Honesty, Cleavers, Common Vetch, Elder

Honesty, Lunaria annua

A plant I have never been able to grow in my garden thrives in a lane in the Wye Valley.  A native of the Balkans it has been in cultivation in the UK since at least 1570 and had escaped to the wild by 1597.

The seed pods may give it its popular name of Honesty, being semi- transparent, and the Latin name probably refers to their being moon shaped and moon coloured. They are just beginning to develop here.

Cleavers, Galium aparine

A member of the Bedstraw family, Rubiaceae, its tiny, delicate  flowers are easily missed. Here it is scrambling along a local woodland path. The stem has hooked downward bristles on the angles. Leaves are bristly hairy, edged with backward pointing prickles and with a fine point at the tip.

Its popular name, Cleavers, obviously comes from bristles and hooks as it cleaves to passing creatures. In Dorset it was called Huggy-me-close. 

It was used medicinally to ease piles, skin diseases and scurvy.  

Common Vetch, Vicia sativa 

This plant from the Pea family,  Fabaceae, is both native and introduced. It was grown everywhere by farmers as early forage. These are in my garden wild area.

The bright pink- purple flowers are one or two together on very short stalks. The leaflets are alternate and have a shallowly notched tip containing a small point, the mucro.

Elder, Sambucus nigra 

Did ever a plant have so many associations both negative and positive? Grigson in his Englishman's Flora devotes over two pages to it. It was associated with the Devil, was the reputed tree of the Crucifixion and the tree Judas hanged himself from. It was foolhardy to make a cradle out of it. 

He also focuses on the more positive but I must mention The Brief Life of Flowers by Fiona Stafford which has a really interesting  chapter on elderflowers covering elderflower cordial, the use of elderflower ointment in the First World War on injured horses and many other historical details.

The flowers were used dried in medicines for eye and throat infections and  a tea was brewed to guard against colds and flu. It was used to fade out freckles and to relieve rashes and skin complaints.

It was great value as a toy: the hollowed out stems made great peashooters and the flowers could be used in dressing up games. 

The individual flowers are 5mm across, the corolla is split into 5 petals and there are 5 stamens and creamy white anthers.

This brings me to Day 136 of #365DaysofBotany. More on Sunday in #Wildflowerhour