This week is turning out to be quite busy. Not only did I do my day at Record this week, and I'm in work (and working outside of work too), but I've also got two mammal trapping days and a fungi day on Saturday. Big week, so expect some updates later in the week and across the weekend.
Outside of that, on my days at work I often get to walk through a park. I've seen a few interesting plants and things on my way in (I often plunder the hedge, if I'm honest) and snapped a few pictures. Recently, I've noticed a wildflower called Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) on my way to and from the car. It's a charismatic very green plant with very blue flowers that have a white centre. The plant is also pretty hairy -- to the point where it can feel a bit like stinging nettles in some of the older specimens. It's part of the borage family, which is fairly obvious once you know that plants in this family tend to have blue flowers and be hairy:
Look at that stem!
Anyway...
It's scientific name has stuck in my head ever since I heard it; literally translated, it means "five-tongues always alive" (or five-tongues evergreen). Green Alkanet has also confused me as a name, so I've decided to look into both of the names as well as the plant.
Apparently the "five-tongues" part refers to the five tongue-like petals. The corolla does kinda look like five tongues, complete with that central groove you've got underneath... as long as you squint. It's more about the shape than the colour in this case. It's called "always alive" because it's an evergreen plant that keeps it's leaves over winter. The scientific name is something of a descriptor, really.
As it turns out, the name "Green Alkanet" is also a descriptor. In this case, the word "green" is referring to those evergreen tendencies. Alkanet's an odd one though because it's a hand-me-down word. Alkanet is a Middle English word which was a conversion of an Old Spanish word, alcaneta, which is a form of the Old Spanish word alcana. Alcana comes from the Medieval Latin alchanna, which has been nicked from the original Arabic language, where it started of as al-ḥinnā’. Al-ḥinnā’ literally means "the henna". It's literally called evergreen henna because red dye can be extracted from it's roots.
That's why it was brought here. It's an invasive plant from the continent, native to southwest France and, fairly obviously, the Iberian peninsula where Spain is a main feature. Britain used to have a lot of monks that really liked having that red ecclesiastical cloth, so they imported the plant in order to create dye. It's hard to say when this happened, but it's fair to say it was quite some time ago. Green alkanet is considered naturalised as it's very common in hedgerows, though as you move north, there is much less of it. I was surprised to find it near us because the land here is quite acidic and it's a calciphile. Here's a better picture of the tongue shape from Wikipedia commons:
I still can't help but feel that after likely being here for over 1,000 years, it's part of the historic landscape, despite my usual loathing for many invasive species. Having said that, it's not as destructive as other invasives like knotweed or rhodi, so that's definitely colouring my view. But I shan't go into that here as that is a massive subject for discussion!
Outside of that, on my days at work I often get to walk through a park. I've seen a few interesting plants and things on my way in (I often plunder the hedge, if I'm honest) and snapped a few pictures. Recently, I've noticed a wildflower called Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) on my way to and from the car. It's a charismatic very green plant with very blue flowers that have a white centre. The plant is also pretty hairy -- to the point where it can feel a bit like stinging nettles in some of the older specimens. It's part of the borage family, which is fairly obvious once you know that plants in this family tend to have blue flowers and be hairy:
Look at that stem!
Anyway...
It's scientific name has stuck in my head ever since I heard it; literally translated, it means "five-tongues always alive" (or five-tongues evergreen). Green Alkanet has also confused me as a name, so I've decided to look into both of the names as well as the plant.
Apparently the "five-tongues" part refers to the five tongue-like petals. The corolla does kinda look like five tongues, complete with that central groove you've got underneath... as long as you squint. It's more about the shape than the colour in this case. It's called "always alive" because it's an evergreen plant that keeps it's leaves over winter. The scientific name is something of a descriptor, really.
As it turns out, the name "Green Alkanet" is also a descriptor. In this case, the word "green" is referring to those evergreen tendencies. Alkanet's an odd one though because it's a hand-me-down word. Alkanet is a Middle English word which was a conversion of an Old Spanish word, alcaneta, which is a form of the Old Spanish word alcana. Alcana comes from the Medieval Latin alchanna, which has been nicked from the original Arabic language, where it started of as al-ḥinnā’. Al-ḥinnā’ literally means "the henna". It's literally called evergreen henna because red dye can be extracted from it's roots.
That's why it was brought here. It's an invasive plant from the continent, native to southwest France and, fairly obviously, the Iberian peninsula where Spain is a main feature. Britain used to have a lot of monks that really liked having that red ecclesiastical cloth, so they imported the plant in order to create dye. It's hard to say when this happened, but it's fair to say it was quite some time ago. Green alkanet is considered naturalised as it's very common in hedgerows, though as you move north, there is much less of it. I was surprised to find it near us because the land here is quite acidic and it's a calciphile. Here's a better picture of the tongue shape from Wikipedia commons:
I still can't help but feel that after likely being here for over 1,000 years, it's part of the historic landscape, despite my usual loathing for many invasive species. Having said that, it's not as destructive as other invasives like knotweed or rhodi, so that's definitely colouring my view. But I shan't go into that here as that is a massive subject for discussion!
The place I used to buy my henna powder sells liquid alkanet root as a red-colour booster. When I saw your post I thought 'I wonder if Lol knows about the colouring properties?' and ta-dah! you did.
ReplyDeleteBut I didn't before I researched the post. Researching this stuff is really paying off for my knowledge about different species.
ReplyDeleteI did read somewhere that they used to use the stuff in Egypt for hair colour, which actually did put me in mind of you (and I wondered briefly if you knew about it). Great minds!