Love your weeds
In the last blog I explained some scientific terms which you will find throughout my blogs. This time I explain a little more why I want to start a blog all about Ethnobotany and our native plants..
The more I work with all kinds of plants, in my daily life and work, the more I appreciate them, and this even includes ‘WEEDS’, or our native plants as I prefer to call them; or even wild flowers as many are pretty as well as useful…. Or ‘PRETTY USEFUL’!!
This week I’d like to talk about the Common Poppy or Papaver rhoeas, which is a symbol in Britain for the millions of casualties in the First World War and since.
It belongs to the Papaveraceae or Poppy family which is number 34 in Stace.
This weekend we will have Remembrance Sunday here which is always the nearest Sunday to Armistice * Day (on 11-11). This was signed at 5 am on the 11th November, 1918 to be precise but all the fighting ceased at 11 am, so exactly 100 years ago!
*Armistice means: a Ceasefire or suspension of hostilities or also an agreement made by opposing sites to stop fighting for a certain time or a truce.
Papaver, also ‘pappa’, is the Latin word for food or milk and ‘rhoeas’ means red in Greek.