column. The longbones and the stems
are hollow, the arching spines infinitely detachable.
There is nothing more; only the fog, the toil of egg-cells
germinating, and the damp sound of a dog panting.
Source material: The Great Horsetail, Equisetum telemateia, is the largest of the
British horsetails, the infertile fronds growing to a height of six feet or more. The
poem was inspired by a remembered scene near Coomes Wood in Oxfordshire,
where a large stand of Great Horsetails was observed beside a ditch in around 2000.
119
Equisetum hyemale
The Pewterwort that polished
his pint pot, the Scouring Rush
that left the cabinet smooth
to a lady’s touch, and finished
the work of the fletcher, gave
the combmaker’s craft
its delicacy, and lent each tooth
perfection, feeds horses well,
they say.
But cows lose molars
altogether, by chewing it,
and it scours them within
cleaner than a milkmaid’s pail.
Source material: All Horsetails have large quantities of silica deposited in their
stems, but none more so than the so-called Dutch Rush, Equisetum hyemale, which
has in the past acquired some commercial value as a natural scourer. It has been
imported to Britain from Holland for this purpose, hence its common name (other
folk names for it are mentioned in the poem). Linneus testified to the fact that the
plant was a staple food for horses in Sweden, but maintained that cows lost their
teeth to it, and that it gave them diarrhoea. See Mrs M. Grieve, A Modern Herbal
(1931), Revised Edition, Surrey, 1973, p. 420.
120
Section E: Club Mosses
Isoetes lacustris
Merlin’s Grass: for who else would look for quills
on the floors of lakes below Yr Wyddfa? Perhaps
he sought them, with his sleeves rolled up, kneeling
on his floating islands, on Nadroedd, Coch or Glas,
and single-eyed fishes viewed his arm, lopsidedly,
as his white fingers groped in sludge, plucking up
the spiked rosettes, shaking their rootstocks free
in a cloud of underwater spores.
Was it these, I wonder,
which silvered his arm, so that with the plunge
it went in wrinkled, but came out like a child’s?
Source material: The Common Quillwort, Isoetes lacustris, is also colloquially
known as Merlin’s Grass. It grows at the bottom of mountain lakes, in the Scottish
Highlands and in North Wales. The one-eyed fishes, the floating islands, and the
rejuvenating quality of the Snowdonian waters are characteristically picturesque
inventions of the twelfth century churchman Gerald of Wales, from his Journey
Through Wales, Chapter 9. A more recent Quillwort hunter was the French botanist
J. Gay, who visited the Snowdonian lakes “and obtained ‘échantillons’ of quillwort
from the vast majority” of them (F.J. North, Bruce Campbell and Richenda Scott,
Snowdonia: the National Park of North Wales, London, 1949, p. 169).
121
Lycopodium spp.
Scaled down since the Carboniferous; imagine
this club-moss was tree-high, its dichotomous
forking roots covered with round scars.
Around the tree there is generation, and decay
in all its stages: clouds of spores at its height,
and by its feet, the smashed stems of horsetails.
Great winds hurl the fronds of tree ferns
against the flexing trunk, and only amphibians
will hear it when it falls.
Take out a hand-lens:
with a toad’s eye view, all shall be restored.
Source material: See Rhona M. Black, The Elements of Palaeontology, 1970, pp.
306–7. Lycopods reached their acme during the Carboniferous period, when they
achieved tree-like proportions. Casts of their enormous fossilized stumps can still be
seen at Victoria Park in Glasgow.
122
Section F: Liverworts
MARCHANTIA
As deep a green as my liver is red
And lobed with equal fleshiness,
Liverworts line the meadow-drain
With their slick upholstery:
Slithers of thallus, anchored
By watersoaked rhizoids,
Their surfaces gleaming,
Wet as vulvas, dripping dew
Back into the stream. Each plant
Wears its sex on a stalk:
Primed gametophytes
Waiting for rain.
Next year, they will invade
Our grandmother’s greenhouse
Perversely scaling the pots
Of tropical orchids, their goblets
Gorged with mist condensed:
The females stellar, rayed;
The males spreading parasols,
Shading a refracted sun.
Source material: Marchantia polymorpha is the largest British liverwort, and is
commonly regarded as typifying all the main characteristics of the order
Marchantiales. It often colonises the banks of streams, but is equally at home in
heated greenhouses. The upper surface is typically covered in goblet-shaped organs,
and the gametophyte tissue is borne aloft on stalks, or peduncles. Male and female
plants grow as separate individuals. See Arthur J. Jewell, The Observer’s Book of
Mosses and Liverworts, London, 1955, pp. 27-28. Written at the request of Anna
Tambour.
123
PART 7: Plants and Culture
ARROWHEAD
Stamped with characters of beauty, their veins
Like waters at a confluence of streams, arrowheads
Point heavenwards. The traceries of their leaves
Are essays in divine proportion: three lobes
Of an arch, mirrored in the initials
Of her half-forgotten, inverted Book of Hours,
In the stained glass of her chapel, in the niche
Of the piscina where her fingers dipped
Before the benediction, and mirrored also
In the shadow of one leaf, which makes
A window to the riverbed. I too wish to dip
My outstretched hand in that dark and holy water.
Source material: The poem refers to Charles Collins’ painting, Convent Thoughts,
currently housed in the Ashmolean museum. John Ruskin praised the leaves of
Alisma plantago-aquatica, the Water Plantain, as models of “divine proportion” which
endorsed his theory of gothic architecture, claiming in The Seven Lamps of
Architecture (1849) that they are “shapes which in the everyday world are familiar to
the eyes of men, [and with which] God has stamped those characters of beauty
which He has made it man’s nature to love”. In a review in which he defended the
aesthetic merits of Collins’ painting, Ruskin maintained: “I happen to have a special
acquaintance with the water plant Alisma Plantago ... and as I never saw it so
thoroughly or so well drawn, I must take leave to remonstrate with you, when you
say sweepingly that these men [Pre-Raphaelite painters] 'sacrifice truth as well as
feeling to eccentricity.' For as a mere botanical study of the Water Lily and Alisma,
as well as of the common lily and several other garden flowers, this picture would be
invaluable to me, and I heartily wish it were mine.” Unfortunately for Ruskin, he had
made a grave error of identification, for there is no Alisma in Collins’ painting, but
there are Arrowhead plants (Sagittaria sagittifolia), in the bottom left hand corner of
the painting. For a more detailed discussion of Ruskin’s mistake, see Elizabeth
Deas, "The Missing Alisma: Ruskin's Botanical Error", Journal of Pre-Raphaelite
Studies (Fall 2001): 4-13. I am grateful to Jeannie for our several visits to see this
painting, and for her assistance in my research.
124
VIPER’S BUGLOSS
Did you see only bareness in Australian soil
When you laid out your garden, and seeded
It with Bugloss, dreaming of its blueness
In an English drought? Had you read
The great herbalists, who saw it coiled
Like a viper, ready to strike, its bleached,
Bloody stamens in lieu of fangs? Did
A brown snake shoot between your
Stockinged legs as you stood and watched
Them growing? Were they coddled
With watering-cans and little trowels
Expunging weeds? Did you recoil
From the muted greens of gumleaves,
Seeing them as merely grey? Were you
Repelled by their oblong shades, longing
To make your garden a dream of elm
And oak, your heart “in England now”?
You meant well. Today, after bushfires,
Bugloss reclaims the scorched ground,
And horses quaver, drugged and stung
By its asp-tongued alkaloids. Bees
Drink its nectar, puke a delicious
Honey: poison on toast, they say. You
Have become a household word:
Mrs Patterson, brewing - with your
Well-meaning, homesick yearning The primal, eldest Curse.
Source material: Echium vulgare is known in England as Viper’s Bugloss, a muchwelcomed coloniser of bare and infertile soils. Old world herbalists praised it as a
cure-all, and adherents of the Doctrine of Signatures saw, in its serpentine curlings
and the apparently scaly appearance of its stems, a sure sign that it was an antidote
for serpent venom. The plant was inadvertently introduced to the Americas, its seed
mixed with cereals - where it is known by its Somerset names of Blueweed, Snake
Flower and Viper’s Grass - and instantly became an invasive weed. In Australia, the
introduction was more deliberate: Mrs Patterson sowed it in her garden, and then
watched with growing horror as it spread like wildfire. The plant contains toxic
alkaloids which have a cumulative and devastating effect on farm animals,
especially horses. After the recent bushfires in Canberra, large numbers of horses
had to be destroyed after consuming the weed, which colonised the burnt soil even
before the native plants could do so. Even before this calamitous event, I can
remember negotiating whole fields of this plant in my childhood walks near the
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Canberra suburb of Weston. Bees love the plant, and I can testify to the delicious –
if somewhat acquired – taste of the honey, which is also reportedly toxic in large
quantities. In Australia, the plant is sometimes known as Salvation Jane, on
account of the fact that it provides much-needed fodder for farm animals after a fire,
but its other, more common appellation documents the tragic results which so often
ensue: it is Patterson’s Curse. I have deliberately referenced Claudius in Hamlet and
a patriotic poem by Robert Browning. The imagined reference to the brown snake
was inspired by a similar incident, beautifully described by W.H. Hudson, which
occurred during his own childhood on the Argentinian pampas. See Geoffrey
Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, St. Albans, 1975, p. 308.
126
WOUNDWORT
A clownish answer he gave, when I,
A man of letters, offered aid:
“I can ‘eal it better mesel’.”
The grass was flush with his gush of blood
And flecks of it dripped from docks
And plantains. A red runnel ran down
The scythe blade, which cleaved the air
Where he had dropped it. His leg
Was open to the shin, and within
I glimpsed a gleam of tibia, white
Before the blood engulfed it.
He shrugged me off, and dragged
Himself to the hedge, where woundworts
Spired their flowers – a signature
In clotted gore – ripped
The stinking leaves with a quaking hand,
Restrained his stertorous breath,
And crammed them into the gash.
The burnt rubber taint of the herb
Mingled with the rusty smell of blood
As the wound lips sandwiched its leaves.
Forty days, it should have taken,
Balsam-poulticed, for such a wound
To heal; he hobbled out each day
To work his field, the gash
Sealed with hog’s grease and herb,
And was whole within a week.
A clownish answer he gave, and I,
A man of letters, use it yet:
Clown’s Woundwort – All Heal to the wise.
Source material: Marcus Woodward (Ed.), Gerard’s Herbal: John Gerard’s Historie
of Plants, (1597), Middlesex, 1998, pp. 238-240. Adapted from Gerard’s account of
how he “discovered” the healing qualities of this herb. “Clownish” is not quite as
insulting as it seems; a “clown” in the sixteenth century was a country labourer, not
necessarily a fool. John Clare’s use of the word to describe himself in the nineteenth
century was tinged with self-irony, but was in no way intended to suggest
foolishness. The comparison of the smell of the crushed herb to “burnt rubber” is an
anachronism in the context of Gerard’s writing, since rubber was not known in
Europe until the mid eighteenth century, but on the basis of my own experience, I
127
can think of no more apt comparison. Woundwort used to be eaten as a vegetable,
which suggests perhaps that people did not find its smell so repellent as we do
today. Could this be, perhaps, because we automatically associate its odour - which
is perhaps quite inoffensive in itself - with the smell of burning tyres: a comparison
which a person of Gerard’s time could not possibly have made?
128
BIRTHWORT
What did the nuns at Godstow want
With Birthwort? Its stench attracted only flies,
And they writhed, imprisoned and foetal,
Goggle-eyed inside its green and swelling wombs.
Its virtues not far removed from vices, its signature
A vulva prematurely opened, its work the grief
Or relief of expectant mothers. The flowers: pale
Lopsided alembics in the grass, ditch-deep.
What do I, sick of sun at Godstow, want
With Birthwort? A plant that outlives bone,
Religions, stone, and budges not one inch
In five hundred years. The flies reborn
Like ghosts of embryos: little slain ones
Raised to life.
Source material: Aristolochia clamatitis was rather provocatively described by
Professor E.F. Warburg as “a good abortifacient, only found in England in
nunneries, where it is an introduced plant.” It is certainly true that the plant
survives on the sites of monastic gardens, and Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica,
(1996), p. 38, observes that “the plant clings on amongst the nettles at the ruins of
Godstow Nunnery outside Oxford.” In 2008, I sought the plant out myself in a fit of
obsession, but it took me more than an hour to find it, blooming in profusion in a
wooded ditch beneath one of the convent walls, at least 500 years after it was first
planted there. Aristolochia is certainly poisonous, but the shape of the flowers was
reminiscent of the human womb and birth canal, making its own ironic appeal to
adherents of the Doctrine of Signatures. Like Cuckoo Pint, Birthwort flowers have
backwards pointing hairs which help to temporarily imprison flies (attracted by its
foetid smell), in order to increase the likelihood of pollination. See also Geoffrey
Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, 1975, p. 243, and Lesley Gordon, A Country
Herbal, 1980, p. 23.
129
SHEPHERD’S PURSE
“Unclean! Unclean!” The clappede pouch
Strung by a thong to the end of a pole
Fishes for coppers, well beyond reach,
The leper untouchable, hooded and pale.
“Unclean! Unclean!” The plant by the gate,
Proffering scrips on a stem in the heat.
Squeeze out the seeds. Are they green? Are they gold?
Bereft is your mother, and broken her heart.
Source material: See G. Clarke Nuttall and H. Essenhigh Corke, Wildflowers as
they Grow, Volume 7, 1914; Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, 1975, p. 67. A
“clappede pouch” was a purse on the end of a long stick, used by lepers to collect
alms. A common wayside weed, Shepherd’s Purse holds its seed cases on long
stalks, which led to the plant being associated with lepers and their clappede
pouches. The second verse alludes to the rather sinister game of ‘Mother’s Heart’ in
which one child persuades another to pick one of the seed cases of the Shepherd’s
Purse, and then, when it breaks, accuses him of breaking his mother’s heart. These
traditions survived into the early twentieth century, and are recorded by Roy
Vickery, An Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, 1995, p. 352, who also mentions the
Yorkshire tradition in which a seed case is broken open. If the seeds are yellow, this
signals prosperity, but if green, poverty is in store.
130
WHITE CLOVER
Olwen: every beauteous cliché
Swells from her swanlike breast;
Each blush recalls a foxglove.
Follow.
With every step of lissom feet
There spring four flowers
Of trefoil. Clover. Mutton-grass,
Each bloom prosaic. Every leaf
A sermon exemplum: revealing
A stern and triune god.
Stoop.
Look again: each tube
A honeystalk, inviting
Hungry tongues.
Look up.
She turns, watches, sways.
Are you hunter,
or hunted
Fixed in her falcon-eyes?
Source material: The radiant beauty of Olwen, desperately sought by Culhwch, is
described in the Mabinogion: “Yellower was her head than the flower of the broom;
whiter was her flesh than the foam of the wave; whiter were her palms and her
fingers than the shoots of the marsh trefoil from amidst the gravel of a welling
spring. Neither the eye of the mewed hawk, nor the eye of the thrice-mewed falcon,
not an eye was there fairer than hers. Whiter were her breasts than the breast of a
swan, redder were her cheeks than the reddest foxgloves. Whoso beheld her would
be filled with love for her. Four white trefoils sprung up behind her wherever she
went, and for that reason, she was called Olwen.” (Gwyn and Thomas Jones (trans.),
The Mabinogion, London, 1974, pp. 110-111.) The name Olwen means “white
footprint”. White clover is known as “mutton-grass” because it is a favourite food of
sheep, a fact alluded to by Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus, where he uses the folkname “honeystalks”: “I will enchant the old Andronicus/ With words more sweet/
[Than] honeystalks to sheep.” See Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, p. 145.
131
DOCK
A dock leaf in downland
Transfigured by sun
Becomes an ascension window,
A collage of lights,
Chloroplast-coloured,
Leaded and held
By a tracery of veins.
Some will turn crimson
As any Chagall, livid
Pointillisms of stain.
Insect-masons chip
At the tracery, mandibles
Champing, invading the green
With pinholes of sky.
Were I a window-maker, I
Would glaze my muse in green,
A nettle clutched unflinching
In her left hand; a dock leaf
In her other, her lips a pout
Preparing to spit on my livid
Skin: the rash she has inflicted.
Source material: The use of a dock-leaf as a means of bringing relief from a nettle
sting is perhaps the most widespread and well known of all herbal remedies. The
more traditional remedy involved spitting on the sting first: a practice which is
indeed efficacious, as the enzymes in saliva stimulate the anti-inflammatory
properties of the plant. See Gabriel Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal: The Curious Stories of
Britain’s Wild Plants, 2007.
132
SWEET FLAG
A single thread from the hem of her gown
Has snagged, and now unravels;
The fabric crimped and puckered
Lifts to show her ankles.
She tuts and bustles winningly,
A dimple punctuates her pout.
She bends in vain to smooth it out,
And he stoops to meet her, falcon-eyed
And glowering. He glimpses the cleft
Of her corseted breast, and breathes
A scent of citrus. The hem has dropped
By her slipper-sole; he grasps the thread
And snaps it. A puckered leaf upon the floor
Mirrors the crimping: beguiling flaw,
And beside it, a spadix stands erect.
He smirks; she almost blushes,
Then shuffles on to take her pew,
The iris flowers and rushes
Crushed beneath her velvet foot:
They leak the scents of fading life.
He turns, surveys his wilting wife.
He makes comparison, weighs up fate;
At length, the service ends.
Wolsey takes his jewelled hand,
Shams obedience and bends
His neck to hear the soft rebuke:
“Candlesticks; Calamus on the floor!”
He turns, and follows her out the door.
*
A single thread from the hem of her gown
Has snagged, and now unravels;
The fabric crimped and puckered
Lifts to show her ankles.
He crushes a leaf of Calamus;
Its cloying leaves him cold.
She lets it drag. Her eyes are fixed
On basket, axe, scaffold.
Source material: Acorus calamus, the Sweet Flag, is so named because its leaves
are superficially similar to those of Iris pseudacorus, the yellow flag iris, alongside
which it grows in marshy places and on the banks of rivers and streams. It is not an
133
iris, however, but a member of the Araceae, and its closest English relative is the
Cuckoo Pint or Lords and Ladies: a relationship which becomes obvious when
Acorus flowers, since both plants have a phallic spadix. Acorus is an introduced
plant, and was grown by the herbalist Gerard in his garden in Holborn. It became
established in the Fens, and has since colonised marshy areas all over the country,
although it is a shy flowerer. In the absence of flowers, the leaves of Acorus can be
differentiated from those of Iris pseudacorus by their asymmetrical midrib, and by
their tendency to pucker at one edge of the leaf, just like the snagged hem of a
garment. Acorus was highly valued as a “strewing herb” – a plant which was strewn
once a year on the floors of churches and other buildings along with others such as
those of meadowsweet – because it has a scent reminiscent of tangerines when
crushed. Perhaps the name “flag” is related in some way to the flagstones on which
it was strewn. The smell is certainly sweet, but I find it slightly nauseating. During
the reign of Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey was, according to Mrs Leyel, “censured for
his extravagance in the use of this herb, which was very expensive because of the
cost of transport.” My assumption that the smell of Acorus might have played its
part at the first meeting of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is of course pure conjecture,
but not at all unlikely. See: Mrs C.F. Leyel, Herbal Delights: Tisanes, Syrups,
Confections, Electuaries, Robs, Juleps, Vinegars and Conserves, London, 1937, p.
263; Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, St. Albans, 1975, pp. 466-7; Richard
Mabey, Flora Britannica, London, 1996, pp. 384-5.
134
YARROW
The milky-white milfoil grew in the soil
Upturned in clods by the grave-digger’s spade,
On the grave of a maiden, the cause of his toil –
Consumption had caused her to fade.
An umbrella of flowers, shading the ground:
The pale young yarrow – the shadows yet long,
As I came to the graveside, and knelt by the mound,
And hoped that the yarrow would hear my song:
Good morning, good morning, good yarrow,
And thrice good morning to thee;
Tell me before this time to-morrow,
Who my true love is to be.
‘Twas the first hour of morning, and inside my glove
Three sprigs of yarrow I held to my palm;
With the sprigs on my mattress, and pillow above,
By the night I repeated the good yarrow charm:
Good morning, good morning, good yarrow,
Who my true love is to be.
And then I was silent, as tombstones are still,
And I slept all the lonely night through,
And who should it be, yarrow-dreams to fulfil?
My love, it could only be you,
Singing “Good morning, good morning, good yarrow,
Who my true love is to be.”
Source material: Zadkiel's Dream Book, a nineteenth century magical text.
135
HERB PARIS
Parity in every part:
Of leaf, of flower, of fruit.
Four leaves tied in lovers’ knot
And ne’er another shoot.
Symmetry viewed from above:
Eight stamens, styles four;
Then in the midst a berry black
A foot from woodland floor.
Berries three, five, seven, nine
I pluck, and kneel on moss.
Are you Devil-in-a-Bush,
Or are you Christ’s true Cross?
Source material: The name of this plant is not a reference to the son of King Priam,
or to the French capital. It refers to the symmetrical structure of the plant: its
parity. Grigson observes that “A usual specimen has an ovary with four cells and
four styles, four inner and outer segments to the perianth… twice four stamens,
and… four leaves.” The single star-shaped flower is later replaced by a single black
berry. Herb Paris was therefore regarded as the herb of equality, and the berries
were used against witchcraft, which, of course, has always set store by odd numbers
rather than even ones. Berries of Herb Paris were used in the treatment of epilepsy,
but the German doctor Martin Blochwich insisted that for them to be efficacious,
they must be administered in odd numbers, thereby revealing that he was of the
Devil’s party without knowing it. The four equal leaves are said to be reminiscent of
a Lovers’ Knot, and this has become one of the flower’s vernacular names. It is also
known as Devil-in-a-Bush, but the even arrangement of the leaves has led to a
folkloric association with the cross of Christ. In fact, Herb Paris is quite certainly a
Devil-in-a-Bush: the whole plant contains a saponin-like poison (emetic and
narcotic) which is unlikely to kill an adult, but is very dangerous to children. The
speaker in the poem may have a very particular reason for dicing with death: in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Herb Paris was regarded as an antidote to
mercury and arsenic, both of which were used in the treatment of syphilis. See
Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, 1975, pp. 447-9; Margaret Baker,
Discovering the Folklore of Plants, 1999, p. 96; Pamela M. North, Poisonous Plants
and Fungi, London, 1967, pp. 145-6; Frederick Gilliam, Poisonous Plants in Great
Britain, Glastonbury, 2008, p. 40.
136
SOLOMON’S SEAL
You were the gardener; I was the maid
And I regret that we were laid
Down in the dell where a single spray
Hung with bellflowers crossed our way,
But earth and loam did not reveal
The roots were marked with Solomon’s Seal.
You were the husband; I was the wife –
There’s always some sick twist to life –
I went to slap; you grabbed my wrist,
That’s how my eye met with your fist.
Pound the root, apply and heal,
Cover the bruise with Solomon’s Seal.
I am the widow, you’re underground,
And may earth keep you safe and sound,
For now I’ve had my sweet redress
And on my deathbed, I’ll confess:
I picked black berries for your last meal
And poisoned you with Solomon’s Seal.
You’re the corpse; you lose – I win –
I’ll not be shriven: there’s no sin.
Perhaps the henbane, aconite
Or deadly nightshade helped that night,
But as I watched them all congeal
I set my store by Solomon’s Seal.
I’m still in the glade, but you’re in hell;
I’ve dug your grave and like it well.
I pile on clods, I pile on stones,
And plant the herb that sealed my bones,
The judgement’s cast; there’s no appeal
Ratified by Solomon’s Seal.
Source material: The berries of Solomon’s Seal contain anthraquinone, a poison
which causes vomiting and diarrhoea, but would scarcely be sufficient to despatch a
healthy, grown man, although each of the other ingredients in the above recipe
would do the job on its own. The origin of the plant’s English name has long been
debated, and Gerard (1597) cites the two main theories: perhaps the name refers to
the sigil-like markings on the root nodules which are like those on a royal seal, or
perhaps it merely alludes to the plant’s supposed efficacy in the “sealing” of broken
bones. The wry reference to the wife’s “accidental” meeting with her husband’s fist is
thankfully not my own invention, but Gerard’s: “The root of Solomons seale stamped
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while it is fresh and greene, and applied, taketh away in one night, or two at the
most, any bruise, blacke or blew spots gotten by fals or womens wilfulnesse, in
stumbling upon their hasty husbands fists, or such like.” See also Mrs C.F. Leyel,
Herbal Delights, 1937; Pamela North, Poisonous Plants and Fungi in Colour, 1967;
Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, 1958; Mrs M. Grieve, A Modern Herbal,
1931.
138
LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY
The dragon beside him gasping for life,
The leaf scrolls unfurled, flowers before long,
Delightful at first, beginning to cloy.
Where Liriconfancie grew in the glade
The nightingale sought his drab little wife,
Drawn by a scent as full as his song,
Deceived by the sweetness, deluded by joy.
Silver and gold are the vessels that hold
Aqua aurea, the fragrance distilled;
Ostara once blessed them. The white bells that hung
Delivered their fragrance to sweeten a lass.
Liriconfancie, physic of old,
Banish this gurgling, let it be stilled:
The bubbling breath from a mustard-scorched lung.
Delude all you can; kinder poison than gas.
Source material: Lily of the Valley, known to Gerard as Liriconfancie, has long been
used by herbalists, despite the fact that it contains cardiac glycosides which are
deadly poisonous, and more potent than digitalin. It has been claimed that a dog
injected with four drops of its extract will die within ten minutes. The plant was
sacred to the Nordic goddess of the dawn, Ostara. Mrs Grieve, A Modern Herbal,
1931, reports a Sussex legend explaining the origin of the plant, which purportedly
sprung from the blood of St Leonard after his protracted but victorious battle with a
dragon in the woods near Horsham. She adds that “Legend says that the fragrance
of the Lily-of-the-Valley draws the nightingale from hedge and bush, and leads him
to choose his mate in the recesses of the glade.” Aqua aurea (golden water) is the
name of the fragrant water distilled from the flowers, which was held to be too
precious to be stored in vessels of baser metals than silver or gold. In the First World
War, the plant was employed in the treatment of soldiers suffering from the
inhalation of poison gas. See also Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, 1958;
Margaret Baker, The Folklore of Plants, 1969; Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant
Lore, 1995; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal: The Curious Stories of Britain’s Wild
Plants, 2007.
139
MONK’S HOOD
He dragged me from Tartarus,
Chained in adamantine,
Clawing up the chasm of Acone,
My eyes seared by sunlight.
My twelve canines gleamed,
My three tongues slavered,
My triple bark splattered
Dog-spit across the green fields.
My sputum sprouted wolfsbane;
Witches flew by it.
Medea picked it for her poison;
Hecate made it hers.
I was Cereberus, the thrice
Decapitated. My three
Necks bleed. Blue flowers
Mourn my murder.
Source material: According to Greek mythology, the triple-headed hound Cereberus
was dragged to the cave of Acone, near Mariandyne on the Black Sea, by Heracles.
The saliva of the dying dog generated the poisonous plant Aconite, also known as
Wolfsbane and Monk’s Hood. Medea poisoned a cup of wine with the same plant in
the hope of disposing of Theseus, but it is said that the poison was first used by
Hecate, or indeed that Cereberus is himself a later version of the witch-goddess. See
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 97 c and 134 g,h. When used in witches’
ointments, the plant caused fibrillation, which, when combined with the
psychotropic properties of plants from the family Solanacae, resulted in a flying
sensation. See Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, p. 9.
140
HELLEBORE
First, to forestall the onset of migraine,
Red wine I’ll drink, with garlic in the glass,
Then seek the herb that mutes all mental pain,
And, in careful measure, causeth worms to pass.
Finding it, large sepaled, palmate on ground,
I describe on earth a circle with my sword.
No bird must fly, no sparrow make a sound;
On bended knee, Aescalpius implored:
“Let no eagle circle, lest I should die,
And by no beak nor tongue my deed betrayed.
Let no fur nor feather come me nigh
As I dig about the dark thing with my spade.”
Danger makes me sweat from every pore
When I uproot grim winter’s hellebore.
Source material: Classical tradition relates that the shepherd Melampus first
realised the medicinal properties of the Christmas Rose or Black Hellebore,
Helleborus niger, and cured the daughters of Proteus of their mental afflictions by
giving them the milk of goats which had eaten the plant. The first century physician
Dioscorides lists a number of precautions required when harvesting hellebores, and
these are the subject of this sonnet. On a more mundane level, hellebores have long
been a folk remedy for worms, and a highly efficacious one, save for the fact that the
poison often kills the patient as well. The Green Hellebore, Helleborus viridis is less
responsible for such overkill than the lethal Stinking Hellebore, Helleborus foetidus.
See Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, p. 74; Roy Vickery, The
Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, p.176, and Katherine Kear, Flower Wisdom, pp. 101–
102.
141
RAGWORT
I eat the milky ragwort leaves;
Touch me and I’ll squirm—
One day I’ll be a cinnabar moth;
Today I’m but a worm.
I climb the stem towards the flower—
The bloom a saffron yellow.
I share its shade with bars of black
For I’m a stripy fellow.
I’ve black hairs, and many feet—
I use them for to clutch
When the wind is blowing hard,
Or when it rains too much.
I sleep here on a moonlit night,
When all lies dark and muted,
But—Oh! What witchery is this?
My ragwort’s been uprooted!
And something big’s astride the stem—
It’s hairy, and it’s smelly.
As I look up between its legs,
I see a great, fat belly.
The wind’s increasing; I must cling
With all my tiny might—
I’m looking up its warty nose;
What a scary sight!
I hear it cackle with delight;
My insides feel like lead.
It seems that all my insect blood
Is rushing to my head.
Let me down! I’m feeling dizzy!
Woe! I think I’m dying!
Can’t you see I’m far too young
To make a start on flying?
Hills and crags are sweeping by;
The hemp-patched garments whirr;
Trees and streams lit by the moon
Pass by in a blur.
The wind is shrieking, so’s the witch,
The vertigo’s appalling—
I’ll curl up like a snail shell.
Oh dear! Now I’m falling!
142
A cushioned landing’s just the thing
Upon a ragwort flower.
Life is hard for caterpillars
At the witching hour.
I eat the milky ragwort leaves;
Touch me and I’ll squirm—
One day I’ll be a cinnabar moth;
Today I’m but a worm.
Source material: The caterpillar of the cinnabar moth feeds on ragwort (Senecio
jacobaea), and has black and yellow stripes. Traditions identifying ragwort stems as
witches’ or faeries’ steeds are common, particularly in Scotland, and are mentioned
by Burns (1785), and also by Henderson (1856): “On auld broom-besoms, and
ragweed naigs,/ They flew owre burns, hills and craigs.” See Roy Vickery, Oxford
Dictionary of Plant Lore, p. 305.
143
WORMWOOD
Cheiron, wildest of centaurs, was yet
The hand which held the healing knife,
Tutor to the gods. Artemis, damp
From the wildwood, gave him wormwood,
Flourishing in sun and shade, febrifuge
And vermifuge, a fitting gift:
Blind old woman, path-weaver of the
Primeval serpent, pounded into liquid,
Green and bitter. Spectrum twister,
Ringworm turner, antidote to
The insidious venom of the shrew.
Cheiron dispensed the juice
In crystal phials, his hooves
Clattering upon marble.
Source material: See Paul Huson, Mastering Herbalism, London, 1974, pp. 86–88,
and Dorothy Jacob, A Witch’s Guide to Gardening, London, 1964, p. 53. Apart from
its medicinal properties, both real and fantastical, wormwood is the source of
intoxicating absinth, which affects the drinker’s perception of colour. L. Harrison
Matthews, British Mammals, London, 1952, pp. 56–57, casts an interesting light on
the supposed “old wives’ tale” about the venomous bite of the shrew. In the 1940s, it
was established that an American species of shrew, Blarina brevicauda, does indeed
produce a venomous substance in the saliva, which assists the insectivore by
immobilising its victims, and causing discomfort even for a human handler. The
venom is introduced to the wound by means of the groove between the lower
incisors. It is probable that English species produce similar, albeit weaker, venom.
Whether the juice of wormwood is efficacious in the treatment of shrew bites is,
however, another matter.
144
BRYONY
Rooting up the bryony,
The mandrake of the north;
Digging up the bulbous parts
To bring our Venus forth.
We’ll put our mark upon her
For we know not how to write,
And she shall win ten pints for us
On fenland’s Venus Night.
White bryony has berries red,
With twining tendrils green;
We’ll find her in the hedgerow
Climbing like a bean.
We’ll dig her up and wash her down;
Our Venus has been born.
We’ll grow the hair upon her head,
Sown with yellow corn.
We’ll take her to the local inn,
And pay the landlord’s fee;
They’ll put her on the mantel shelf,
A jolly sight to see.
The landlady will judge each root,
By leg, and arm and breast,
And we shall all shout “Cheers” to her
When she rules ours is best.
Baccy, beer and pickled onions,
These shall be our prize;
No Venus ever was more shapely
Or of better size.
And all the other bryony roots
Shall not be left to rot—
They shall be sold for good red gold
For mandrake cures the lot.
We’ll put some in our moneybox,
Our riches shall increase,
And every penny be transformed
Into a sovereign piece.
We’ll put some in our pigsty
For piglets hale and hearty,
And when we’ve done, we’ll all return,
Drink ale, and throw a party.
145
Our Venus, she shall reign a year,
Our plump and woody Mother,
Until we go out with our spades
And dig up yet another.
Source material: White Bryony (Bryonia dioica) has long been used in parts of rural
Britain in place of the exotic mandrake, since its roots tend to take similar
humanoid shapes. Venus Nights were a common practice in Cambridgeshire, and
the verses of this song catalogue some of the uses to which the rejected roots were
consigned. The practice of germinating corn in the “head” of the bryony root in order
to imitate hair has a long history, and was recorded by Sir Hans Sloane (1660–
1753). See Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant-Lore, Oxford, 1995, pp. 393–394,
and Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, Princes Risborough, 1999,
pp. 33–34.
146
FOXGLOVE
The foxgloves, in that they are bitter
Are always hot and dry,
With cleansing qualities therewith,
And yet, the Ancients sigh,
“Foxglove, growing from my wall,
Alas, thou art no use at all.”
They came with dropsy, one by one;
Knocked on her cottage door.
She led them to her kitchen dark,
The weary and the sore.
Her kitchen hung with charms, and herbs
Both poisonous and strong,
Her hearty patients left her care
And scorned the ancient song:
One Dr William Withering
Came to her Shropshire town;
He stroked his beard suspiciously
And wore a sceptic’s frown.
He watched them cured of dropsy all
And maladies of the heart,
For Mrs Hutton made them well
All by her secret art.
She said, “The foxglove cures their ills;
No herb has greater worth.
Wise women know it very well
And thank their mother Earth.”
He took her chanted recipes,
To Worcester town he went;
“For sure, the Ancients got it wrong—
This herb’s from Heaven sent.”
He published all his findings,
And thus fulfilled his dream
To make his mark, and show at length
That science was supreme.
Historians, they vaunt his deeds,
“Great Withering,” they rave,
Whilst wise old Mrs Hutton lies
In an unmarked grave.
Source material: Documentary evidence concerning Mrs Hutton is sparse, whereas
that which vaunts the achievement of Dr William Withering as the “discoverer” of the
medicinal qualities of Digitalis is plentiful. According to Margaret Baker, Discovering
the Folklore of Plants, pp. 60–61, “Dr William Withering, a medical practitioner in
Warwickshire, discovered the value of digitalin (contained in the dark green leaves of
147
the foxglove) in the treatment of heart disorders, after noticing its effect on the
dropsical patients of a wise woman in Shropshire. He published his theories in An
Account of the Foxglove and Some of its Medical Uses (1785). When he died in 1799 a
carved foxglove decorated his memorial in Edgbaston Old Church. Foxglove’s
medical benefits were encapsulated poetically by Dr Withering himself: “The
Foxglove’s leaves, with caution given,/ Another proof of favouring Heav’n/ Will
happily display:/ The rapid pulse it can abate,/ The hectic flush can moderate,/
And, blest by Him whose will is fate,/ May give a lengthened day.” The chorus is an
adaptation of the rather more sceptical words of Gerard’s Herbal.
148
BELLADONNA
The vulgar believe, and the witches confess,
A pipe of oyntment shall begrease their staffs.
Where hairs grow, there they rub it,
Shove the shaft between their legs, and fly.
We rifled the lady’s closet. There we found
A pipe with which she greased her long, black broom.
Thereon did she gallop, through thick and thin
And flew up through the chimney in her room.
Thumbscrewed and racked, she confessed,
How her pestle worked to pound the berries black.
By means of them she flew, or so she claimed,
When she was put to pricking and the rack.
I am the grease bird, she said, eating grass,
Goose-like shall I peck upon the ground.
I shall become fish-fingered, fin-handed,
Fling out my arms and underwater fly;
I shall float up and dive down, ere I die.
Source material: Deadly nightshade, or belladonna, was one of the principal active
ingredients of witches’ flying ointments. The opening verses are adapted from two
medieval sources; the first from the fifteenth century: “The vulgar believe and the
witches confess, that on certain days and nights they anoint a shaft and ride on it to
the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and other hairy places and
sometimes carry charms under the hair.” The second describes an inquisitorial
investigation into witchcraft in 1324: “in rifling the closet of the ladie, they found a
Pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and
galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed.” The final
verse is based on a description of the effects of using Belladonna in an ointment,
recorded by Porta, a friend of Galileo, in 1589. See Richard Evans Schultes and
Albert Hofmann, Plants of the Gods: Origins of Hallucinogenic Use, New York, 1979,
pp. 88–89.
149
THORN APPLE
In the hold of the Golden Hind
Came seeds to help him lose his mind.
To make him meeker than a lamb
His wench shall give him half a dram.
In the hold of the Golden Hind
Among the plundered jewels
Lay apples of Stramonium,
The conker-case of fools.
Drake sailed for honours from his Queen,
The jimsonweed came too;
Scattered on the rank-tared ground,
Seeds split, the strange plant grew,
Thrusting forth its jagged leaves.
Its trumpets white grew well,
And many a man who wandered by
Grew waxen at the smell.
The flowers dropped, the apples grew,
Encased in thorns of green,
About the time that Francis Drake
Was knighted by his Queen.
Three wenches picked them when they dried
To spike their husbands’ ale,
So they could leave them senseless
When the sabbat moon rose pale.
Their husbands swooning on the floor
As if they’d never wake,
Three wenches flew on stangs and brooms
Thanks to Sir Francis Drake.
Source material: “[Thorn Apple] was used by herbal ‘wizards’ (though not medieval
ones: it didn’t arrive in England until the late sixteenth century)—and perhaps
‘witches’ too. At the end of the seventeenth century John Pechey maintained that
‘Wenches give half a dram of it to their Lovers, in beer or wine. Some are so skilled
in dosing of it, that they can make men mad for as many hours as they please.”
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, p. 303. Datura stramonium is, like Deadly
Nightshade and Mandrake, a member of the Solanaceae, and has similar effects
when taken internally. It seems reasonable to assume that since John Pechey’s
“wenches” were so skilled in its use, they would have known how to exploit its more
interesting effects for themselves, whilst at the same time temporarily disposing of
their husbands with its aid. It also seems at least a fair hypothesis that Datura was
introduced as a result of Drake’s voyage, since it is a native of South America, where
150
Drake had been active in disrupting Spanish shipping, much to the indignation of
King Philip of Spain, and to the delight of Queen Elizabeth. It would, however, be
unreasonable to assume that English witches, ever resourceful by necessity, should
have taken an entire century to discover the merits of the Thorn Apple.
151
VERVAIN
Herba sacra swept the altars
Of Jupiter, scoured temples
And houses at Verbenalis, hung
From garlands at weddings.
Herba veneris made philtres
For Elizabethan lovers, was good luck
For Florentine witches, febrifuge
And expectorant, in decoction.
Simpler’s Joy, tied to a ribbon
Of white satin, purged the plague,
Prophylactic against scrofula and bites
Of rabid dogs, calmed the migraine.
Yn Ard Lus, sewn into the hems
Of Manx men and women, was sought
But not requested, hints given,
A guess made. No words exchanged.
Source material: Paul Huson, Mastering Herbalism, London, 1974, p. 84; Margaret
Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, pp. 152–154; Roy Vickery, Oxford
Dictionary of Plant Lore, p. 381; Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, London, 1996. p.
312. The names in italics at the beginning of each stanza all refer to Verbena
officinalis. Manx herbalists insist that the herb is most efficacious when given by a
friend, but it is rendered ineffective if asked for directly. Mabey reports Colin Jerry’s
observations: “The procedure for getting a piece is rather complicated. It cannot be
asked for directly. Broad hints will be dropped and perhaps the possessor will take a
hint and a plant will discreetly change hands, usually wrapped in paper. No word
should be exchanged. It must always change hands from man to woman or viceversa. It can be stolen, but I have not stooped to that yet.”
152
HENBANE
I shall look for henbane
In the darker places,
Where nature’s graces grow pale
And the frail root is white
And writhing like a worm
Smoked from an aching tooth.
I shall say sooth, I shall fly
By horse and hattock
Through the sabbat-black sky.
The flower like veined flesh,
Its purpled pulse corpse cold,
And pistil like a licking tongue,
The leaves haired and viscid,
Flower heads funnelled and drooping
With their own deep narcotic.
Into hot water, this herb I hurl,
Raise a storm, and stew
My ointment while the winds whirl.
Some shall I save, to burn
With frankincense and fennel,
Cassia and coriander,
With black candles on a stump
In a dim wood,
When the darkling birds take flight.
Spirits of the night shall rise
Where henbane burns, dimly,
Like the smouldering in their eyes.
Source material: Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), is the witch’s plant par excellence
on account of its strongly narcotic and toxic properties. It contains a combination of
atropine, hyoscyamine and hycosine. The herb has been used as a pain-killer, and
especially for treating the symptoms of tooth decay. The normally astute naturalist
John Ray described its use in 1660: “The seed of Hyoscyamus placed on a coal gives
off a smoke with a very unpleasant smell: when passed through the mouth and
nostrils by a tube it drives out small worms (vermiculi) which sometimes grow in the
nostrils or the teeth. They can be caught in a basin of water so that they can be seen
better.” The existence of these worms is attested by several other authorities, but
dismissed by John Gerard, who described henbane-administering dentists as
“mountibancke tooth-drawers”. (See Roy Vickery, The Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore,
pp. 177–178.) Henbane was a common ingredient in witches’ flying ointments.
Storms could be raised by throwing some of the plant into boiling water. The incense
recipe for raising spirits of the night is cited by Jon Hyslop and Paul Ratcliffe, A Folk
153
Herbal, Radiation Publications, Oxford, 1989, p. 15. “To be rid of them”, they add,
“burn Asafetida and Frankincense.”
154
MANDRAKE
“They hanged a felon from this tree;
He swung from that there bough.
And as he twitched, he voided pee.
A mandrake grows there now.”
I looked at my companion’s eye;
He sideways glanced at mine,
“’Tis likely one of us shall die
When we undermine
Mandragora, mandragora,
When the demon screams,
For one shall die, and one shall live,
And one shall have foul dreams.”
His misty breath rose from his hood,
His hound slunk at his knee.
The moonlit, silhouetted wood
Of the hanging tree
Cast its shade upon the place
Where foetid things must grow,
And thrice in circles did he pace,
And chanted, grim and low:
“Mandragora, mandragora,
One shall die, and one shall live,
He grabbed the tail of the hound
And tied it to the plant;
The cur a-cringing on the ground
Began to whine and pant.
From sackcolth he unwrapped a bone
And held it for the hound,
And from the plant there rose a moan.
I quailed at the sound:
And then the moan became a howl
Most horrible to hear,
And every badger, every owl
Fled the glade for fear,
And when the howl became a screech
I fell down to my knees
All gods and spirits to beseech;
155
It faded by degrees.
Beneath the moon, the root gleams pale,
’Tis like unto a man.
But who shall live to tell this tale
If tell this tale he can?
Three of us wait for the dawn
And one of us must die,
But which will rue that he was born—
My friend, his dog, or I?
Source material: This lyric is based on two legends about the mandrake, both of
some antiquity. The oldest, concerning the method of harvest, in which the wrath of
the mandrake demon is supposedly unleashed on the unfortunate dog, appears to
have its origins in ancient Greece, and may be still older. The more recent, which
holds that the mandrake springs from the urine or sperm of a man dying on the
gallows, probably dates from between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Schmidels relates in 1751: “At the foot of the gallows on which a man has been
unjustly hanged for theft it is said that there springs from the urine, voided just
before death a plant with broad leaves, a yellow flower, and a root which exactly
represents the human form even to the hair and sexual organs... To dig it is said to
be attended with great danger, for it gives forth such groans when drawn from the
earth that the digger if he hears them, dies on the spot.” Some traditions insist that
the death, either of dog or digger, occurs not instantaneously, but at sunrise. The
assumption that the uprooting of the plant might cause nightmares for a third party
is the author’s own, but it seems a logical one. Readers interested in the fascinating
history of mandrake lore should consult C.J.S. Thompson’s superb study, The
Mystic Mandrake, New York, 1968.
156
HEMLOCK
Socrates said that trees and fields
Taught him nothing; men did.
So I killed him. He sipped me
From the cup they offered.
Thrice Diotima spat
Into her bosom.
Toads find refuge
Under my ferned leaf,
My purpled stems
And my umbelled flower.
Thrice my poison drips
Upon their warted skins.
I shall temper the black knife
Forged in the hour of Saturn.
Thrice shall you thrust it through me
With fire in the iron.
The steam shall hiss with mouse-stench
And I shall drip on the black silk
You wrap about the blade.
Source material: Hemlock (Conium maculatum) is a highly poisonous umbellifer
with purple-spotted stems, and often a strong odour of mice. The first verse is
inspired by the foreword to Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, which identifies
Socrates’ world-denying philosophy as contrary to the spirit of poetry. Germanic
folklore holds that toads gain their toxicity through sitting under hemlock plants.
See Stephen Pollington, Leechcraft:Early English Charms and Healing, Norfolk, 2000,
p. 129. The Greater Key of Solomon advocates that a sorcerer’s black handled ritual
knife be tempered in hemlock juice and the blood of a black cat. See Paul Huson,
Mastering Herbalism, London, 1974, p. 256.
157
DANDELION SPRING
This spring, dandelions took arms
Against cowslips and primroses,
Prevailing on the field of battle.
Anemones hung helmets,
Celandines were spent,
Coltsfoot spilled stuffing,
Cloud ramparts glowered
Mile-high, reedmace
Serried the ditches.
Cuckoos were clarions,
Swallows swooped: Stukas
Strafing the streams.
This spring, dandelions took arms
Against cowslips and primroses,
Prevailing on the field of battle.
158
WOOD ANEMONE
When Deacon picked the Candlemas Caps
There was thunder in a cloudless sky.
He pinned the Chimney Smock to his coat,
The Cuckoo taunting by,
And Deacon climbed to a lonely farm,
He knocked; and Hell rejoiced,
A Shame-Faced Maiden opened up;
He heard her wan, dry voice:
“A wedding feast is in this house,
The Shoes and Slippers dance,
But you bring doom on your lapel.”
She stared, as in a trance,
“Now I Smell Foxes; Eyes of Snakes
Gaze on their nuptial bliss –
They drink to Death, the bride and groom
And seal it with their kiss.”
When Deacon plucked the Windflower’s bloom
The best man’s toast was spilt,
And when she turned him from the door
The Smocks began to wilt,
And love turned cold, like Drops of Snow
And Bethlem’s Star winked out;
He shrugged his shoulders to the storm,
Pursed lips, and turned about.
When Deacon pulled the Easter Flower
The garter slipped and fell,
And when he walked back down the hill
The bloom began to smell:
Badger’s marking, vixen’s scat
In Soldier’s garment clothed.
Within the house, the groom turned tail
And hated his betrothed.
Source material: E. Deacon, ‘Some quaint customs and superstitions in north
Staffordshire and elsewhere’, North Staffordshire Field Club Transactions and Annual
159
Report, 1930, 64: 18-32. Cited in Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, 1995:
“By chance one day I went to an outlying farm, where unknown to me a wedding
feast was in progress. The door was opened by someone with a very smiling face,
which suddenly changed to a face with alarm written on it, because I had a wood
anemone in my buttonhole! I was the bringer of bad luck to the wedding.” The
capitalised words in italics are all vernacular names for the species, recorded by
Geoffrey Grigson in An Englishman’s Flora.
160
WOOD SORREL
The fine art of folding away
Has been perfected: down the midrib
Of each leaf, by night
Like blinds unstrung, or dropped
Like closed umbrellas fearing day,
The wood-sorrel’s timid trefoils
Open only when the cuckoo’s call
Quakes the lengthening shade
Striking other birds with strange
Apprehensions. The flowers, veined
With purple, nod his tune.
Source material: See G. Clarke Nutall and H. Essenhigh Corke, Wildflowers as they
Grow, Volume 2, London, 1912, pp. 117-118. The wood sorrel is a strong contender
for the title of the true “shamrock”, and therefore may well have been the plant St
Patrick referred to in his sermon exemplum on triunity. Its trefoil leaves are very
mobile, closing along the midrib of each leaf at night, and shutting down like
collapsed tents in the heat of the day. The plant’s folk names reflect a long
association with the cuckoo, because it blooms when the bird begins to call.
161
MUSK MALLOW
Hoverflies twirl stamens in supplicant hands
With intense concentration, like children
Sifting flour for baking scones,
The whisking anthers a thousand times
Reflected in bubblebath eyes.
The musk-smell rises, like butterflies
On an updraft. The flower beneath:
A vellum scroll.
The hoverflies return
To find anthers withered, and in their place
Are feathered stigmas, awaiting
Some sacrament. The flowers
Are in facets, a thousand to each eye.
Unfurled: the bloom beneath.
Children
Find the cheeses ready-plated,
Bundled, babybelled, for waiting mouths,
Tight cakes of mucilage
Ripe for tasting. The hoverflies’
Eyes - and their thousand tiny worlds –
Extinguished, and every petal
Wilted.
Source material: G. Clarke Nuttall and H. Essenhigh Corke, Wild Flowers as they
Grow, Volume 1, 1912, pp. 62-64. There are three main stages to the life cycle of a
musk-mallow flower. In the first, a pyramidal arrangement of stamens arises on a
central column, as soon as the flower has opened itself by unrolling after the
manner of a scroll. In the second, the anthers fall away to allow insects to perch on
the stigmas, transferring pollen from their legs as they do so. After this, the flower
withers, and the fruits are bundled on top of the calyx just as though they are being
presented on a dinner plate. They are indeed edible, and particularly delectable to
country children, who have called them “cheeses” for generations. The detail of the
hoverfly rubbing the stamens together in a twirling fashion with its forelegs in order
to extract the pollen for eating is based on personal observation.
162
NAVELWORT
Flowers, corpse-coloured,
Waxy as candles, stand in spikes
By cracks in the stone,
The tomb empty of all
But the dead man’s fingers.
Tissue pink as fractured bone,
Digits ply the weathered stone.
A leaf is the gently dimpled
Navel of Venus; the arching stalks
Pit the surface at the join.
Children, grazed by chafe or fall,
Peel the leaves like plasters.
Source material: Navelwort (also known as Wall Pennywort), has been a remedy
against chilblains since Dioscorides recommended it in the first century. The
epidermis, or “skin”, is peeled from the leaf, and the leaf is then applied to the
chilblain. The epidermis itself is used in lieu of sticking plasters in the treatment of
cuts and abrasions. The plant is prevalent in the south-west of England, and
especially on the Isles of Scilly, where it often grows between the granite stones of
megalithic tombs. “Dead Man’s Fingers” is a folk name which is also associated with
the Early Purple Orchid and the Broomrapes. See Charles A. Hall, A Pocket Book of
British Wild Flowers, London, 1937, p. 35; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal, pp.
246-7; Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, pp. 200-1.
163
SILVERWEED
Plantain and the Little Powerful One
Will claim the trodden portion of the path.
Roman soldiers picked them
Marching barbarian roads:
Stuffed them into boots for easing blisters.
Children dug and roasted them
On little illicit fires.
At Lag nan Tanchasg, a man
Could stake his claim by lying down
On the sward: the upturned roots
Of the Little Ground Hugger
Could sustain him – from a plot
No bigger than a grown man’s grave.
Gerard picked its feathered leaf
And dropped it in a beaker,
The underside a glaze of silver
Bulging, rolling, tumbling.
Praise you, little potent, trampled herb.
Source material: A series of snapshots from the history of Potentilla anserina. The
generic name means “little powerful one”, and is probably a reference to its
persistence on heavily trampled paths. Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica not always the most reliable of sources – makes the rather extravagant claim that in
North Uist a man could sustain himself on the roots of silverweed growing on a
square of ground of his own length. The herb is placed inside shoes to this day as a
remedy for tired feet. Silverweed is covered with grey hairs, which trap air bubbles
when immersed in water. See Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, pp. 159-60;
Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, pp. 352-3; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s
Herbal, pp. 319-320.
164
QUAKING GRASS
Maiden Hair and Trembling
Were dashing through the grass.
Dithery and Dillies
Quaked to watch them pass.
Shivering and Totty
Shook like ships in battle.
Toddling Grass and Silver Spoons
Were rankled by the Rattle.
Quaker Grass and Wigwams
Were wobbly with dissent,
When drought struck the Dothery Dicks,
Their Golden Shekels spent.
Source material: Quaking Grass (Brizia media) is so named because the spikelets
tremble in the slightest wind. Local names for the plant appear in the first line of
each verse; Rattle and Golden Shekels are two more. Still more folk names are listed
in C.E. Hubbard, Grasses, London, 1968, p. 215, and Richard Mabey, Flora
Britannica, p. 396.
165
CENTAURY
1.
Hunt a female hoopoe,
Stalk her startle-crested,
Or grub-getting on ground.
Do what you will, but gain
Her blood, and drip in oil.
Trace the pink wort,
Whose star-flowers purse
By swelling afternoon.
Do what you will, but pull
Her up, and pound in oil.
Burn all in a black lamp
With a long wick, let
Smoke slick the glass.
Do what you will, but wait
For worlds to turn.
Look at yourself: you
Are upside down, your
Feet wave in the air.
Do what you will, the roots
Grow through your hair.
Your feet are flowers, or stars.
2.
With curmell come, with Cheiron’s care,
For adder’s bite, in ageing wine,
For smarting eyes, smear the same
With honey mixed for dimming sight;
For spasm in the sinews sore,
For poison drunk, three draughts down,
For worms that do the navel harm
The centaur’s wort will work the charm.
166
Source material: The thirteenth century Dominican and occult researcher, Albertus
Magnus reports, “Magicians assure us that this herb has a singular virtue for if it is
mixed with the blood of a female hoopoe and put in a lamp with the oil, all those
present will see themselves upside down, with their feet in the air.” By the time
Francis Barret wrote The Magus in 1901, the recipe and its effects had changed: “If
centaury be mixed with honey and the blood of a lapwing, and be put in a lamp,
they that stand about will be of a gigantic stature; and if it be lighted in a clear
evening, the stars will seem scattered about.” The latter authority is perhaps the
more to be doubted, given that he also asserts that “The ink of the cuttle-fish being
put into a lamp, makes Blackamoors appear.” Part 2 of the poem is derived from the
list of uses of “Curmelle feferfuge” in The Old English Herbarium Manuscript V, 36
(see Stephen Pollington, Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plantlore and Healing,
Norfolk, 2000, p. 304–305).
167
HERB ROBERT
Robin redbreast lies a-bleeding,
Man, he killed him all for nought
While Herb-Robert was a-seeding,
Killed him, all for winter sport.
Robin redbreast’s blood a-clotting
On the ground where Robert lies,
Robin redbreast’s flesh a-rotting
Feeds the soil, then feeds the flies,
Feeds the seed where Robert’s sleeping
Through the hour when Wrens are kings;
Robin’s rosy blood is seeping
Up the shoots when comes the spring.
Robert lies on ground a-bleeding,
Blood-pinked flower and ruddy shoot,
Man, he dug him up a-weeding,
Exposed to air his withered root.
Man, he cannot bear the thought
Of any beast that chews the cud,
Such a curse has Robin wrought
That all their milk has turned to blood.
Man no more shall Robin kill
His blood upon the ground to sow,
No more wish Herb-Robert ill
But grant he is a good-fellow.
Source material: Herb-Robert (Geranium robertianum) and the Robin redbreast
share a long-standing folkloric association with the mischievous and sometimes
vengeful sprite, Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck. Both the bird and the plant
have been revered as sacred, and folk belief dictated that the killer of a Robin would
never be able to have a cow milked without the milk turning to blood. To uproot a
Herb-Robert may bring a similar inconvenience, or even occasion a death in the
family. See Katherine Kear, Flower Wisdom: the definitive guidebook to the myth,
magic and mystery of flowers, London, 2000, pp. 155–156.
168
GOOSEBERRY
You may find me in October when the berries are all gone—
Am I ghastly, am I grisly, am I grim to look upon?
Will I beat you, will I eat you, will I make your children sick?
No, I’ll stand here at attention and I’ll imitate a stick.
You may seek me in November when the leaves fall to the ground,
When the thorns are standing starkly, but I shall not be found.
Will I bite you, will I smite you, will I kill you with a sting?
No, I’ll hibernate in winter and I’ll not be seen ’til spring.
You may look for me in May, by the warmth I am awoken,
Like the wand of a witch, like a twig that has been broken.
Will I flay you, will I slay you, will I batter or betray you?
No, I’ll hide amid the flowers, and pinch me not, I pray you.
When you search again in June, you will find that I have spun
A web of silken gossamer, its strands caught by the sun.
Will I blight you, will I slight you, will I bring your mum to grief?
No, I’ll hide inside my silken bed, the darkside of the leaf.
In the middle of July, with gooseberries growing round,
You must seek me with your lantern, a-fluttering around.
Will I rile you or beguile you, will I rob you of your life?
No, and you shall never recognise the gooseberry wife.
Source material: On the Isle of Wight, parents traditionally scare their children
with stories of the “gooseberry wife”, a giant caterpillar which supposedly eats people
alive. The gooseberry wife is a typical “nursery bogey”, designed to dissuade children
from stealing the ripening fruit. This song is based on the assumption that, far from
being the “hairy caterpillar” so often described in the legends, the original
gooseberry wife might have been the larva of Uropteryx sambucata, the Swallow-Tail
Moth, which, as Edward Newman, British Moths, p. 50, observes, “exactly resembles
a twig”. It feeds on honeysuckle, elder, various herbaceous plants, and on
gooseberry bushes, and it pupates inside a leaf suspended from the underside of a
twig by silken cords. See also Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies,
Harmondsworth, 1977, p. 196, and Margaret Baker, The Folklore of Plants, Princes
Risborough, 1980, pp. 62–63.
169
ST. JOHN’S WORT
1.
The stench of goat upon your hand, bend to the fire
Throw on the long-pistilled, many-stamened flower.
Burn, eye of Baldr, ripen barley with thy light.
Pluck the bug, the bane that sucks the root.
Pluck it bleeding from the plant, before the feast.
Burn, eye of Baldr, ripen barley with thy light.
2.
Have your way with me no more, my incubus,
For it is clenched between my bosoms,
The bonny, sunwise herb.
For it swelters ’twixt my tits,
For it reeks of randy fox,
3.
Hanged man and miscreant, I conjure thee,
With my bundle of the yellow wort, bleeding
In my hand, and, dripping on my hazel wand
An owl’s head unseeing. Arise. Arise. Arise.
Hanged man and suicide, I conjure thee.
With my bundle of the sun’s herb, gleaming
In my hand. Bring me Sybilla, the faerie,
Your soul for to save. Arise. Arise. Arise.
Hanged man and malcontent, I conjure thee,
With my bundle of the wounded salve, wilting
In my hand. My christall stone shall show
The future’s moaning ghosts. Fiat. Fiat. Fiat.
170
4.
Wounded through your hauberk
By the halberd of the Moor,
Crusader of St. John
Soak the red cross with your cruor.
Pierced through your mail
By the lance of infidel,
This is the penance which
Will save your soul from hell.
Pounded is the poultice
And yet the knight has swooned,
The wort bears the signature
To quell his weeping wound.
Source material: Long used in rituals at the midsummer solstice, when it blooms,
St. John’s wort partly owes its solar association to the bright yellow colour of its
flowers. At times, the leaves have a strong smell, described by some as “goat-like”,
and by others as “foxy”. The plant has long been burned in the midsummer fires,
perhaps originally, as Richard Mabey suggests, as a form of sympathetic magic
intended to mimic and strengthen the power of the sun. The smoke from the
burning herb would waft over the fields, ensuring a generous helping of sunlight,
and protecting the crops. The ancient Greeks placed a plant called Hypericum above
their religious statues to ward off evil spirits, and while it is not known whether this
really was the plant which in modern times has inherited that generic name, it is
certainly true that Christianity appropriated the plant for its own purposes, as a
charm against demons. Originally sacred to the pagan sun-god Baldr, the Christians
dedicated it to John the Baptist, claiming that the bloody colour obtainable from its
leaves was intended as a reminder of his martyrdom. The Revd. Hilderic Friend
reports that “About Hanover... I have often observed devout Roman Catholics going
on the morning of St. John’s Day to neighbouring sandhills, gathering on the roots
of herbs a certain insect looking like drops of blood, and thought by them to be
created on purpose to keep alive the remembrance of the foul murder of St. John the
Baptist...” The insect in question was Coccus polonica, a sap-sucking bug. In a
thirteenth century life of St. Hugh of Lincoln, a woman tormented by a “licentious
demon” in the form of a man was instructed by another male spirit to take a sprig of
St. John’s Wort and hide it in her bosom. The demon-lover forsook her house
whenever she kept it in place because, he maintained, it was “disgusting and
stinking”. The plant was, according to the same author, efficacious against poisons,
including snakebite. Sir Walter Scott also alludes to the disdain with which demonlovers regarded the plant, since one says “If you would be true love of mine/ Throw
away John’s Wort and Verbein.” Oddly, the plant was good not only for banishing
spirits, but also for raising them. The enlightened Reginald Scot, who incurred the
wrath of James I by writing to quell anti-witchcraft hysteria, nevertheless affirmed in
his Discoverie of Witches (1584) that it was possible to “raise the ghost of a hanged
man with the aid of a hazel wand tipped with an owl’s head and a bundle of St.
John’s Wort”. Moreover, the resin glands in the leaves of perforate St. John’s Wort,
Hypericum perforatum, which look like tiny pin-holes, were reckoned by Paracelsus,
champion of the Doctrine of Signatures, to be an effective treatment of “inward or
outward holes or cuts in the skin”. Today, the herb is used to treat depression, but
not in cancer patients, since it has been shown to block the effects if chemotherapy.
It can also have alarming side-effects, including heightened photosensitivity. See
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, pp. 114–115, Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of
Plant Lore, pp. 330–333, Margaret Baker, Discovering the Folklore of Plants, pp. 140–
141, Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies, p. 346, Lesley Gordon, Green Magic,
171
p. 27. Vaunted as it is by herbalists, the horses who accosted me whilst I was
examining a specimen near Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire in July 2003 were
more interested in trying to eat my hat than they were in partaking of the herb, even
when proffered by hand.
172
RUE
If I picked her in daylight,
She would blister me,
Smite my skin for cutting her.
This, her lobe-leafed trickery.
Before the sun comes;
Before her yellow flowers
Bloom, I shall gather
The Herb of Repentance.
You have repented, you child,
Wish not to grow round,
Want not their scorn,
Will drink it in a draught.
There will be blood spots
And pain; you shall writhe
With it in secret, waiting
For the draining out of life.
This, the midwife’s other duty
Shall be secret ever,
Else they’ll burn me,
And I shall make you rue.
Source material: Care must be taken when picking Rue, as its juices will cause
blistering of the skin if exposed to sunlight. Rue was known as the Herb of Grace or
the Herb of Repentance because the plant was used in the Asperges before the Mass
as a brush for sprinkling holy water. Whilst the herb certainly possesses medicinal
properties, it is also poisonous, and most modern herbals warn that it should be
avoided by pregnant women. It seems reasonable to speculate that, during the
Middle Ages, many of the women who were persecuted as witches were in fact
unofficial birth control practitioners. Rue must have been particularly useful to
them. See Lesley Gordon, Green Magic: Flowers, Plants and Herbs in Lore and
Legend, Exeter, 1977, p. 77. The pun at the end of the song has long been used
folklorically; a jilted lover may blight a marriage by throwing rue on the wedding day
of the man who has wronged her, shouting “May you rue this day as long as you
live.” See Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, Oxford, 1995, pp. 322–323.
173
WILLOWHERB
Last winter, incendiaries ignited
A bloom of flame in your bedroom,
And the gramophone gouged
Through ‘Lili Marlene’ one last time
Before the bakelite buckled
And the window-glass turned liquid,
You lying there on the counterpane
As though asleep. The Luftwaffe
Droned your orisons as the rafters
Turned to ash.
And now, high summer –
Your house a withered flower –
The ruins are rank with willowherb,
Your open fireplace gutted, alive
With a rash of pink. A hundred weeds
Spire skyward, their summits flowers
Unbroken, painted magenta. Between six
And seven this morning , the blooms beneath
Opened, stamens primed and ready,
Domed above a gift of nectar.
One storey below, in the willowherb’s
Wall-less house, the styles wear bold
White crosses, beckoning bees
In a mute semaphore. Beneath these,
Pods curve and crack, their seeds
Aloft, alighting where your paraffin fire
Burst in a blaze of gold.
The first war coughed up poppies
From the cold and ruptured earth;
The second, willowherb, for there were
Not widows, but wraiths, with their
Seeds borne on the wind.
Source material: After the Blitz, one of the first plants to colonize bombed buildings
in London was the Rosebay Willowherb. Although it has never looked back since the
Second World War, its remarkable proliferation in the twentieth century had been
noted as early as 1912 by G. Clarke Nuttall, Wild Flowers as They Grow, Volume 1,
pp. 89-96. Nuttall also provides an unparalleled description of a single flower-spike
of the willowherb, from the unopened flowers at the top, down to the seed-pods at
the bottom of the spike. The scene I have described is imagined, but was reproduced
many hundreds of times in wartime London.
174
ON AN EDELWEISS IN THE BACK OF SCHRÖTER’S
ALPINE FLORA
There it sits, transfixed and flattened
Between the green and floral-patterned
Endpapers. Nine woolly bracts, and within
An embroidered silver star, fringed
With silk, held in place with the serrated
Edging from a book of stamps, labelled
In pencil: “Santa Maria, July 1952.” Where
Did she send them: those postcards stamped
With gum licked by the same wet tongue?
Was she quite out of breath when she held it
To her breast? Or cold, detached, exact,
Pasting it in place with a narrowed eye
And a pursed lip, flattening it precisely?
Did she kiss its flannelled face, or snap
The cover, a sprung trap, after depriving it
Of sky?

A POET`S NOSEGAY

Transcription

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