Green Alkanet + Update

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!

Bog Rosemary

Another plant we found at Abbot's Moss was bog rosemary (Andromeda polifolia).  It's a lovely little plant that is only found in bogs in peat-accumulating areas, often alongside Sphagnum mosses, though there are some high maintenance cultivars available from some garden centres.  The plant below was found on a raised moss hummock, growing in amongst cranberry plants:

This is a distinctive plant, called bog rosemary because the leaves look so much like actual rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis, that is).  Of course, you'd only make that mistake the once as the plant is quite toxic, containing the same poisonous compound as rhododendron.  This particular toxin, which is referred to in the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes as "hydrated rhododendron" has several names including grayanotoxin, rhodotoxin and andromedatoxin.  The end result is the same though -- depending on the dose, the unfortunate sufferer will experience excessive salivation, sweating, dizziness, weakness, numbness, low blood pressure and vomiting.  In high doses it causes a loss of co-ordination, muscle weakness, slowing of the heart and dangerous palpitations.  Fortunately, this type of poisoning is rarely fatal and generally lasts less than a day.  This is doubly fortunate seeing as honey made from plants that contain this toxin (usually rhododendron) causes these symptoms -- in which case these problems are referred to as "mad honey disease."  As a side note, tainted honey was used to poison invading armies at least twice in ancient Rome.  Apparently, locals didn't like the invading Roman army coming to town and fled leaving these amazing stores of honey, which the 1000 strong Roman army then ate.  It didn't go so well for them from that point on as the Roman force was incapacitated, defeated and sent on home!

Bog rosemary has had a few uses in it's own right though.  According to Duke, 1998, the Ojibwe Indians used to create a cold tea by macerating the leaves in water.  The cold part is important because heat draws out the toxins, making the tea poisonous.  Apparently it's very nice, but even as an actual card-carrying native, I'm not sure I'd be willing to try that one!  In Russia, the plant was used in the leather tanning process.

Linnaeus himself gave the scientific name to bog rosemary in 1732, naming it "Andromeda" because it "is always fixed on some turfy hillock in the midst of the swamps, as Andromeda herself was chained to a rock in the sea, Which bathed her feet as the fresh water does the roots of the plant."  Mr. Linnaeus had quite the imagination, as he saw the frogs as the sea monsters from the Andromeda myth -- and even did drawings on this theme:

 (From WikiMedia Commons)

That's quite an imagination.  I just saw a pretty flower in a bog that looked like a cross between bell heather and rosemary.  I somehow feel like I'm letting the man down!

Sundews!

Or more specifically Drosera rotundiflora, the common sundew, round-leaved sundew or archaically, youthwort.  It's an interesting little plant -- for a start, it's carnivorous.  Sundews live in bogs, marshes and fens which are all nutrient poor areas.  The sundew's workaround for this is to snack on insects which are attracted to the plant because of two things:  Colour and mucilage.

The bright red colour attracts the insects.  The mucilage (sugary plant goo, blobs of which you can see on some of the tentacle parts of the leaves above) covers the leaves of the plant; whilst initially the mucilage seems like ideal food for insects, it's worth noting that this plant goo stretches up to one million times it's initial size.  Within 15 minutes of an insect contacting this goo, it dies, either of exhaustion or asphyxiation as the plant goo covers the insect's body.  The plant then secretes digestive enzymes and then absorbs the digested insect goo through its leaves, extracting the nitrates and other nutrients lacking in the soil.  I'm not sure I'd care to go to dinner with a sundew...

Sundews tend to be fairly obvious as they're a red leaved plant with tentacle bits on a bog (the one above is growing on Sphagnum).  There are a few varieties about though.  In the UK, we have three -- round-leaved sundew, oblong-leaved sundew and the great sundew.  Round-leaved sundew has the most widespread range, covering bogs, fens and marshes almost throughout the UK.  Oblong-leaved sundew is less common, occuring in locations that are not necessarily on the coast, but nearer the coastline.  The great sundew occurs mostly in Scotland, parts of the northwest, parts of west wales and a few populations in Norfolk.

Extracts of this plant are used today as an anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic in medications.  In the past, it was taken in a tea and used for dry coughs, asthma, tuberculosis and bronchitis.  The Scots also used to make a purple dye from the roots of this plant as well as making a type of liquer using the leaves of all three British sundews.  That recipe is from the 14th century -- and as much as I have an interest in history, I'm really not too sure about sundew liqueur!  If you're interested, a really long blog post about liqueurs of this type can be found at http://www.historicfood.com/rosolio.htm.

Birch Polypore

As this isn't a blog just about mosses, I figured I would do an entry on another species we spotted at Abbot's Moss -- the Birch Polypore (Piptoporus betulinus).  This is a bracket fungus also called birch bracket or razor strop and grows almost exclusively on birch trees.  It's necrotrophic, meaning that it's a fungus that kills its host (in this case, the host descends into brown rot after).  This is actually in the name of the fungus; Pipto is a Greek word with a few meanings including "to fail", "to fall from power by death"  and "to perish, i.e come to an end" (Greek Lexicon online).  Therefore, if you see this mushroom on a tree, you know that tree is either dying or dead.  Literally, the name basically means "porous birch decliner."

They're pretty easy to spot too -- firstly, they'll be on the dead birch trees, especially silver birch.  Secondly, the cap folds over to make a smooth rim around the pore surface (no gills here!).  The top surface is whitish-brownish-grayish.  The fungus itself is has a whitish pore surface which will go a brownish-grey with age; it also has between 2-4 pores per millimetre.  I was able to get a picture of one from my walk in Dyson Woods (unfortunately the ones at Abbot Moss were quite high up) -- the one below felt really quite rubbery, but as they age they feel much more like cork.  This one is a bit slug eaten:

They smell quite mushroomy and technically it's edible but it's really quite bitter apparently (I take it as a hint that if someone says "technically edible" then it's not really).  It's got some interesting historical (and current) uses though.  When I did my insect ID course, we used strips of this stuff to mount the tiniest of insects with the tiniest of pins.  Older mushrooms would also make pretty good slow match tinder.

Outside of that, it's called "razor strop" because people used to (and still do) use rectangles of the dried mushroom as a strop.  Apparently you can cut out a rectangle, dry it on a radiator and just sharpen your knives with it -- it creates its own abrasive.  You'd be wanting to use the top surface of the mushroom for that.  The underside of the mushroom (the porous side) can also be cut thin and used as micropore plasters when the mushroom is fresh.  So, it sharpens and mitigates against the invariable cuts!

Medicinally, it contains anti-inflammatory compounds and has anti-bacterial properties.  It's also been discovered in the possession of Otzi the Iceman -- Europe's oldest mummy at 5,000 years old.  He'd been suffering from whipworm before his death and this mushroom contains polyporenic acid -- a compound that is toxic to this particular parasite.  It is not unreasonable to suspect he was using it as medicine, but how on Earth the connection between this mushroom and those symptoms was made is anyone's guess!

More polytrichum! (Commune)

I was thinking over this entry (and the previous one) earlier and I realised something -- the word "Polytrichum" isn't necessarily an easy word to read and then pronounce correctly.  So, for the record, it's pronounced "politrickum" -- or at least, in the UK it is.

The second moss we saw at Abbot's moss was Polytrichum commune.  It's common names include Common Haircap Moss, Common Hair Moss and Great Goldilocks.   These species of moss are called hair mosses because because the spore producing part of the moss (sporophyte) has hairs that stick out from the protective hood that covers the spore case (the calyptra).  The word "calyptra" is medieval Latin, from the Greek word "kaluptein" (to cover).

Common Haircap Moss is bigger than Juniper Haircap -- in fact, it can grow up to 28 inches long, though usually it reaches anywhere between 2-12" long and looks far more "bottle brushy" than the Juniper Haircap:

Other differences include toothed leaves with parallel sides.  It also has brown leaf tips.

It's found throughout the more temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere and grows in heathlands and bogs.  It also grows in Australia and New Zealand and has been found woven into the fabric of Maori cloaks.  It's other uses include being made into doormats and brushes in Sweden and being used for bedding and quilting by Linnaeus himself -- and he would not be alone in doing this in the late 1700s!  Oil from the plant was used as a rinse for hair in addition to it teas being made to relieve gall bladder and kidney stones. 

Finally, baskets made of Common Haircap have also been found, though these were baskets made by Romans in around 86AD in Newstead, England:

I found this in a digitised version of a book written in 1911 by a chap named Curle.  He also writes "The stems of this moss are commonly a foot to eighteen inches long, and often attain a length considerably greater. The central stele, when cleaned, forms, as I have proved for myself, a tough pliable strand easily plaited, and quite suitable for the formation of such articles as baskets. When freshly cleaned, the core has a reddish colour and glossy surface, and basket-work of the material would not only be quite strong, but would, at least at first, have an attractive appearance."

He also notes that the tradition of doing this was probably pre-Roman.  If you want to read more, the digitised version of the book is here:  http://www.curlesnewstead.org.uk/index.htm