11-May Famine Flowers & Lamb's Toes

Charlock is quickly joined on roadsides by Wintercress Barbarea vulgaris. Wintercress is more of a citrus yellow and is also often found beside water. Another relation, Rape Brassica napus, quickly starts to colour entire fields on the perimeter of London. This early flowering strain turns up as a casual elsewhere. Another mustard associated with old bomb sites is Eastern Rocket Sisymbrium orientale. The rarer London rocket Sysimbrium irio can still be found on old walls by the Tower of London and has the added romance of having apparently covered the city after the great fire.

The middle of May sees hedge mustard S. officinale starting to appear everywhere, especially on roadsides and wasteland. Its distinctive crooked branching will get noticed until September. Another common white-flowered crucifer producing large patches of flat-topped cream flowers is hoary cress Cardaria draba. Originally it seemed to favour habitats such as sand dunes and salt marshes but now it seems to prefer roadsides. The story goes that it arrived in 1809 when a Thanet farmer bought some used hay mattresses from a ship that had just docked carrying wounded soldiers from the Napoleonic wars.

He is then said to have ploughed the hay into his fields, which quickly became covered with the weed. It was at this point that it gained its alternative name of Thanet cress. Before, it had been called pepper cress as its seeds were ground to make pepper. Currently it has ended up with the less interesting name of hoary cress on account of its hairy leaves.

Pea-Flowers

Waste areas and where the grass is short, including lawns, are the best places to look for all these plants. The list is a long one, with eighteen peas Vicia spp. and twenty-four clovers alone. Red clover Trifolium pratense and white clover T. repens are the most commonly encountered, with alsike clover T. hybridum being the most common alien.

Bird’s foot trefoil Lotus corniculatus is the most noticed of all the trefoils, with its eggs and bacon colours. Hop trefoil Trifolium campestre and lesser hop trefoil T. dubium both have small, pale yellow hop-like flowers.

Lesser hop trefoil is shamrock which is now in flower in short grass and hop trefoil can even be found on mown lawns. Slender bird’s foot trefoil Lotus tenuis is not unlike bird’s foot trefoil, but prefers the edges of the tidal Thames, where it can sometimes be found in abundance. Toothed medick Medicago polymorpha, black medick M. lupilina and spotted medick M. arabica are all also found on lawns or similar short grass. Black medick has distinctive black clusters of seeds, spotted medick has black spots in the centre of its leaves and toothed medick prefers more coastal situations. Hairy tare Vicia hirsuta and smooth tare V. tetrasperma, are another two “pea” plants which have tiny purple flowers, and are often found scrambling in rough grass.

A good place to see a range of wild “pea” plants is Tolworth Farm fields including the rare yellow vetchling Lathyrus aphaca which will be in flower next month. The unimproved grassland and hedgerows of Freyent Country park could be equally rewarding.

Among the vetches, horseshoe vetch Hippocrepis comosa and kidney vetch Anthyllis vulneraria stand out. The first is typical of good chalk downland and the second prefers bare chalk. Kidney vetch has lemon yellow flowers which used to be called ‘lamb toes’ on account of their woolly calyx. In some parts of Britain they can cover cliffs with their bright yellow flowers, which a favourite food plant for blue butterflies. In London the plant is now largely restricted to chalky banks along the North Downs with the consequent loss of blue butterflies. In John Clare’s poem ‘Cross Roads’ he tells of mourners including their soft, attractive flowers in the shroud of a beautiful girl who had drowned.