Alive and Kicking

This weekend we walked past a derelict patch of rubble-strewn ground in Newcastle that was smothered in the golden yellow blooms of coltsfoot Tussilago farfara. This must surely be one of our most irrepressible wild flowers, since it seems to thrive on the most unpromising brown field sites and it only takes the merest hint of spring for its flowers to erupt through hard-packed ground. I once saw a newly created car park whose freshly laid, thick layer of  tarmac had been punctured by scores of coltsfoot flowers that had forced their way to the surface. The plant spreads via an underground rhizome that's full of starch and when the call of spring arrives it takes a lot more than tarmac to contain its pent-up energy. Coltsfoot's common name comes from the hoof-shaped outline of its leaves, while its Latin name Tussilago is derived from tussus, Latin for a cough; a mucilaginous extract from this plant has a long history of use in herbal medicine, as John Gerard noted in his herbal of 1597: "A decoction made of the greene leaves and roots, or else a syrrup thereof, is good for the cough that proceedeth of a thin rheume", he wrote.