Cornflowers

There has been some debate about whether cornflowers Centaurea cyanus are native to the British Isles. According to the New Atlas of the British Flora there is archaeological evidence that they have been here since the Iron Age. They have certainly acquired a range of regional common names, usually an indicator of long-term presence; John Gerard in his Herbal of 1633 lists Blew-bottle, Blew-blow, Corn-floure and Hurt-sickle, the latter referring to the way in which the tough stems blunt the edges of sickles and scythes in cornfields.

It has been part of the landscape long enough to acquire numerous regional names. Geoffrey Grigson, in The Englishman's Flora, lists twenty five, including Witch Bells and Witch's Thimble, which were used here in northern England.

It was once as common as poppies in corn fields, until  improved methods of seed cleaning and then, in the last decades of the 20th. century, modern herbicides rendered it a rare sight in arable fields. There are now few naturally self-sustaining populations in the wild.

It was always an unpopular plant with farmers. Gerard describes how it 'hindereth and annoyeth the reapers, by dulling and turning the edges of their sickles in reaping the corn'.

George Sinclair, gardener to the Duke of Bedford, writing at the height of the agricultural revolution in the 1840s, describes it as being amongst a class of weeds [which also included corn poppy. mayweed, corn marigold and charlock] that ' with their gaudy colours, like heralds of spring and summer, proclaim bad farming to the landlord, the tenant and the passenger; and announce the neglect of using clean seed-corn, judicious manuring, fallowing, the row culture, and horse-hoe husbandry'. 

Today it's mostly grown as a garden flower, usually as the the wild blue form although even in Gerard's day white, pink and double cultivars were also known in gardens. It makes a very attractive cut flower.

The best displays are in cornfield weed wild flower plantings, like this one established by the Woodland Trust at Low Burnhall farm near Durham city a few years ago, when the arable land was being replanted with native trees.

For a year or two the display of cornflower, corncockle,corn marigold, corn poppy and mayweed was simply stunning - and a reminder of the appearance of cornfields in the landscape before the advent of modern farming techniques.

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/