Poppy
Nearly all the flowers that grow so abundantly on our shingle find a place in folklore or the herbals.
The petals of the red poppy were once collected on sunny days and made into a syrup; while the seeds are scattered over bread – the Romans mixed them with honey and ate them like jam.
The poppy is rarer than it once was. Gerard wrote The fields are garnished and overspread with these wild poppies.
Scarlet Poppies
This is a poppy
A flower of cornfield and wasteland
Bloody red
Sepals two
Soon falling
Petals four
Stamens many
Stigma rayed
Many seeded
For sprinkling on bread
The staff of life
Woven in wreaths
In memory of the dead
Bringer of dreams
And sweet forgetfulness
Foxglove
I always thought of foxglove as a flower of the woods – deep in the shade, beloved of the bumble bee and little people. But the foxgloves of the Ness are a quite different breed. Strident purple in the yellow broom, they stand exposed to wind and blistering sunshine, as rigid as guardsmen on parade.
There they are at the edge of the lakeside, standing to attention, making a splash – no blushing violets these, and not in ones or twos but hundreds, proud regiments marching in the summer, with clash of cymbals and rolling drums. Here comes June. Glorious, colourful June.
The foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, folksglove, or fairyglove – whose speckles and freckles are the marks of elves’ fingers, is also called dead man’s fingers. It contains the poison Digitalis, first used by a Dr Withering in the 18th century to cure heart disease. Foxglove is hardly mentioned in older herbals – Gerard says, it has no use in medicine, being hot and dry and bitter. The ‘glove’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon for a string of bells, ‘gleow’.
Dill
Dill, like its cousin fennel, has a strong sweet taste used in pickling and with vegetables. The seeds have a soporific effect and were eaten in church to dull the agony of listening to sermons. The name of the herb is derived from the Anglo-Saxon dilla, to lull. Dill sent the witches flying.
There with her vervain and her dill
That hindereth witches of their will
A scarewitch stuffed with dill
Dog Rose
In that garden be floures of hewe,
The gelofir gent that she well knew,
The flower de luce she did on rewe
And said, ‘The white rose is most true
The garden to rule by rightwis lawe’
The lily-white rose me thought I sawe
And ever she sang …
This medieval poem, which probably describes Rosa alba – the white rose of York – could equally describe the dog rose, Rosa canina, of the hedgerow. Pliny says it grew so plentifully here that this island was named Albion.
The dog rose can live as long as the yew: there is one old bush in Hildesheim Cathedral said to have been planted by Charlemagne.
Bugloss
Of bugloss Culpeper says
It is a gallant herb of the sun, it is a pity it is no more use than it is. The gentlewomen of France do paint their faces with these roots, it is said.
Two to three foot high, it is covered with clear blue flowers, and of all the plants of the Ness is the brightest:
Viper’s bugloss has its stalkes all to be speckled like a snake or viper, and is a most singular remedy against poison and the sting of scorpions. – Cole’s, Art Of Simples – The water distilled in glasses and the roote taken itself is good against the passions and tremblings of the heart, as also against swoonings, sadness, and melancholy.
Yarrow
In the garden the yarrow is blooming – Herba militaris, achillea, a wound herb used to staunch blood. Woundwort, knight’s milfoil, nosebleed, staunch grass, bloodwort, sanguinary – also known as devil’s plaything – yarrow was brushed over a victim as the dark one cast a spell.
Great Mullein
The great mullein was the herb that Ulysses used as a protection against Circe’s enchantment. These flowers were used by Romans to dye hair yellow: The golden floweres of mullen stiped in lye causeth the heare to war yellow being washed withal.
The plant had many uses: it drew splinters, cured earache; dipped in wax, it was used as a taper – the whole toppe with its pleasant yellow flowers sheweth like to a wax candle or taper cunningly wrought. Verbascum is of the latines called candelaria because the elder age used the stalkes dipped in suet to burne wether at funerals or otherwise.
Cole in his Adam and Eve writes: The husbandmen of Kent do give it to their cattle against the cough of the lungs. It was called ‘clown’s lungwort’.
Agrimony
If it be leyd under a man’s heed
he shall sleepen as he wer deed
he shall never drede ne wakyn
till fro under his heed it be takyn.
The yellow flowers of Agrimonia eupatoria are named after Mithridates Eupator, a king who brewed herbal remedies. It is known colloquially as ‘church steeples’ and yields a bright yellow dye. ‘A decoction of the leaves,’ says Gerard, ‘is good for them with naughty livers.’ ‘A herb of princely authority,’ says Pliny.
Mugwort
The ragwort Artemisia vulgaris was used once as a substitute for tea or to flavour drinks. Placed between linen its dried branches warded off moths. Cingulum Sancti Johannis was worn by John the Baptist as a girdle in the wilderness; it also preserved the traveller from fatigue and sunstroke, pixies, elves, and wild beasts. Make a charm of it and wear it on St John’s Eve for protection against the evil eye.
This tall silvery herb grows deep green by the wayside despite the drought. Culpeper says: A very slight infusion is excellent for all disorders of the stomach, prevents sickness after meals, and creates an appetite, but if made too strong disgusts the taste.
I’m going to wear a crown of the wort tonight, not wait for St John’s Eve. And put a leaf in my shoe, as this will enable me to walk 40 miles before midday without getting tired.
Crocus
The crocus produced the best yellow for the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages – many of the plants that grow on the Ness once produced dyes. The finest blue ‘turnsole’ was made from the juice of elderberries – sap green from the berries of the buckthorn, and a bright green from the juice of the flag iris.
Other colours – vermillion, cobalt, and bright lapis blue – were mineral. Antonello da Messina’s little study of St Jerome in a monastery scriptorium – with a dazzling postage stamp sized landscape through an open window – shows the calm and tranquil rooms in which these manuscripts were prepared.
The crocus that was used as a dye was the saffron crocus – Arabic Z à Faran, the yellow one. Thomas Smith, Edward III’s counsellor, brought it secretly from the Holy Land in 1330. The dye was exquisitely expensive: 4,320 flowers were required to produce one ounce of saffron. John the Gardener wrote:
They should be set in the month of September, three days before St Mary Day, Nativity, or the next week thereafter; so must it be with a dibble you shall set him, that the dibble before be blunt and great. Three hands deep they must set be.
Petals of the saffron crocus were strewn across Jupiter’s marriage bed; it dyed wedding robes and the robes of monks. Gerard says saffron brought those dying of the plague back from the deathbed.