Will this be a 'painted lady summer'?

 

This spring was notable for an early influx of migrant painted lady butterflies that arrived here on warm southerly winds, raising hopes that this might be a 'painted lady summer'.

They began to appear in Weardale in substantial numbers towards the end of the heatwave in May but were reported in southern and western counties from mid-April onwards. There has long been speculation that these early arrivals fly here directly from North Africa. The tattered state of the butterfly in the photo above, nectaring on sweet rocket aka dame's violet Hesperis matrionalis in my garden, suggests that it might have had a long and eventful journey.

L. Hugh Newman, whose family ran a butterfly farm in Kent (that supplied Winston Churchill with butterflies for his garden at Chartwell) kept detailed records of their lifespans. Resident breeding species typically had lifespans of less than a month , with the exception of those that overwintered as adults (10-11 months for brimstone, small tortoiseshell, peacock) and found that 30 days was the maximum lifespan of painted ladies. They are known to fly at night and with a favourable wind, they are reckoned to fly about 150km. per day, so it’s just conceivable that some early spring arrivals here might have made the one-way journey directly from North Africa, but there’s no doubt that the true test of whether we are due a ‘painted lady summer’ depends on their breeding success at various locations in continental  Europe, and favourable summer winds.

Most arrive in relays, crossing the Mediterranean to breed in France and Spain first. With their short life cycle - egg to imago in six weeks - their numbers multiply exponentially as they move northwards, a rolling wave of butterflies that reaches our shores in mid- summer.

Spectacular ‘painted lady summers’ are the stuff of lepidopterists’ legends. I recall walking along the coast near Whitby in 1996, surrounded by hundreds of painted ladies settling to feed in flowery cliff-top grassland. That invasion reached Orkney and Shetland. The most recent mass migration that I remember here was in 2009, but size and frequency of such events are subject to favourable winds and clement weather.

 

Ox-eye daisies in a County Durham churchyard

 

St. Brandon’s, at Brancepeth, County Durham, is a shining example of the way in which an ancient churchyard can be managed for the benefit of people and native wild flowers. The south side of the churchyard is a wild flower meadow, with mown paths between 18th. and 19th. century memorial stones.

Throughout spring, drifts of snowdrops have been followed by daffodils and bluebells, then cowslips that last week ceded centre stage to thousands of waist-high ox-eye daisies Leucanthemum vulgare.

In The Englishman’s Flora (1960) botanist-author Geoffrey Grigson listed about 30 local, colloquial names for Leucanthemum vulgare; some familiar, like moon daisy, dog daisy and marguerite, others less so, like Billy buttons, crazy Bett, hayweed and poverty weed, that have fallen out of use.

You might expect that a plant known by so many names would have been part of the daily lives of past generations, used in herbal medicine.

According to John Pechey, in his The Compleat Herbal of Physical Plants (1694) it “cast forth Beams of Brightness” so just looking at it might do you good: a nature cure to boost mental wellbeing.

But there’s more: “The whole herb, stalks, leaves ad flowers, boyl’d in posset-drink, and drunk, I accounted an excellent remedy for an asthma, consumption and difficulty of breathing, “ he claimed.” ‘Tis very good in wounds and ulcers, taken inwardly, or outwardly applied,” he assured readers, and went on to mention a use that might have benefitted quaffers of too much chilled beer during the recent heatwave: “A decoction of the herb cures all diseases that are occasion’d by drinking cold beer when the body is hot.”

Pechey’s herbal is available to download or read on-line. Its full, less-than-snappy title is

The compleat herbal of physical plants : containing all such English and foreign herbs, shrubs and trees, as are used in physick and surgery : and to the vertues that are now in use, is added one receipt or more, of some learned physician : the doses or quantities of such as are prescribed by the Londond-physicians, and others, are proportioned : also directions for making compound-waters, syrups, simple and compound : electuaries, pills, powders, and other sorts of medicines : moreover, the gums, balsams, oils, juices, and the like, which are sold by apothecaries and druggists, are added to this herbal : and their virtues and sues are fully described

Bistort Polygonum bistorta: wild flower, food and herbal medicine

 

Bistort Polygonum bistorta, flowering in damp hollows in an old hay meadow at Wolsingham in Weardale, on a route that I often take on one of my local walks.

From a distance the pink flower spikes look like orchids, but this plant is a member of the much less charismatic dock family. It lacks orchids’ botanical celebrity status but has an interesting history in food and folk medicine.

I’ve never dug it up so can only take on trust accounts that say that its underground rhizome is often coiled like a snake, the source of its alternative colloquial names adderwort and snakeweed in Somerset, and its ancient use in treating snakebite.

In a less-lethal context, bistort has a long association with assisting pregnancy: ‘to help to conceyvve, make electuary of powdre of bistorte in quantyte of halfe a pounde …. and swete smellyngs spices of the same weyght’, wrote Peter Treveris in his Grete Herball of 1526.

There’s an early allusion to its healing powers woven into a fabulous early 16th. century French tapestry, The Unicorn in Captivity, now displayed in the Met in New York, where bistort sits against the right foreleg of the wounded mythical beast.

In a culinary context, it’s the key ingredient in the classic traditional Easter-ledge pudding of Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Recipes vary, depending on location, but all require its leaves, harvested young at Easter-time, usually boiled with nettle tops, oat-meal and chopped onions, bound together with egg, made into patties and fried. Every spring the World Easter-ledge Pudding Championship is held at Mytholmroyd near Hebden Bridge in Calderdale.