Danish scurvy-grass Cochlearia danica

 

Seen on my walk into town this morning - an exquisite rain-glossed rosette of fresh, spoon-shaped succulent leaves of Danish scurvy-grass Cochlearia danica, growing in the grime that accumulated between a wall and the pavement.

It’s a seaside native wild flower that thrives in salt spray on clifftops and sea walls along the north east coast; here, an hour’s drive inland, it’s doused in saline mist that hangs in the slipstream of traffic, along roads treated with de-icing salt in winter.

When we first moved to the north east, 50 years ago, it was confined to the coast but since then Danish scurvy-grass has followed salt-spreading council vehicles inland, all the way into the North Pennines. In another month a ribbon of its tiny white flowers will decorate road verges along most of our major roads, followed by a prolific crop of tiny seeds that will be carried away on car tyres.

Cochlearia danica is member of the cabbage family. Scurvy-grass leaves have a high vitamin C content and have been used as a fresh green vegetable and to ward off scurvy, but were described by C. Pierpoint Johnson in his Useful Plants of Great Britain: a Treatise, published in 1863, as ‘scarcely superior to water-cress in medicinal effect and much less palatable’ although ‘well known to the early navigators as a remedy for the terrible disease that formerly decimated our ships’ crews on long voyages and was brought much into the notice at a somewhat later period by the use to which it, with other like herbs, was applied by Captain Cook in his expeditions to the Southern Seas.’

Scurvy-grass flowering on Craster harbour wall, on the Northumberland coast, in spring.