Stubble field annual wild flowers

 Some common annual wild flowers that flourish along field margins, in the few weeks between a cereal crop harvest and the arrival of the plough.

Common poppy, rejuvenated by warm sunshine, after the very wet weather during this summer's harvest in Teesdale

The tiny, pale blue flowers of field forget-me-not. Many  arable weeds have small flowers but are well worth a closer look.

Scarlet pimpernel has a long flowering period that often extends until the end of October. The flowers always close in mid-afternoon, unless rain clouds cover the sun, when they close quickly to protect their pollen -  behaviour that has earned the plant the reputation as 'the poor man's weather glass'.

Field pansy, a tiny but beautiful flower that has contributed to the parentage of garden pansy

Sky-blue flowers of common field speedwell, a native of the Caucasus that was first recorded in the wild in England in 1826 and has since spread throughout Britain. Like many arable weeds, its seeds are transported far and wide in mud on shoes, hooves and agricultural vehicle wheels. 

Common cudweed, with silvery leaves and tiny yellow flowers.

Common sowthistle whose light seeds, supported by a parachute of hairs, are carried long distances on the breeze

Arable weeds

A ripening field of wheat, as harvest time approaches, is an impressive sight - the culmination of 10,000 years of selective plant breeding, aided by the finest agricultural technology that modern science can provide. It's also one of the most hostile environments for native wild flowers.

In winter the soil is ploughed every year and then selective herbicides are used to destroy any wild plant species that manage to germinate. but around the edges of the crop, where the herbicide spray doesn't quite reach, and where there is more light and less competition with the wheat, a select assemblage of annual arable weeds often persists. There presence in arable fields is as old as agriculture itself.

Corn poppy Papaver rhoeas depends on the plough to bring its tiny buried seeds to the surface, exposing them to the light that they need for triggering germination. Most scatter their seeds from their pepper pot seed capsules long before the combine harvester arrives.

Field pansy Viola arvensis is a frequent annual arable seed of crop edges. Its dome-shaped seed capsules split into three boat-shaped segments. They immediately begin to shrink as they dry in the sun, squeezing the seeds - which as smooth and slippery as wet soap - until their are fired out into the surrounding crop.

Most of these arable weeds have small flowers, nonetheless beautiful when you take a close look. This is cut-leaved cranesbill Geranium dissectum. Its tiny flowers are attractive but .....

.... its fruits are exquisite too. Here they are, ripe and ready to go - five seeds each in their own capsule, attracted to a strip of tissue that runs right to the tip of that beak-shaped structure. It becomes as tense as a clock spring as it dries, until the capsules break free and are flicked upwards, hurling out their seeds like a medieval siege catapult.

After the seeds have been discharged the fruits remain attached to the plant, like miniature chandeliers.

Most of these small arable weeds have no impact on crop yield, but sometimes more serious agricultural weeds survive and can become a problem - this is wild oat Avena fatua, whose seeds have a remarkable ability to drill themselves into the soil, which you can see by visiting this post.

The Curse of Corncockle

Corncockle Agrostemma githago is an essential component of every annual wild flower mix these days, thanks to its inherent beauty but perhaps also because it symbolises of the long-lost days before agricultural intensification and the advent of modern herbicides that wiped out so many cornfield weeds. But, back in the days when horses and hard manual labour were the essential tools for farming these pretty flowers were an unwelcome sight in a wheat field. Corncockle is a prolific seed producer and if the seeds were milled they contaminated the flour. Here's the advice of George Sinclair F.L.S., F.H.S., Gardener to the Duke of Bedford,  writing in The Weeds of Agriculture published in the 1840s:


'The miller's objection to these seeds is, that their black husks break so fine as to pass the boulters, and render the flour specky; also, because the seed is bulky, if there be much in the sample, it detracts considerably from the produce in flour: whatsoever is not wheat, must lower the value of that which should be all wheat.


It is the duty and interest of farmers to meet their customers the millers with clean samples; for the latter never forget to make use of every objection to beat down the price. "I would give you the other shilling if it were not for the cockle", is a common conclusion to one of these bargains: so a farmer having a hundred quarters of wheat grown in one field, loses five pounds by sowing a little cockle.'


In Sinclair's day the only solution for a farmer with cockle seed in his harvest was to resort to laborious sieving. ' A cockle sieve is therefore necessary, and will be found, for other purposes, very useful in a barn,' he advised. No doubt he would be appalled that anyone should deliberately sow this plant.


Sinclair's advice on this and other weeds is contained in the fourth edition of his Hortus gramineus woburnensis or, An account of the results of experiments on the produce and nutritive qualities of different grasses and other plants used as the food of the more valuable domestic animals: instituted by John, duke of Bedford. The 1826 edition, full of insights into growing grasses productively on farms, is available as a free e-book here and other editions are downloadable here.

Here's a sight you don't see very often....

If you happen to be travelling out of Durham along the dual carriageway towards Darlington, pull into the lay-by and take a look at the fields on your left as you travel down from what used to be called the Cock 'o the North towards Croxdale. You still sometimes see arable fields with fine displays of poppies when their seeds are brought to the surface by the plough, but it's rare to see displays like this.

 

This land was formerly sown with cereals and oilseed rape but was bought by the Woodland Trust a few years ago. Eventually it will all be replanted as public-access woodland, to join up with the fragments of ancient woodland you can see in the distance in these photographs.

  

In the meantime some of it it has been sown with the kinds of arable field wild flowers that were a common sight before the days of intensive farming - corn poppy, corn chamomile, corncockle, cornflower.

It's a wonderful sight - well worth stopping to have a wander through if you happen to be passing - there's a gate in the fence near the lay-by. I've uploaded these photographs larger than usual - so it you double-click on the images you'll get a better impression of the spectacle.