This week a post about a pennywort which is causing a problem to our waterways!
The Pennyworts are in their own family: The Hydrocotylaceae or Pennywort family according to Stace.
The family is in between Araliaceae (number 143) and Apiaceae (number 145).
Many authorities, including R.B.G. Kew and the R.H.S., however classify it in the Araliaceae!
But Stace writes:‘Differs from Apiaceae and Araliaceae in its distinctive habit and presence of stipules, and from Apiaceae in its fruits without oil bodies (or carpophore); appears anomalous in either family’.
From Wikipedia: The genus Hydrocotyle has between 75 and 100 species that grow in tropical and temperate regions worldwide. A few species have entered the world of cultivated ornamental aquatics.
There are 4 species in the B.I. according to Stace and only one is native and the other three are introduced. The Floating Pennywort can cause a major problem in our waterways!
Pictures by Mike Poulton, Matt Summers and Wikipedia Commons. Links on Scientific Name from the (online) Plant Atlas 2020 and links on Common Name from Wikipedia or other source. See next page.
Information about habitats and uses also by various sources above and colour-coding is blue background for habitat, wildlife and interesting information. Green for uses and pink for medicinal uses or threat to our waterways.
A dear friend suggested writing about this obscure plant: the Mistletoe, after seeing an appletree absolutely loaded with it!
He sent me a picture and then sent some more after he asked the householder to take a few close-ups and then he got kindly invited into his garden.
There were three apple trees in the garden: two covered in both male and female plants of mistletoe. Neither appeared to be suffering in any way and according to the householder, both are producing fruit. The third tree however, which he said has never had any mistletoe growing on it, had recently died!!
That is a bit of a mystery as surely it should have been the other way round?
The mistletoe is semi-parasitic (or hemi?) but also has some other interesting facts which you can read on the next page.
The mistletoe belongs to the Santalaceae or Bastard-toadflax family and the only one other member growing in the B.I.: Thesium humifusum or Bastard-toadflax will also be discussed!
Information and links from various websites and the Medicinal Flora of Britain and Northwestern Europe by J. Barker. The information on habitat and the Scientific Name link is from the Plant Atlas 2020 online. An interesting information sheet about the biodiversity of mistletoe in the U.K. was also used with thanks. See for the entire article: www.mistletoe.org.uk.
Pictures with thanks from Mike Poulton, Ian Trueman as well as from Wikipedia Commons.
The family Hypericaceae has only one genus: Hypericum and the most useful plant in this genus is the St John’s Wort or Hypericum perforatum.
But there are other species with medicinal uses as you can read on the next page and many shrubby Hypericums in particular make good garden shrubs with simple yellow flowers and often attractive fruits. These are often arrived on the B.I. as a garden shrub and then spread succesfully in the wild.
The herbaceous Hypericums are pretty wildflowers too, worth growing in an ornamental border and also as I found out from this blog that their pollen is good food for bees:
“I love Hypericum shrubs. I adore the cheerful yellow flowers and the berries afterwards (the seeds inside the berries are eaten by some bird species).
It can be quite comical to watch bees, especially fat bumble bee queens and large workers, landing, and almost bouncing on the stamens, which on some varieties are rather long – these are specimens I advise selecting for a bee garden.
Most often, I tend to notice honey bees and bumble bees on the flowers, although some solitary species may also be observed. Other pollinators like Hypericum too; especially hover flies.“
The Plant Atlas 2020 online describes 19 species of Hypericum + 1 hybrid and 2 subspecies of Hypericum maculatum. You’ll find all the species on the next page and the descriptions of the more common species.
Information is used from the Plant Atlas Online mainly on the habitat of the plant and the link on the scientific name gets you to this website page. Pictures of the plant can often be found in the Gallery of the website. The link on the common name gets you to Wikipedia or any other often UK website. Pictures by Mike Poulton or Wikipedia Commons. A special thank you to https://cambridgewildflowers.blogspot.com/ where you can find good descriptions and pictures of the various Hypericums.
Myrica gale or the Bog-myrtle, Sweet willow, Dutch myrtle, and Sweetgale which are its other common names is a fascinating plant in the Myricaceae family.
This is the only native species of this family, but there occurs one other introduced species in the British Isles:
M. pensylvanica or Bayberry is an introduced species from E.N. America and is also naturalized in a few places in the B.I.
Pictures are by Matt Summers and information + pictures mainly from Wikipedia. The links on the scientific name take you to the Plant Atlas Online 2000. The link on the Common Name is mainly from Wikipedia.
This is all about my stay at ‘Marroncello’ with my friend Esther, who I’ve known for nearly 30 years. She and her partner Thomas look after the land surrounding a 300 year old traditional Tuscan farm house. The land on which they live and work amounts to about 5 Hectares and the vegetable crops as well as the herbs for their business are grown on terraces or in the valley. Many different sorts of useful ‘fruit’ trees are also grown. The house is located at 530 m and can be reached by a 700 m long track on foot or by tractor!
Native trees consist mainly of Oak along with Ash, Lime, ‘Sorbo’ and Juniper.
Marroncello means: a small orchard with Sweet Chestnut trees. Apparently there is still a small stand of them much higher above the house.
When Thomas ‘found’ the property it had been derelict for 50 years!
I stayed for 4 weeks helping along with all the jobs to be done at this time of the year and enjoying the much more natural and simple way of life in very beautiful surroundings!
I love all the plants including the ‘weeds’ that grow everywhere. It has been a bit of a puzzle to identify some of them without flower, so I will have to go back at some point in spring or early summer to see those flowering, as it will make identifying a bit easier!
I have used mainly my own pictures, but I have also used several from Wikipedia Commons with much gratitude.
Follow the links in my contents page for easier reading, the different colour backgrounds are ‘blue’ for general interesting information, ‘green’ for different uses and ‘pink’ for medicinal uses.
Neophytes were introduced to these shores after the discovery of the New World in c.1550 on purpose as an ornamental or food plant. But many are also arrived accidently through wool shoddy, and in more recent years with oil-seed, bird-seed and agricultural seed.
“On enquiry he found that wool waste (“shoddy”) was unloaded at the sidings and delivered to local farmers for use as a manure, and when this was followed up foreign weeds were found to be plentiful in their fields. By 1952 he had found 112 species of wool aliens in Bedfordshire (Dony, 1953) and was in touch with the firms near Bradford that despatched the “shoddy” -in that year he went to Yorkshire and in Bradford, Morley, Heckmondwike and Kirkheaton found over 40 species.”
The Wild Flower Key describes just the 5 best-known species in the Nightshade Family:
Lycium barbarum or Duke of Argyll’s Teaplant
Datura stramonium or Thorn-apple
Hyoscyamus niger or Henbane
Solanum dulcamara or Bittersweet
Solanum nigrum or Black Nightshade
Atropa belladonna or Deadly Nightshade
Pictures with gratitude from Mike Poulton, Matt Summers and Wikipedia Commons. FBBC added behind the common name below in the contents when the plant is described in the Flora of Birmingham and the Black Country.
Warning:
Please note that this is an educational blog and not a guide for medicinal use. All plants in this family are poisonous!! Many poisonous plants are however also often employed as medicine in a much reduced amount of course.
‘a long-expressed opinion that these semi-parasitic Scrophulariaceae (tribe Pedicularieae) should be placed with the totally parasitic Orobanchaceae, which was confirmed by molecular studies’ (in Stace).
These are fascinating plants and in this post I hope to find out about all their uses to men as well as for wildlife and their interacting hosts.
Click links in the contents for more info and pictures from various websites. The scientific name usually has a link from the Online Atlas of the British Isles and Irish Flora. The common name mostly has a UK link or Wikipedia.
Background colours are meant for easier reading. A pink background means a warning (such as poisonous!) or medicinal use, green for edible, ornamental or other uses and blue for habitat where it can be found in B.I. , and just for interesting facts or wildlife use.
This is a complex genus with many species as well as hybrids! Stace divides them in 3 groups to make them easier to identify. Most species listed below have a narrow range where they grow.
In Stace we can find that the Veronicaceae is now a family with 11 genera of which 4 genera are individually very distinctive.
Some authorities, however, including R.B.G. Kew, the R.H.S., Wikipedia, etc have most of these genera in the Plantaginaceae.
The Plantaginaceae is a much shorter family in Stace, which you can read about in an earlier post.
I am using various good websites for you to find out more on each individual plant. The links on the scientific mames are usually from the Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora, the links on the common names are from Wikipedia or preferably a U.K. website.
Pictures, with gratitude are again by Mike Poulton (M.P.), Rudi Pilsel (R.P.), Matt Summers (M.S.) and Wikipedia Commons.
FBBC is added behind the plant names in the contents below, when the plants occur in the Flora of Birmingham and the Black Country.
The Figworts or Scrophulariacea is a family wich has many introduced ornamental plants, through planting in the garden. It used to be much larger but has been split since the new molecular system of classification (APG III) came into place.
The name Figwort is only just represented by the genus Scrophularia in the B.I..
The individual genera of Scrophulariaceae are all unique in their general appearance. The uses are mainly for wildlife and garden plants, but the Figworts and Mulleins also have medicinal uses which you can read up about on the next page.
The Buddlejaceae are now amalgamated with the Scrophulariaceae.
Hopefully more about those families in future blogs.
More info and pictures can be found through the links provided. The pictures used in this post are by Mike Poulton (M.P.) of Ecorecord and Rudi Pilsel (R.P.), Derrick Forster, Matt Summers (M.S.) as well as from Wikipedia Common.
If the plants are found in the Flora of Birmingham and the Black Country a FBBC will be added behind the Common name in the contents page below.
The Valerian Family is again a small plant family in the B.I. and I choose to do this as it comes before the family of last week which was the Teasel Family.
The best known is probably the Common Valerian although perhaps the Red Valerian is now a lot more common, especially here in the Midlands!
More info can be found through the links provided from online websites and the pictures are by Mike Poulton (M.P.) and Ian Trueman (I.C.T.) of Ecorecord and Wikipedia Common.
If the plants are in the Flora of Birmingham and the Black Country a FBBC will be added behind the Common name of the plant in the main contents.
Above also the other half a page of Plate 43 in the Concise British Flora in Colour, showing mainly some members of the Valerian family. In the last post the Teasel family half was shown. The Common Teasel is also mixed in the picture above. This book was aquired by myself for the Kew Diploma Course in 1986 as one of the reference books to get! Still a beautifully illustrated book with 1486 species illustrated in 100 plates of all the flowering plant families of the B. I. The work was completed by W. Keble Martin in 60 years and first published in 1965.
73 species are listed in Wikipedia but in the B.I. we know of 5 species; 2 native and 3 are Archaeophyte. Ripe fruits are essential for determination of the correct species.(Stace)