The more common Russian Comfrey thriving on the Bee Garden at Borneo Street allotment!
There is so much information concerning the comfrey which is also, like the plants in the blog of last week, in the Boraginaceae Family. This week therefore, my post will concern itself purely with comfrey.
Pictures by Matt Summers, Mike Poulton and contributors from Wikipedia Commons.
The Pentaglottis sempervirens or Green Alkanet. (picture by Ericoides-Wikipedia)
This week I would like to talk about most of our native genera of the Boraginaceae or Borage Family. This is family number 114 in Stace.
My customers sometimes complain about 2 members of the Borage family: the Green Alkanet; scientifically known as Pentaglottis.
To a less extend they complain about the abundance of seedlings of Forget-me-nots in their gardens, but I think that is just showing off! As who can be upset when you see all that magnificent blue; they are all wonderful weeds really!
All there uses and benefits will be explained in this as well as in the next post, which is entirely about the Comfrey.
Pictures by Matt Summers, unless stated.
Blue background is for general interest, Pink as a warning or medicinal use and green background for all other known uses such as food and wildlife. Please use the jump links in the contents below also for quick access. Ecology information from PlantAtlas 2020 Online, Wikipedia
This week I would like to talk about a bit of a climbing menace known as the Common or Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium). Then later about the fascinating Dodders!
The whitish rhizomes and growing shoots of Hedge Bindweed or Calystegia sepium.
Is there any use to this plant you may wonder?
Please read on and find out!
I will also write about the rest of its family; the bindweed family or Convolvulaceae!
Blue background is for general interest; pink background is for medicinal use or negative information; green background for all sorts of uses. Pictures by Matt Summers unless stated. If the plant occurs in Birmingham and the Black Country, this is mentioned as FBBC in the contents page.
The Bindweeds are in the Convolvulaceae or Bindweed family, which is number 115 in Stace in between the Boraginaceae (114) and Solanaceae (116), which is the potato family.
This family has 4 genera growing in the British Isles namely; Convolvulus, Calystegia, Ipomoea (which are ‘introduced’, mostly ornamental climbers from N. America) and finally Cuscuta or Dodder.
The ivy on our wall has been looking fabulous again last year and providing the bees and wasps, as well as the odd butterfly some late nectar.
Then afterwards the black berries lasted until late spring as a nutritious food for our resident birds, mainly wood pigeons and blackbirds seem to enjoy them!
Papaver rhoeas in bean field – Lodge Lane, Kingswinford (picture by Mike Poulton)
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.
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.
From this large genus, Salvia or Sage, only 2 are native: S. pratensis or Meadow Clary and S. verbenaca or Wild Clary.
Most information is copied from the Medicinal Flora, Wikipedia and other fabulous websites and links are provided on the various plants covered as well as on difficult scientific or medical terms.
Blue background for intersting facts, green background for various uses and pink for medicinal uses.
24) Mentha or Mints. This is a difficult taxa for classification due to widespread hybridisation . But according to Stace; ‘with practice the scent of fresh plants is very helpful, but difficult to describe!’ Many are native but many will be introduced as escaped garden plants of course.
27) From this large genus, Salvia or Sage, only 2 are native: S. pratensis or Meadow Clary and S. verbenaca or Wild Clary.
On the next page you can find the medicinal and other uses of these handsome weeds! Pictures by Matt Summers and very much grateful for all other + Wikipedia picture providers!! Blue background for general interest. Pink for medicinal uses. Most medicinal uses were found in Medicinal Flora. Green background for other uses and wildlife benefit. These were found mostly in PFAF and Wikipedia.
This family of the Lamiacea or the Deadnettle family (family 128 in Stace) is one of my favourites for the flowers and herbs it gives us. The insects and in particular the bees also love it for the nectar the flower provides.
Betony on the Cornish coast attracting Hummingbird moth!
It is a large family in the B.I. with 27 genera. To identify to genus level, Stace has split them into 8 groups. Not all genera are native but may be garden escapes. As it too large for one week I will spread this family into 3 separate blogs and weeks.
To make life even easier for identifying the plants the taxonomists also have sub divided this large family world-wide into 4 Subfamilies, where again the genera in those groups have similar characters.
This is the whole idea about classification to make sense to all that variety out there!
To summarize, I will place only the native as well as Archyophytes into those, so numbers missing genera below are either not native or have no connection with us people, which is the whole idea of this virtual ethnobotanic blog. On the next page you can find the uses for all the members of the first 2 Subfamilies:
Blue background for general interest. Green background for general uses and wildlife. Pink background for medicinal uses. Pictures by Matt Summersunless otherwise stated.
Pollarded Willows (Salix alba) in a very Dutch Landscape (MS)
Genetic studies summarized by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) have greatly expanded the circumscription of the family to contain 56 genera and about 1220 species, including the Scyphostegiaceae and many of the former Flacourtiaceae.
BUT; fortunately for us, in the British Isles it has only two main genera, namely the Poplar and the Willow. Although the flowers (as always in traditional classification) determine the ultimate genus and whether it is a Willow or Poplar, most of us can easily tell the difference from the leaves. All the Poplars have a triangular, broad oval, to heart-shape outline with often a long leaf stem (petiole) whilst most of the Willows have long, narrow leaves or roundish, much smaller leaves than Poplars.
When there are no leaves in winter the tree could be identified by the winter buds, where Willows just have one outer scale and the Poplar has several. However as there is much to say about the Willow, I will leave the Poplar for another blog in the future!
Pictures by Matt Summers (MS) and Mike Poulton unless stated.The links provided on the scientific and common plant names provide more detailed information as well as good pictures on each species. Also special thanks to PFAF which provides a wonderful plant database of not just native plants but any useful plants all over the world.
This time I will include all the records of the entries of the ‘Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora’ (BRC) or National Biodiversity Network link (NBN) next to the scientific and common names.
