Ground elder, buttercup and marsh thistle
June 2022
What did the Romans ever do for us I hear you ask! Roads, sanitation, underfloor heating, yes, yes, but no one ever mentions ground elder Aegopodium podagraria, they kept that one quiet!
The Romans brought and cultivated ground elder as a pot herb for culinary and medical purposes, being used mainly for gout (one of its common names being goutwort) and to eat as a vegetable. The use of ground elder carried on through the ages with the Anglo-Saxons using it to clarify beer, so not all bad then. The plant, seemingly bent on liberation, soon escaped its confinement and, as shown some time later in the 1962 Atlas of the British Flora, is recorded as covering pretty much every part of the British Isles.
Ground elder, which spreads by creeping roots (rhizomes) and also by seed, can be found mainly (as the Biological Records Center tells us) in a wide variety of disturbed habitats, especially hedgerows, road verges, churchyards and also neglected gardens, no offense taken!
As you might have noticed by now, I’ve decided to talk about some plants that we could easily see in our garden (which some of us will be happier about than others) as well as when we’re out and about.
Next up, and looking amazing at the moment in my garden if I do say so myself (though I’m not sure that it’s anything to be proud of), is the creeping buttercup Ranunculus repens. I’ve fully embraced this native plant's creeping habit which it manages by sending out stolons, overground runners that then root at points along its length as strawberries do.
The name Ranunculus comes from the latin rana meaning frog, while culus indicates the diminutive form, so ‘little frog’. Saying goes that it’s named that because the buttercup is often found in damp places, as are frogs, but that takes a bit of a leap of the imagination. Maybe Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist/zoologist who basically invented taxonomy was having an off day. Repens by the way, refers to the plant's habit of creeping.
The creeping buttercup is one of only a couple of buttercup species to host Hydrothassa glabra, a sweet little beetle 3 or 4mm in size and coloured dark metallic blue and orange.
Lastly the marsh thistle Cirsium palustre. Apparently the word thistle comes from the Old English thist-ley meaning ‘to prick’ and as the name of this species would suggest, this thistle grows mostly on damp ground and reaches approximately 1.5m tall. It’s a biennial so flowers in the second year then dies. The main reason that I wanted to talk about this thistle, besides it growing in my garden as yet another experiment, is that it is a super pollinator attracting bees, flies, moths, butterflies and beetles. It was rated to have the most nectar production (nectar per unit cover per year) by a project supported by the UK Insect Pollinators Initiative. Also in the top five were the grey willow Salix cinerea, common knapweed Centaurea nigra, ball heather Erica cinerea and common comfrey Symphytum officinale. What’s more, the marsh thistle can be used to eat. I’ve not tried this but I read that you can strip the plant down to its stem, peel this and then dip it in sugar a little like rhubarb…No no, after you! You might have to speak to Nicky, our local forager about this.
NB, remember that it’s illegal to dig up any wild plant and always make double sure that the plant is what you think it is if you’re going to eat it.
