Mauvais Herbes: The Flowers She Sent and the Flowers She Said She Sent
Pressed flowers, St-Nicolas-de-Pierrepont, August 14th 2020
Two days before my thirty-first birthday, as the church clock is chiming an impatient 6pm, I head up the drive and onto the lane that bisects the village. We are having a feast to mark my inexorable aging, and something is required to dress the table. I head into the hedgerows clutching a pair of kitchen scissors, E patiently in tow.
I have a grudging fondness for weeds. At home I am lucky to have both a small garden, eccentrically planted, and an allotment where I coax reluctant produce from the ground and tend six slug-beset dahlia plants with maternal care. During the summer months there I battle to attain supremacy, to usher bind wind, chickweed, thistles and dandelions to the boundaries. I win some battles but the war rages on and I catch myself admiring the resilience, the unpicky stubbornness of the weeds I grub up as my vegetable plants hem and haw and have an existential crisis about whether to continue living at all.
Not wanting to scrump from A’s garden, it is to weeds I turn my attention for my bocage bouquet. Our first find is an exciting one, initially misidentified as cosmos, a stray seedling from a neighbouring garden, it turns out to be wild camomile, a member of the daisy family (we get our English spelling of this from the French, but the name comes from the Greek khamaimelon – Khamai meaning ‘earth’ and melon meaning ‘apple’). A spangle of white flowers with egg yolk yellow centres bob in agreement with each other. It feels apt, to have found this first, a plant renowned for its ability to soothe, to calm and relax. I scramble up the steep bank to harvest some fern fronds. Pleasingly pre-historic in appearance, ferns blanket the rocky banks that make up the Bocage in Manche, both the snakey asplenium or heart’s tongue fern, and its feathery cousin the Royal Fern. I snip a handful of bright yellow fronds, discoloured by the stress of the recent hot weather (at today’s count there had been no rain in Manche for four weeks) and fan myself with them, hearing the church bell chime the half hour.
A little further along the road splashes of ecclesiastical purple catch my eye and draw me on – the elegant spires of purple loosestrife (Lythrum Salicaria). Here is a clue that we should not stray too close to the banked hedgerow on either side of the lane – loosestrife is at home in bogs, reedbeds and marshes. Its blooming here flags up the narrow but deep stream running between the verge and the field boundary, obscured by grasses and nettles, a trap for the unwary. Richard Mabey describes purple loosestrife as ‘gracious and reserved’[1] in its behaviour, and she certainly is that, elegant flower spikes undulating in the breeze, holding the promise of treatment for upset stomachs in even the smallest of babies. I cut a handful, safe in the knowledge that this species grows rapidly (even aggressively in parts of North America where it is regarded as a pest in many States), and hand them to E for safekeeping. Despite the loosestrife’s warning we get our feet damp anyway, tucking ourselves into the bank to make way for a milk tanker wallowing its way towards a co-operative diary and seeing ourselves reflected in its galvanised sides.
[1] Richard Mabey, Weeds, p. 16. Mabey quotes Pliny’s belief that purple loosestrife ‘was such a promoter of harmony “that if placed on the yoke of fractious oxen it will restrain their quarrelling”’ and draws our attention to this plant’s presence in John Everett Millais’ famous riverside scene Ophelia, Drowned.
Rounding a bend in the road I spot what appears to be the frothy lace caps of cow parsley. Scissors poised I hesitate on seeing its thick stem and ask for a second opinion. E confirms this is a plant best left alone – it is Giant Hogweed (Heracleum Mantegazzianum). Imposing though they are on this stretch of road, these specimens are babies in truth since given ideal conditions Giant Hogweed can grow to up to eighteen feet in height. Nonetheless I don’t want them adorning my dinner table – the sap of the plant is phototoxic. Safely trapped in the uncut stem it is harmless, but skin bought into contact with the sap and exposed to sunlight becomes extremely photosensitive, resulting in huge blisters and scars. We pass on, finding on the opposite verge the Hogweed’s far more delicate and beautiful sister Anthriscus Sylvestris – true Cow Parsley. Slim hollow stems branch out to a constellation of pure white flowers, each branch supporting an individual foamy spray. I bedeck E with it and continue, entertained by the medieval common name, or should I say slur, for Cow Parsley – Devil’s Oatmeal.
Mindful of the time, our imminent guests, the need to turn up for supper in clothes not sodden with stream water or accessorised with burrs, we turn for home. We listen as we walk to the sound of the crickets in the undergrowth and the urgent cries of swifts overhead, kicking up dust and gravel in the late evening heat. We have enough, I think, watching E walk ahead of me, arms full of foliage and blossom, a figure from a much older time, garlanded. As we are about to turn back down the drive: an apricot flash. Honeysuckle, pouring from the hedge like a fountain, its fragrance drapes across the road in a ribbon. The initial apricot gives way to shades of gold, purest white and blush pink. Though we are barely halfway through August some of the blooms have already faded to glossy, cherry red berries, a festive forerunner. I take three short strands, their heady scent deepening as the evening draws down. In Ancient China honeysuckle was thought to be a curative for homesickness. It’s difficult to pine for anywhere else, breathing in their sweetness on the breeze, listening to the church clock chiming the dinner bell and the laughter of the party goers lifting above the hedges, carrying a bocage bouquet down the long drive and into the evening.