THE other morning I went for a walk along the bank of the Grand Canal in a rural part of Co Kildare. The amount and variety of wildflowers was striking.
In woodlands, hedgerows and meadows the most intense flowering tends to take place in the spring before tall plants shade out the wildflowers and conceal them from pollinating insects. But there’s less of this kind of competition beside water so everything tends to bloom a bit later and the show reaches a climax in high summer.
A stand of red valerian had only just come into flower. This familiar plant normally grows on walls, bridges or other masonry but is sometimes found in marshy places and beside rivers and canals. It’s not an Irish native plant but was introduced into gardens from the Mediterranean and then escaped. It has flowers that are very variable in colour, they’re normally red but can also be white, coral pink or mauve.
The valerian family is quite small so it was a surprise to find two other members growing along the bank – and these were both Irish native wildflowers. Common Valerian is a tall, strong plant, it can grow up to 1.5 metres, and its umbels of flowers are white, sometimes with a hint of pink in the centre. Since ancient times it’s roots have been prized as a nerve tonic and sedative.
Marsh valerian is a much smaller plant which tends to creep around the place rather than stand upright. The familiar valerian clumps of flowers are pale pink but this species is unisexual and on female plants the flowers are in dense heads and on males in loose clusters.
Rather surprisingly, the only other member of the valerian family that grows wild in Ireland is Lamb’s Lettuce, which is also known as Corn Salad. In recent years this plant has become very popular as a gourmet salad leaf.
I think it’s one of the best of all salads, although it’s a bit tedious to harvest, and I grow it all the year round in my greenhouse. If you also grow it and you leave a few plants to mature in the summer, pretty little lilac-coloured flowers will appear in the axils of the uppermost leaves. Lamb’s lettuce grows wild in Ireland on dry soils, including sand dunes, and in the days before modern herbicides it was a common weed in cereal crops, which is why it’s also called Corn Salad.
I walked on, admiring Hemp Agrimony, White Convolulus, Lady’s Bedstraw, and Purple Loosestrife.
The next thing that caught my eye was a couple of stands of very pretty, pale mauve orchids growing in the short grass in front of the taller bank-side plants. I find the identification of Irish wild orchids difficult. It’s not only that many are very similar, they also hybridise at the drop of a hat so you can come across intermediate forms.
I was cursing I’d come out without a digital camera. I wanted to know what species they were and the best way is to compare a photograph with images from a book or the internet. I’d never pick wild orchids, many of them are rare and declining.
I was peering intently at the flowers, trying to memorise important details, when a rumbling sound approached from behind and the bank started to shake slightly. I had to step aside to make way for an enormous tractor with a mowing bar behind it. Waterways Ireland were ‘maintaining’ the banks for walkers. And after the machine had passed there was no sign at all of my orchids. Maybe I should have picked a couple after all.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, July 20, 2009
