Ribwort Plantain, Plantago lanceolata

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Ribwort Plantain, Plantago lanceolata

Ribwort Plantain, Plantago lanceolata, growing on sea cliffs, Isle of Wight

This month I haven’t had much time to update this blog, but today is cold and damp and I have a chance to stop and look back over the last month. One of May’s highlights was a week’s trip to the Isle of Wight, where there were lots of interesting wild flowers: Spring Gentian, Hoary Stock, Fairy Flax, Kidney Vetch, Bird’s-foot Trefoil, Thrift, Subterranean Clover, Rock Rose, Spring Beauty, Crosswort and Ivy Broomrape, some of which I will probably write about in future posts. But today I have chosen a very common plant to write about: Ribwort Plantain, Plantago lanceolata.

Ribwort is a perennial plant which has a rosette of spear-shaped leaves, from which grow short stems topped with compact heads of flowers with protruding, white stamens. The flowers are produced from April to August and are pollinated by the wind, beetles, flies and bees. The plant is pretty but quite subtle and is not always appreciated as much as it should be.

Ribwort is widespread in the British Isles, where it grows in lowland meadows and pastures and in upland grasslands. It can be found on disturbed ground on roadsides and river banks, in cultivated and waste ground, in lawns (where it can survive mowing and some will call it a “weed”) and on walls. Ribwort is tolerant of salt spray and grows by the seaside in sand dunes and on cliffs. Inland, it is found in the hills and on rock ledges and crevices, up to 845 metres above sea level on Great Dun Fell in Westmorland. It is also found in the rest of Europe and in North Africa and the Middle East, where it is native, and as an introduced plant in other parts of the world, including the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and parts of Asia and Africa. Because Plantago lanceolata likes disturbed ground, the presence of Ribwort pollen can be used as evidence for early agriculture.

Ribwort’s name comes from its narrow, ribbed lanceolate leaves, with their parallel veins. Other names include English Plantain, Narrowleaf Plantain, Black Plantain, Ribgrass, Tinker-tailor Grass, Windles and (listed in Flora Britannica) Fighting Cocks, Short Bobs, Soldiers and Sailors, Black Jacks, Hard-heads, Carl Doddies, Fire-weed and Fire-leaf. The latter two names come from the belief that dried Plantain leaves can set haystacks alight.

Ribwort is a member of the family Plantaginaceae. When I did Botany at university, this was a small family but the Plantaginaceae now includes what I always called the Scrophulariaceae (Figwort family), including some familiar and colourful flowers such as the Foxglove (Digitalis), Toadflaxes (Linaria), Speedwells (Veronica) and even the subject of my PhD thesis, the Snapdragon Antirrhinum majus. Who would have predicted that?

Ribwort was used in children’s games such as Soldiers (winding the stem around itself just below the head and pulling it tight to catapult the head) and a game known as Dongers (in Kent) or Carl Doddies (in Scotland), where the plantain heads were used like a conker on a string to hit an opponent’s plantain head. (More details are given in Flora Britannica.) No batteries required!

We have Ribwort in our small wildflower mini-meadows on the allotment and in our back garden. Ribwort is often found in wildflower seed mixtures and is one of the first species to become established. In both our “meadows” Ribwort was very numerous in the first couple of years, but as other species have become established it moved to the edges as older plants died off and were replaced by their offspring, and on the allotment it grows along the grass path between plots, where I am happy for it to remain. Ribwort’s seeds contain a water retaining “gel” that allow them to germinate in dry soils. This gel allows seeds to stick to animals and machinery, aiding their dispersal. The seed can also remain dormant for 50 – 60 years in soil if the growing conditions aren’t right.

Ribwort leaves are edible but can be bitter. Older leaves are very fibrous and in his book “Around The World In 80 Plants” Stephen Barstow recommends using the youngest leaves in a mixed salad and advises boiling older leaves before eating. The closely related Buck’s-horn Plantain, Plantago coronopus, is sometimes cultivated and both Stephen Barstow and Joy Larkcom suggest growing it. Ribwort seeds taste nutty and can be made into a flour and the buds prior to flowering are moist and crunchy and have been described as tasting like mushrooms.

The Plants For A Future and Phytology websites both list a range of medicinal uses for the plant, including as a treatment for coughs (because of the mucilage the plant contains) and wounds (as it staunches blood flow and has antbacterial properties). Ear infections and bladder complaints can also be treated with the plant. But beware – there can be side effects. The plant can be used for its fibre too, and to make gold and brown dyes.

Ribwort is eaten by a range of insects but slugs and snails don’t like it. I’m writing about Ribwort now because this is the food plant of one of Britain’s rarest butterflies, the Glanville Fritillary (Melitaea cinxia), which is mostly restricted to the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands. When we visited the Isle of Wight in mid May, the butterfly was on the wing, mostly on the sea cliffs where Ribwort was growing. If we had visited earlier in the year, we might have seen its very handsome caterpillars feeding on the plant. The butterfly is named after Lady Eleanor Glanville, who discovered the species in Lincolnshire in the 1690s.

Glanville Fritillaries

Glanville Fritillaries mating. (Photo by Vanna Bartlett.)

Danish Scurvygrass, Cochlearia danica

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Cochlearia danica

Danish Scurvygrass on the old A47 just west of Dereham, Norfolk.

Once upon a time, there was a white-flowered member of the Cabbage family (Brassicaceae) called Danish Scurvygrass, Cochlearia danica. It could be found growing on the tops of cliffs, in sand dunes and on sea-walls, and on old walls and between cracks in the pavements of coastal towns. In Norfolk it could be found along the north coast, in the drier parts of salt marshes. It was sometimes found growing on the ballast of railway lines too.

Danish Scurvygrass still occurs in these places but since the 1980s it has spread inland along our road network, as can be seen from this distribution map. In the early days it began to colonise the central reservation of major roads and by 1993 it was established along motorways and trunk roads in 320 ten kilometre squares in the UK. In Norfolk, its distribution now follows the network of ‘A’ Roads and it can be found along many ‘B’ Roads too, such as parts of the B1108 from Norwich to Watton. In Norwich, it lines parts of the ring road and the edges of Farrow Road are a mass of white in April, when the plant is in full flower. The individual plants are small but a continuous mass, knitted together alongside the tarmac, is rather striking.

Main roads are salty places and the recent spread of Danish Scurvygrass is down to its tolerance of salty environments. The movement of traffic probably helps too, spreading its small seeds further along the road network, at a rate that Richard Mabey calculates as 10 – 15 miles per year on some roads (Flora Britannica, 1996).

Danish Scurvygrass is a winter annual, growing through the cold months before flowering in April, setting seed and dying. Its flowers are white but its flowerbuds are pink. Its relative Common Scurvygrass, Cochlearia officinalis, is a perennial and, unlike C. danica, has remained a coastal plant. In Norfolk, it can be found alongside the River Yare and River Waveney, just above where they join Breydon Water, and, more rarely on the North Norfolk coast and in the marshes by the Wash. Common Scurvygrass is normally a larger plant, with a straggly growth habit.

The name Scurvygrass comes from the high levels of Vitamin C to be found in these plants, which will help prevent or treat scurvy. According to the Plants for a Future website, both C. danica and C. officinalis have similar properties and the leaves of both plants are edible. I tried C. officinalis many years ago and I don’t remember it being particularly unpleasant, but the Plants for a Future website says that “very few people will actually enjoy the pungent flavour” of C. danica and that although C. officinalis is “pleasantly sharp”, the flavour is “rather less than pleasant to most tastes”. You have been warned.

In a life or death situation, Scurvygrass would be well worth eating. Common Scurvygrass and the related Cochlearia anglica, C. groenlandica and C. fenestrata are found in Spitsbergen (Andreas Umbreit, “Guide To Spitsbergen”, Bradt Publications 1997) and in his 1905 book “No Man’s Land: A History of Spitsbergen”, Sir Martin Conway recounts how a Dutch whaling party overwintered successfully in 1633-34, partly because they managed to find large quantities of Scurvygrass. In the following year another overwintering party had died of scurvy by the time spring arrived, having not found any of the plant. (The first group also hunted reindeer, and there would also have been Vitamin C in the fresh meat.)

The Wild Flower Finder, Nature Spot and West Highland Flora websites have some very good photographs of Danish Scurvygrass, which also known as Early Scurvygrass. The Wild Flower Finder website also gives more details of some of the chemical compounds found in the plant. The name Cochlearia comes from the Latin word cochlear, meaning ’spoon’ and refers to the shape of the leaves. ‘Scurvygrass’ can also be written as ‘Scurvy-grass’.

Lady’s Smock or Cuckoo Flower, Cardamine pratensis

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“When daisies pied and violets blue / And lady-smocks all silver-white, / And cuckoo-buds* of yellow hue, / Do paint the meadows with delight…”
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labours Lost, Act V, Scene II.

Lady's Smock, Cardamine pratensis

Spring is unfurling slowly this year, and one of its characteristic plants is coming into flower here in Norfolk –  Lady’s Smock or Cuckoo Flower, Cardamine pratensis.

This lovely plant can be found in damp meadows and grasslands and on roadsides, ditches and river banks throughout the British Isles. It is native throughout most of Europe and western Asia and northern North America. It is the county flower of both Cheshire and Brecknockshire.  (If you see the plant in the British Isles, you can submit records of sightings here.)

Cardamine pratensis has a basal rosette of pinnate leaves, each one 5 – 12 cm long with 3-15 leaflets. Each leaflet is about 1 cm long. In spring a blue-green stem grows upwards from the rosette and a head of delicate, small, pale pink or mauve flowers opens up at the top. Each flower has four petals, a characteristic of the Cabbage family, Brassicaceae, to which it belongs. Cuckoo Flower is the big brother of Hairy Bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta, a frequent occupant of flower pots, which I wrote about in February 2012.

A group of the plants in flower in damp grassland is a memorable and very lovely sight but after flowering and producing seeds, Cardamine pratensis lies dormant for the rest of the summer, so is easily missed later in the year. The plant grows in Earlham Cemetery in Norwich, where it put on a spectacular display in the cool spring of 2013.

Cardamine pratensis is called Cuckoo Flower (or Cuckooflower or Cuckoo-flower) because it comes into flower at roughly the time that the first Cuckoos arrive here in spring, although the plant can flower as early as March in a sheltered spot in a warm spring, or as late as June or even July in a cool, shady spot or on high ground. The Sixteenth Century herbalist John Gerard said that ‘These flower for the most part in April and May when the Cuckoo begins to sing her pleasant notes without stammering’. The plant can also be covered in “cuckoo spit“, the frothy mass produced by the nymphs of the Meadow or Common Froghopper, Philaenus spumarius.

According to “A Pocket Book of British Wild Flowers” by Charles A. Hall (1937, A. & C. Black) the name Lady’s Smock may be from a fancied likeness to chemises hung out to bleach, or from the plant’s dedication to the Virgin Mary: “Our Lady’s Smock”. However, “Flora Britannica” is more down to earth: the name Lady’s Smock is probably an allusion to certain activities that took place in springtime meadows. (“Smock” was a less than complimentary slang term for a woman, rather like a “bit of skirt”).

Other names include Milkmaids, Fairy Flower, May Flower, Coco Plant and Meadow Bittercress. The last name describes the plant’s close relationship with Hairy Bittercress and also the fact that it is edible. The leaves have a peppery taste, rather like Cress, Land Cress or Water Cress. If you have access to large quantities of the plant, you could substitute a few leaves in Hairy Bittercress recipes. The Eatweeds website has a recipe for Lady’s Smock and Three-cornered Leek Salad. You can also nibble on the flowers or flowerbuds, though it seems a shame to spoil the plant by doing so. The leaves are full of Vitamin C.

Cardamine pratensis is one of the foodplants of Orange-tip Butterfly caterpillars (Anthocharis cardamines). I saw my first Orange-tips of the year on Wednesday, in Thetford Forest in Norfolk. The ground there is mostly too dry for Cuckoo Flower, but the other main foodplant was growing – Garlic Mustard, Alliaria petiolata. The Hazel Tree website has some stunning photos of Orange-tips on Cuckoo Flower, which I recommend.

If your garden has soil that stays fairly damp, you could grow Cardamine pratensis, perhaps naturalised in grass. Other members of the genus make even better garden plants but our garden is too dry for them all, unfortunately. Cuckoo Flower even has double-flowered and hose-in-hose forms, if you like that sort of thing. (Both are found in the wild in parts of Devon.) The Seedaholic website gives tips for raising Cuckoo Flower plants from seed, which is best sown in late summer or early autumn. Seeds can be bought online from suppliers such as Crocus.

If you’re superstitious, beware of Cuckoo Flower! Picking the plant to bring indoors was sometimes discouraged in case it caused a thunderstorm to break out, or an adder bit the picker before the year was out. In Ireland it was sometimes believed that a human or animal born on May Day would have an Evil Eye, which could only be prevented by bathing the eye with the plant’s juice.
* Incidentally, the “cuckoo-buds” Shakespeare mentions are probably buttercup flowers.