Rampant Rust

This is Alexanders Smyrnium olusatrum flowering near Tynemouth castle at the mouth of the river Tyne, in May. At this time of year the flowers have yet to appear but there is a lot of lush growth in its glossy leaves. The plant is supposed to have been introduced as a pot herb by the Romans and it was widely grown as a spring vegetable for its edible stems and leaves for centuries, until it was replaced by celery . The feral populations that are frequently seen are usually the result of past cultivation.

One of the reasons why it may have fallen out of favour might be this rust fungus, Puccinia smyrnii. It distorts the leaves, causing them to swell, then erupts through the surface and releases spores before they wither. Many of the plants that we saw around Tynemouth castle today were heavily infected.

If I'd been a gardener, growing this plant in my kitchen garden, I'd be very disheartened.

More rust fungi here and here

Flowery Tynemouth

There's a fine display of wild flowers around Tynemouth Priory at present. The top of the cliff is carpeted with red valerian. This plant, from south west Europe, was first recorded in Britain's gardens in 1597 and began spreading into the wild in 1763 - and it's still spreading, especially in coastal locations where it likes to grow in the mortar of old buildings. It produces a lot of nectar and is one of the plants that hummingbird hawk-moths like to visit.

Down on Tynemouth pier this sea pink (aka thrift) plant is thriving between the rusty old railways lines that once supported the travelling cranes that unloaded ships berthed alongside the pier.

The second introduced plant species that carpets the cliffs here is  Alexanders, a green-flowered umbellifer from southern Europe that was introduced by the Romans and grows in great profusion here. Its glossy leaves are edible and it was once cultivated as a pot herb, but by the 15th. century had been replaced in the garden by more palatable celery.

The native wild food plant that graces these cliffs is wild cabbage, the ancestor of garden cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli and kale which produces these spectacular sprays of yellow flowers.

Alexanders

Alexanders Smyrnium olusatrum is the first of the large umbellifers to bloom and drifts of this naturalised garden escape - a native of continental Europe - are  currently in bloom on the banks of the river Tyne at Tynemouth. 


There was a time when it was cultivated as a vegetable, for its young shoots, leaves and stems that were blanched like celery. I've never met anyone who has actually eaten it but the smell of its flowers - described politely by Michael Proctor and Peter Yeo in The Pollination of Flowers (Collins New Naturalist) as resembling 'stale human dung' may go some way towards explaining why it's more popular with flies than with people. As long ago as 1776 Thomas Withering, in his Botanical Arrangement, wrote that "It was formerly cultivated in our gardens, but its place is now better supplied by celery" so it clearly fell out of favour as a garden vegetable a long time ago.

..... more Spring Greens

Someone asked me a while ago why most spring wild flowers are yellow. Having thought about it for a bit, I'm not sure that's really the case ....... thanks to their sheer numbers, yellow-flowered lesser celandines and primroses are a very conspicuous part of the flora, but there are quite a few green-flowered spring species too. Perhaps the most interesting is Moschatel Adoxa moschatellina, also known as town-hall clock on account of the fact that four of its tiny flowers face outwards, like clock faces on a clock tower. There's also a fifth flower in the inflorescence, that points directly upwards, and one of the unusual features is that the single upward-pointing flower has four petals whereas the four outward-facing flowers have five.

Moschatel is an inconspicuous plant but it's worth taking a close look at the flower with a magnifying glass ..... and taking a sniff. It has a faint musky smell after rain, which is said to attract small flies...although my sense of smell isn't what it once was, and I can barely detect it.

There's nothing faint about the smell of Alexanders Smyrnium olusatrum flowers ...... it's just downright unpleasant and attracts flies. This glossy-leaved umbellifer was once cultivated as a pot-herb and it's quite common around the coast - often near habitation, suggesting a garden origin. Large numbers of plants are coming into bloom on the headland at Tynemouth now, but .....

.. there's a distinct shortage of flies around to pollinate its flowers, although this black ant was attracted by the nectar.

Forty years ago, when I lived in Sussex I used to find spurge laurel Daphne laureola quite frequently in beech woods but up here in Durham it's much less common. There are some plants in Castle Eden Dene and a few in Weardale. Its sweet-scented green flowers attract the first bumblebees to emerge from hibernation and it produces black berries in summer.

Dog's mercury Mercurialis perennis is common everwhere. It spreads via a slow-growing underground rhizome, so large patches tend to be good indicators of old woodlands and hedgerows. There are separate male and female plants, with the former being rather more common.

Like most flowers, even those of dog's mercury become more interesting when you take a close look .... these are the flowers of a male plant, with the anthers shedding pollen, which is carried by the wind rather than by insects.