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.

Weeds or Wildflowers?

Every summer Durham University Botanic Garden hosts a wonderful display of annual cornfield weeds (or wild flowers, depending on your point of view). These are species that would have been familiar to Iron Age farmers but have now all but disappeared from the agricultural landscape, thanks to improved methods of cereal seed cleaning and decades of intensive use of systemic herbicides that wipe out weeds soon after germination and never allow them to set seed, so that the bank of seeds in the soil is finally depleted and the species become locally extinct. In Victorian times, when the main method of weed control was manual labour, all these species were serious weeds of crops that drastically reduced crop yields. The cornfield border is the most stunning exhibit in the Botanic Garden at this time of year, eclipsing even the giant Amazonian waterlilies in the glasshouses for their sheer ‘wow’ factor, and is a reminder of what has been lost from the agricultural landscape. Shown here, top to bottom, are corn poppies; corn marigold; cornflower; corn chamomile;corncockle. The whole border positively hums with bees and hoverflies. These are all easy species to grow in a wild flower garden. For more information about Durham University Botanic Garden visit http://www.dur.ac.uk/botanic.garden/