Spring Flower Folklore

It's spring. Every day or so a different plant comes into bloom. Exciting times! As you notice them, consider these bits of folklore.

Grape hyacinths (Muscari species) are good luck growing outside, but brought in, cause gloom and depression. 

grape hyacinths

Gazing upon periwinkles (Vinca sp.) restores lost memories. 

It is bad luck to pick primroses (Primula vulgaris, early meadow flower of Europe) unless you can pick thirteen or more. 

In Maine, they say if you point your index finger at a daffodil plant (Narcissus), it won't bloom. 

White narcissus (Narcissus) were called grave flowers on Shetland and were unlucky to take into the house, though not unlucky grown in the garden. 

Narcissus

To cure a headache and relieve dizziness, link violet flowers (Viola) together into a little wreath and wear it on your head. 

For good luck, carry strawberry (Fragaria vesca) leaves. Furthermore, carrying strawberry leaves eases the pregnancy pains of pregnant women. 

Many places in England agree that bringing snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) into the house will bring very bad luck, likely a death in the immediate family. 

snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis

And then there is rampion, one of the common names of rampion bellflower, Campanula rapunculus, a spring garden flower, especially in Europe. If you grow it in your garden, your children will be quarrelsome. 

If you can turn the flower of a bluebell (Campanula rotundiflora also called harebell) inside out without tearing or damaging it, you will eventually have the one you love. 

Bluebells, harebells, Campanula rotundiflora

Do not bring buttercups into the house because the smell of buttercups, especially the creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens), makes people go crazy. 

Place fresh lilac (Syringa) flowers in a haunted house to help clear it of spirits.

lilac, Syringa vulgaris

Gather the first blossom of anemone (Anemone pulsatilla, pasque flower), wrap it in a red cloth and wear or carry it to ward away disease. 

Place some magnolia (Magnolia) near or beneath the bed to ensure faithfulness.  

Sniff fresh hyacinth (Hyacinthus orientalis) flowers to relieve grief or to end an obsession. 

hyacinth, Hyacinthus

Were any of these part of your traditions? Other spring flower folklore?

Merry Spring!

References

Cunningham, S. 2003. Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs. 2nd ed. Llewellyn Press, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Martin, L.C. 1987. Garden Flower Folklore. The Globe Pequot Press, Chester Connecticut. 

Vickery, R. 1995, Oxford Dictionary of Plant-Lore. Oxford University Press. London. 

Want to think more seriously about folklore? Next post. 

Kathy Keeler

A Wandering Botanist

More at awanderingbotanist.com

Join me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AWanderingBotanist

Spearleaf stonecrop, Sedum lanceolatum Common in the Rockies and the West

Sedum, known as stonecrop, in the stonecrop family, Crassulaceae, is a big genus with 400-500 species, native all over the Northern Hemisphere and into the Southern Hemisphere in South America and Africa. They are succulents with thick, fleshy leaves, allowing them to live in dry places.Their pretty flowers have put many stonecrops into the garden trade. 

Spearleaf stonecrop, Sedum lanceolatum

Spearleaf stonecrop, also called lanceleaf stonecrop, Sedum lanceolatum, is native across the western half of North America; in Colorado it is grows in the Rocky Mountains above 5000', its range goes west from there.  

Gardening for Moths

Moths are mysterious little pollinators, flitting around in the dark or near-dark, hard to observe. Yet providing plants that support them, so that they can pollinate, is important. Like other insects, their numbers seem to be dropping. Here are some ideas for gardens that promote moths. 

white lined hawk moth (Hyles lineata) and Persian cat mint (Nepeta racemosa)

Plant Story: Pincushion Flower, Scabious

I first remember noticing pincushion flower (also called scabious, honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae) on a hike on the coast of Italy. What a pretty flower!

scabious, Scabiosa or Krautia, in Italy

Scabious is used as the common name of a group of related plants. Some are classified in the genus Scabiosa (about 70 species), some in the genera Knautia (55 species) and others in Succisa (3 species). They all have flowerheads made of dozens of tiny florets. Most have pink or lavender flowers but the they range over to rich deep reds. They are native across Eurasia but not to North America. In some places in the United States, though, they have escaped from gardens and naturalized. 

Moth Pollination 3. Settling Moths

Pollinating moths come from only a few of the 124 families of moths, as far as we know (part 1 of this series). The sphinx moths, family Sphingidae (part 2) are important pollinators that fly in the evening and even by day; they are really cool insects to watch. All the other pollinating moths are collectively called settling moths, because the land on the flowers and then probe for nectar, while sphinx moths hover. Settling moths are quite mysterious.

a settling moth, the bindweed or four-spotted moth,
Tyta luctosa Denis & Schiffermüller (Noctuidae) on a cosmos (Cosmos) flower

Travel Story--Beaches in Taiwan

Taiwan is an island just east of the continent of Asia. It is subtropical to tropical, full of scenic vistas, rugged mountains, and, being an island, it is surrounded by beaches. When the Portuguese discovered it in the 1500s, they called it Ilha Formosa, "beautiful island" an aptly descriptive name, though no longer in use.

beach, looking south

It is the end of winter, Colorado is still brown and beige, so here is a photo tour of coastal Taiwan. My photos are not especially colorful, so remember to imagine the temperature is a very comfortable 80^oF, a light wind is blowing and the humidity is very high.

Moth Pollination 2. Sphinx Moths aka Hawkmoths and Hummingbird Moths

The sphinx moths are the family Sphingidae of the Lepidoptera, handsome moths that can hover in the air. Many fly by day or during dawn and dusk, so are more often spotted and admired than their relatives that fly in the dark. 

sphinx moth pollinating vervain

Citron, An Old Citrus Fruit

The citron, Citrus medica (orange family, Rutaceae) is one of the oldest of citrus fruits. Although we have many citrus fruits--lemons, limes, grapefruits, oranges, tangerines, etc.--all were produced by humans crossing a few wild plants with small and sour fruits and selecting for better fruits. The citron is one of those wild plants, ancestor to popular citrus fruits. It is not well-known. 

One of the varieties of citron, Citrus medica, the etrog

Moth Pollination I. Overview.

Moths are the secret pollinators. They fly at dusk or after dark, tend to be small, and have blotchy color patterns. For all those reasons, they get little attention. And yet:  Moths are very numerous. They make up most of the insect order Lepidoptera, moths and butterflies. Lepidoptera are the second largest group of insects, after beetles, with 180,000 species, which is about 10% of all described living organisms. Lepidoptera are broken into 126 families; two families are butterflies, 17, 000 species, the rest are moths. So nearly 10% of the world's organisms are moths. And yet we generally overlook them. 

big tropical moth, about an inch across

Of Brooms and Broom

 Everyone knows a broom:

broom

And lots of people know the plant, broom, common broom, Scotch broom Cytisus scoparius  

Scotch broom, common broom, Cytisus scoparius

I was surprised to learn that the plant named the tool, not vice versa.

The English Yew, Taxus bacata--Ordinary and Fabled

My earliest memory of yew is from a poem. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a historical novel, The White Company, as well as his Sherlock Holmes mysteries (The White Company).  As a teen I loved the book, and remember clearly a poem from it, celebrating a company of medieval archers, which goes in part, 

"What of the bow?

    The bow was made in England:

Of true wood, of yew-wood,

    The wood of English bows;

         So men who are free

         Love the old yew-tree

And the land where the yew-tree grows." (link),

of true wood, of yew-wood

English yews, Taxus bacata, as ornamentals

Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia

 In August,  I took a garden tour of Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. One of the important gardens on the tour was the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver.

pond and willow, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden

Classical Chinese gardens date back to at least the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1279). They were best developed as the retirement retreats of government bureaucrats. The owner set rocks, plants, and water around his home, to have pleasing and different views in all directions. In southern and coastal China, the house could be quite open, the garden and the indoors linked most of the year. 

Stinging Nettles Part II: FIber, Dye, and Folklore

Stinging nettles, Urtica dioica (nettle family, Urticaceae) have been used for food and medicine for millennia (see previous blog link). 

Fiber

They have also been used to make cloth and rope. The individual stalks do not branch and so contain fibers that can be four feet long. These can be separated from the surrounding plant tissue and braided or twined into thread or twine and then used to make items from soft cloth and fish nets to rope. Online videos show people stripping the leaves and outer stem off stinging nettles without gloves, so apparently you can grip it firmly at the base and avoid contact with the stinging hairs. Once the outer layers are removed the long fibers are pliable and can be twisted or braided while fresh or softened further in an alkaline bath. link The older literature mentions weaving nettles into table cloths and sheets. It could be bleached very white. In Germany, nettle fiber was used to supplement cotton into the 20th century. Using stinging nettle for its fibers goes back millennia, but is pretty much a forgotten art in western culture. 

stinging nettle, Urtica dioica

Native Americans across the continent made good use of stinging nettle fibers. They produced fishing lines, fish nets, twine, thread, bowstrings, baskets, fiber bags and cloth. 

Dyes

Nettles have a long history as a dye plant. Leaves, whole above-ground plants, and roots can be used. Colors obtained range from pale yellow, stronger yellows, olive greens, beiges and browns to black. The color obtained apparently depends on the mordant used and dyeing conditions but is further affected by growing conditions. Nettles naturally contain some iron, which acts as a mordant in nettle-dyed fiber, . saddening the colors, that is making them browner. An easily-found plant of Scotland, nettles were often used to create the yellows and dark greens in Harris tweeds. The colors are generally quite color-fast, not fading much over time or if exposed to sunlight.

As you might expect, dyers complain about the pain of collecting nettles and recommend other plants. 

stinging nettle

When people lived in villages and walked out into shared wild spaces to gather useful plants, stinging nettles were common weeds that could be harvested in large numbers for food or medicine, fiber or dyes, and trusted to grow back quickly. Today, we live in cities and suburbs, rarely with easy access to a source of stinging nettles. I have not had a place to gather nettles for many years. They are more common in the eastern United States and on the Pacific Coast than in the Great Plains. I would love to try making fiber from them or turn them into dye, but know nowhere I could gather them. That sounds strange, since most land-owners with patches of nettles would probably be happy to have those annoying plants removed, but it reflects our time, when you need permission to gather on property you do not own. 

A consequence of this is that more recent dye-plant books do not include nettles. Generally today  the writer grew or bought her dyestuffs and nettles weren't included. We rarely think of nettles when listing fiber plants, again because they aren't readily available today. Once important useful plants, nettles have been relegated to undesirable weeds. 

Folklore 

Nettles have had no problem gathering folklore because their sting makes them so memorable. For example: Sprinkle nettles around the house to keep out evil. To remove a curse and send it back, stuff a poppet (a small cloth doll) with nettles or carry some in a sachet. Place freshly cut nettles next to the sickbed to aid the patient's recovery. Toss stinging nettles into the fire during a thunderstorm to protect people from lightning. Beating arthritic hands with nettles to make them feel better sounds like folklore, but is a medical treatment of great antiquity. 

stinging nettle growing next to wild poppy, Norway

Nettles appear in a variety of admonitions, for example: 

     "If you gently touch a nettle,

      It'll sting you for your pains; 

      Grasp it like a lad of mettle,

       An' as soft as silk remains."

That is, tackle a difficult problem boldly. 

Nettles also have aphorisms: "Though you stroke a nettle ever so kindly, yet it will sting you" and "He that handles a nettle tenderly is soonest stung." 

stinging nettle

Appreciate stinging nettles when you see them. You'll still have to walk around them to avoid getting stung, of course. To paraphrase, "Though admire a nettle ever so sincerely, yet it will sting you."

Comments and corrections welcome.

References

Cannon, J. and M. Cannon. 1994. Dye Plants and Dyeing. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 

Casselman, K. L. 1993. Craft of the Dyer. 2nd edition. Dover Publications, New York. 

Cunningham, S. 2003. Cunningham's Encylcopedia of Magical Herbs. expanded & revised edition. Llewellyn Publications. St. Paul, MN.

Grierson, S. 1986.The Colour Cauldron. Milt Books. Perth. Scotland. 

Moerman, D. E. 1998. Native American Ethnobotany. Timber Press, Portland OR. See online database: link Accessed 1/12/25

Simpson, J. and J. Speake. 2009. Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 5th ed. online link Accessed 1/6/25

Kathy Keeler

A Wandering Botanist

More at awanderingbotanist.com

Join me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AWanderingBotanist

Stinging Nettle, Urtica dioica Stinging and Useful

Stinging nettle is a plant that too many of us only criticize. It stings! The tiny venom-filled hairs on the leaves are really painful to brush against. So suburbanites, farmers, hikers, hunters and many others,  dislike it; it stings, it makes places that you go around rather than through, nasty plant. 

stinging nettle, Urtica dioica

And yet, this is an excellent vegetable and healing herb. Heat the leaves and the stinging hairs are quickly destroyed, leaving rich, nutritious greens. For millennia people gathered stinging nettles for food and medicine. Today that is rare or confined to commercial medical production, so we only see them as irritating.