PLANT CORNER
In this second week of February one just hopes that winter doesn’t do something silly, but that we can slowly emerge into Spring. Simplistically I mentally divide the year into 3-month blocks, so I reckon that spring starts on 1st March no matter what meteorologists may say about equinoxes. This means that when you get this newsletter it will only be a couple of days before spring and I can justifiably write about two early spring species.
Colt’s-foot (Tussilago farfara) is a favourite for many people because its bright yellow flowers appear so early. By late February the flower stalks, which appear a good two months before the leaves, should be becoming visible on waste ground and road verges. It prefers clay soils in damp situations, but will grow happily in sand dunes and shingle and at any altitude from sea level to over 1000m. One place we often look for it is by standing on Old Bewick bridge where the Breamish changes its name to become the Till. If the water isn’t too high there is usually a shingle spit in the river just below the bridge where Colt’s-foot is readily visible.
The flowers grow on stalks with prominent reddish scale-like leaves. They have small male disc florets and numerous thin female ray florets. They close at night. The seed heads develop into white masses like dandelion clocks. The large leaves show from late April and have white woolly undersides and margins with irregular small dark teeth. They used to be dried and smoked as a cure for asthma, or infused and added as an ingredient to cough mixtures.
A flowering shrub that is not found in the wild much if at all in Britain, but is planted for show in various places locally and whose small yellow flower clusters are worth searching out from mid-February to late March is Cornelian-cherry (Cornus mas).
Despite its name Cornelian-cherry is not a cherry but a Dogwood, as can be seen from its generic name, Cornus. Floras often almost dismiss it because it is a mere hortal (cultivated species). Generally, botanists don't really rate hortal species unless they can be shown to have become naturalised. But for those who are simply delighted to see this attractive species in flower it is a very cheerful harbinger of spring, whether in the garden or elsewhere. The attraction comes from the early bright yellow clusters of small flowers with spoon-shaped yellowish bracts at the base of each cluster. My drawing also shows an autumn twig with red berries, but actually fruiting is rare in Britain.
In case anyone is wondering why I’ve chosen Cornelian-cherry rather than the even more spectacular very early flowering Witch Hazels (Hamamelis spp.) it’s because, to my knowledge, the latter are only garden pants and are not found as hortals or naturalised specimens anywhere in Britain.
© Richard Poppleton