A Wandering Botanist

Vera aloe has been a household remedy for burns for millennia. It still works.

Vera aloe, Aloe vera

Stinging nettle is a plant that too many of us only criticize. It stings! The tiny venom-filled hairs on the leaves are really painful to brush against. So suburbanites, farmers, hikers, hunters and many others,  dislike it; it stings, it makes places that you go around rather than through, nasty plant. 

stinging nettle, Urtica dioica

And yet, this is an excellent vegetable and healing herb. Heat the leaves and the stinging hairs are quickly destroyed, leaving rich, nutritious greens. For millennia people gathered stinging nettles for food and medicine. Today that is rare or confined to commercial medical production, so we only see them as irritating.

Tansy is a small plant with bright yellow flowers and a spicy smell (scientific name, Tanacetum vulgare sunflower family, Asteraceae). It is native to western Asia but long ago became an herb and spice that was grown throughout Europe and then transported by Europeans all over the world. Today we know it more as a garden flower or roadside weed than as a flavoring or medicine, but it is all of those. 

common tansy, Tanacetum vulgare

Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria, in the rose family, Rosaceae, is a lovely and conspicuous European wildflower, now naturalized in the eastern United States (known there as "queen-of-the-meadow"). 

meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria

 As a group, the plants in the mustard or cabbage family, Brassicaceae, are cool weather plants, growing well early in the spring, flowering as the temperatures warm, going to seed in the heat of summer. Familiar mustards are cabbage (Brassica oleracea), broccoli (Brassica oleracea), and mustard itself (mustards are species of Brassica, Rhamphospermum and Sinapsis). These edible mustard family plants were domesticated in Eurasia and they are a small selection of the more than 3,700 species worldwide. North America has 634 native species in the mustard family. It also has more than 100 exotic mustards. 

Ground ivy, Glechoma hederacea, is a plant of many common names, reflecting that it is very widespread and not very distinctive. Common names beyond ground ivy include creeping Charlie, alehoof, cat's foot, creeping Jenny, field balm, gill-over-the-ground, hay maids, hedge maids, robin-run-in-the-hedge, runaway robin, tunhoof, and variations on those. 

Today, you mostly hear of St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum, St. Johns wort family, Hypericaceae) as a medicinal plant. It has been shown to be effective treating depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders and is widely used for those. But when I studied ecology in graduate school in the 1970s, under its American name, Klamath weed, it was the weed in a major weed-control story. So here are both tales.

St. John's wort, Klamath weed, Hypericum perforatum

"If any man will ask any thing of a king or prince, [cinquefoil] giveth abundance of eloquence, if he have it with him, and he shall obtain that which he desires," wrote Albertus Magnus in the 13th century. Well, not really. Albertus Magnus (d. 1280, biography) was a real person, a famous medieval German scholar, but The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus was an anonymous work of folklore and superstition that appeared in the 16th century. But, clearly, cinquefoil was considered a powerful plant.

Turmeric (Curcuma longa, ginger family Zingiberaceae) is a Southeast Asian ginger that has been a major spice and dye since antiquity.

turmeric (Curcuma longa)

It grows from a rhizome (the source of the spice), with short stems and tall leaves that can be 3' high. Flowers are yellow-white and pretty (link). While close relatives, called curcuma by nurseries, for example Curcuma petiolata and C. aromatica, are grown for their dramatic flowers, breeders have produced some handsome varieties of turmeric as well, with red, white, or pink flowers link. Turmeric is unknown in the wild and makes no seeds, so it requires people to spread it, although in a few places in the tropics it appears to have escaped from cultivation.

castor, Ricinis communis

When I was a child, castor oil was a tonic commonly given to children. It was oily and we resisted.

In those days, I was told the plant that castor oil came from was called the castor bean. Although you still see it, the name castor bean is "out" today, because usually beans are plants in the pea family, legumes (Fabaceae) and castor, Ricinus communis, is a spurge, related to croton and poinsettia (Euphorbiaceae). You will see castor oil plant or just castor as we struggle to say it better.

You can see why the name: the seeds do look like beans.

Seeds of castor, Ricinis communis

Castor oil has been an important oil for millennia, but castor is a very poisonous plant.

Stavesacre. Would you think "larkspur"?

The larkspurs (Delphinium species) of North America are tall plants with curiously-shaped flowers in purple, blue or white. (Earlier blog, featuring American larkspurs link)

It was clear when researching American larkspurs that there were similar European plants because, well, the name larkspur is based on the flower looking like a lark's foot, but North America doesn't have a common bird we call a lark. The lark of England, more formally the Eurasian skylark Alauda arvensis, was a well-known and conspicuous bird of farmlands. Its numbers are drastically down recently and farmlands have retreated so perhaps it is not as well known as in the past link. 

Rosemary is for remembrance.

rosemary in flower

That's one of the few commonly-remembered plant meanings.

The "Language of Flowers" was a Victorian creation, putting meanings onto plants, so a bud or bouquet could convey a very specific message. There seem to have been several systems, which meant you could misunderstand the message. But, using Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers, one of the still-available lists (link), a white rose would say "I'm worthy of you, " while receiving white and red roses together meant "unity." In Greenaway's system, rosemary meant "remembrance".

But rosemary's role in remembrance goes back way before the Victorian era (1837-1901). In both ancient Greece and Rome, rosemary was worn by couples at weddings and placed in the hands of the dead. Both of these evoke enduring affection and remembering. Furthermore Greek students reportedly wore rosemary in their hair for examinations, to better remember the information.

Hills of Mallorca

The island of Mallorca has beautiful beaches (earlier post), but the hills are lovely too. In the hill town of Valldemossa we visited a former monastery which was rich in plants and history.
















A rambling old building, of which I have no exterior photograph (so see link), it was begun as a royal residence, then, between 1399 and 1835, served as a Carthusian monastery. After that it was a private guest house and today it is a museum.