Early blooming spurge laurel

 At this time of year we are all on the lookout for the first sign of spring flowers - the first celandine, colt'sfoot or maybe even a precocious primrose - but one of the first native species to flower is a shrub, spurge laurel Daphne laureola.  Its lime green flowers, with golden stamens, tend to be tilted downwards under the glossy evergreen foliage, so are easily overlooked. 

This plant is one of several currently in flower on the south bank of the river Tyne, upstream from the Tyne Green Country Park in Hexham, Northumberland. Spurge laurel is an uncommon shrub in Northumberland and Durham - I can only recall seeing it in three locations, but there are probably about a dozen in this population. It is a slow-growing shrub and probably slow to establish and reach flowering size.

I didn't notice at the time that I took the picture, but there was a small sap-sucking insect on the flowers, that I have yet to identify. The flowers are said to have a nocturnal fragrance that attracts moth pollinators, but they also produce nectar that attracts early-emerging bumblebees.

This last photo shows spurge laurel's black berries, which ripen in June. They are poisonous.

Winter bloomer

Last week we found this very early-blooming spurge laurel Daphne laureola coming into bloom on the bank of the river Tyne, near Hexham in Northumberland. I know this plant from one other location, in Wolsingham, Co. Durham, where it may well be of garden origin, but this Tyneside population, of about ten plants (three of flowering size) is the first I've found in Northumberland and it might be native. The black fruits, which ripen in summer, are eaten by birds that disperse the seeds, so it's never certain whether the plants are wild or are of garden origin. 

 Spurge laurel is a very easy plant to overlook unless it's in flower, because its glossy evergreen foliage has some resemblance to a small-leaved Rhododendron.

Click here for a post from 2014 about the Wolsingham plant and its pollinators.

The whole plant is poisonous, but despite its toxicity it was formerly used in what must have been very risky herbal medicine. This is what William Withering (who discovered the medicinal uses of foxglove) has to say about it in his Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables growing naturally in Great Britain, published in 1776: 'Very happy effects have been experienced from this plant in rheumatic fevers. It operates as a brisk and severe purgative. It is an efficacious medicine in worm cases; and upon many accounts deserves to be better known to physicians; but in less skilful hands would be dangerous, and it is possessed of considerable acrimony. The whole plant has the same qualities, but the bark of the root is the strongest. Dr. Alston fixes the outside dose at ten grains'.  

(DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!)

Spurge Laurel

There are always landmarks in the changing seasons that I look out for and this is one that's particularly welcome at this time of year: spurge laurel Daphne laureola coming into bloom, a sign that spring is creeping a little closer. These lime green clusters of flowers always begin to open at about the same time as snowdrops bloom and depend on bees and butterflies that emerge on mild days for their pollination. In January, the plant is likely to be better served by these insects in southern England  than up here in the North East. The flowers have a faint fragrance, though nothing like as strong as some of the Daphne species grown in gardens.

When I was a kid growing up in Sussex I used to see spurge laurel quite often in the beech woods on the South Downs but in North East England it's an uncommon plant - but relatively easy to spot in hedgerows at this time of year because it's evergreen. This one is growing in a hedgerow at Wolsingham in Weardale.


Later in the year it produces glossy black berries which are poisonous, but like many poisonous plants it has been used in herbal medicine in controlled doses. The 18th. century botanist and physician William Withering had a high opinion of its therapeutic properties. "Very happy effects have been experienced from this plant in rheumatic fevers", he wrote. "It operates as a brisk and rather severe purgative. It is an efficacious medicine in worm cases; and upon many accounts deserves to be better known to physicians; but in less skilful hands it would be dangerous, as it is possessed of considerable acrimony. The whole plant hath the same qualities, but the bark of the root is the strongest. Dr. Alston fixes the outside dose at ten grains"


Sounds risky, so please don't try this at home - even if you can find kitchen scales that are calibrated in grains. 


Incidentally, Dr. Charles Alston, 1683-1760, quoted by Withering above, was  lecturer in materia medica and botany at Edinburgh University and was the first person to produce opium from poppies in Britain, conducting experiments with it on animals and drawing attention to its potential for pain relief and drug-induced feelings of well-being.

..... 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.