10th August: Ten Things of Thankful

Things for which I give thanks this week…

Weed of the Week!

1.- I am grateful for the boundless curiosity which i inherited from my Dad and too, the habit of passing on snippets which interest me – of course he was part of the age before the internet which gives us boundless access to knowledge (not all of it coorect though). One such snippet was the story of Common Ragwort, a weed which was supposedly brought to Britain and grown in Kew Gardens from which it allegedly escaped and spread across Britain along the newly built railways.

As a geography student, this story fascinated me too touching on ecology as well as the unit I studied on “Weeds, Pests, and Aliens”. I didn’t really encounter Ragwort till we bought a cottage in the West of Ireland where Ragwort grew in the three acres of fields that came with the cottage. The farmer who sold it to us, explained that whilst not poisonous to cattle and horses whilst growing, once cut along with grass to make hay, then it was poisonous and so the farmer must go over the field and remove the offending weeds. My father’s account also claimed that the weed was rife until the one and only caterpillar to munch on it was brought from foreign parts, and then the weed became manageable… There the story might end, but – I have access to the internet and there is thirty years of people adding information about their hobbies and passions to comb through…

2.- # The Internet, aka the World Wide Web

Disambiguation!

It turns out that the story of Ragwort escaping Kew Gardens is a myth and that Ragwort in endemic throughout Europe and Asia! However, there was a Botanical Garden and an escaping Ragwort which spread along the railways and it was nearer to home than we thought – Oxford Ragwort which originally came from the slopes of Mount Etna…

 Senecio chrysanthemifolius and S. aethnensis grow at low and high altitudes on the volcano respectively, and form hybrids where they meet naturally at mid altitude. It was material from this hybrid zone that was grown in the Oxford Botanic Garden by Bobart the Younger in the early 1700s. Plants that later escaped from the Garden spread across the UK via the clinker beds of railway lines and, over the next few hundred years, diverged from the hybrids and their parents sufficiently to become recognised as a separate species, S. squalidus, the Oxford ragwort
https://www.obga.ox.ac.uk/oxford-ragwort

As to the poisonous qualities of ragwort, it is poisonous, though animals would have to eat a massive amount to be seriously poisoned and this is unlikely because it doesn’t taste good – however, once cut, along with the grass, the unpleasant taste goes and so animals are more likely to ingest it.. This and other interesting facts can be found in this video in defence of Ragwort and on behalf of the many creatures and their parasites who depend on Ragwort…

Weed of the Week – The Runner Up…

3.- Returning from a haircut by way of the churchyard at the back of our house, I was looking at how the lower half was cleared of gravestones (with permission of relatives) and the gravestones were arranged arround the outside or laid down as paths which opened up a great space of grass.

4.- This christmas tree was planted by a near neighbour ( I know the guilty party) too close to our house and it has already been cut down once but has grown 10 feet in just the last year and is directly in line with our kitchen window…

5.- Butterflies abounded…

6.- An unusual Clematis like a clematis has been crossed with a Campanula…

7.- One of the first things I posted on TToT, was a picture of Barbara when we visited a PYO wildflower field near Helmsley so that is at least a year ago, well we went again this weekend and this time we picked some flowers, which are lasting far better than I thought they might…

8.- English Eccentricity!
The pictures below are at Thirsk, on the way back from the Flower Field and these knitted offerings are to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the Thirsk Yarn Bombers. They will replace this display with poppies for Remembrance Sunday and there will be 3 or 4 different displays during any given year – incredible work!

9.- MUSIC – and today I offer you Irma Thomas It’s Raining… (In the hope that you all have enough of the stuff…)

10.- Ten Things of Thankful…

Have a good week everyone…