Hornsea Wildlife and Walks: Spellbinding Plants

I've found several new plants recently which makes life more interesting in identifying them first of all and then researching a bit more about them. All have been common plants, just new to me that's all.

First of all Hemlock (and the inspiration for the post title of course). I really don't know why I haven't noticed Hemlock (Conium maculatum) before, or even looked for it. I've walked past where I found it hundreds of times, but given it was behind a sort of curtain of Cow Parsley, perhaps it just merged into the mass of umbels. This was found locally at Wassand.

How did I spot it? The blasted tidy crew have been out and about with their mowers/tractors and have hacked down a wide swathe each side of a track, unveiling the Hemlock - but that's about the only good thing I can say about such activity. Whoever thinks the countryside should be tidy needs their head looking at.

Purple blotchy stems of Hemlock

Fruit seeds developing after the flowers have died

Feathery leaves and the blotchy stems again

Hemlock is a favourite ingredient of witchy spells and features in Shakespeare's Macbeth, whose 3 witches included "root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark" in their brew. All parts of the plant are poisonous but the seeds contain high concentrations of coniine, which takes its Latin name from this plant's name.

Another 'new' plant found locally is Centaury. I remember seeing this plant in my collection of Brooke Bond tea cards - Wild Flowers. Brooke Bond tea and their nature-based cards, given away free with each packet of tea in the 1950's and 60's, formed the basis for my love of nature.

Each card was the size of the old cigarette cards and albums were provided at a princely cost of sixpence in which to collect each set of 50 cards.

Anyway, back to Centaury (Centaurium erythraea). Pliny The Elder said this plant was named after the centaur Chiron, and who am I to disagree? Common centaury was good for treating wounds of all types according to herbalists.

Common Centaury in Freeport car park

Centaury, small but perfectly formed

While on a walk round Flamborough I found a single stem of Sun Spurge (Euphorbia helioscopia) - again I seem to remember this from the old tea card collection but I've never come across one growing before. It was at the edge of a barley field.

Sun Spurge

This plant is poisonous so it's interesting to find it growing in arable land, where it is most common according to my plant book! One of its alternative old folk names is mad woman's milk, probably derived from its poisonous qualities.

Also on the same Flamborough walk I found Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis). This is a member of the honeysuckle family. This plant and other members of the family were used in the old days to treat scabies and other skin complaints, including the sores from bubonic plague. The word scabies has its root in the Latin word scabere for scratch.

Field Scabious

Finally, again from my jaunt around Flamborough there is Common Restharrow (Ononis repens). A smashing little flower that is pretty common in our area.

Common Restharrow

This is a creeping plant that covers the ground quite thickly. Its common name comes from the fact that in the days of horse-drawn ploughs (or harrows), this plant was hated by farmers of arable land because its matted stems and deep roots used to slow the progress of the plough - hence restharrow.

Out for my soggy walk this morning I came across the usual brown hare on the road and further along was a young rabbit. Rabbits are growing in numbers again locally after being hit by myxomatosis.