This weeks Six on Saturday is a selection of wildflowers, a subject close to my heart. Like most houses on the island, as well as a garden space, the house also came with a parcel of land, and again, as with most houses on the island, that parcel of land was mostly moor. To the front though, between house and sea there was a small field, overgrown to waist height with Soft rush and coarse grass and with a bed of thatch so thick and springy that to walk on it felt like walking across a trampoline. It was pretty barren, from a wildlife point of view, a duo culture that we set about clearing one Winter with rake and pitchfork and an old diesel power scythe. The following year we cut it hard until the end of May and then allowed it to grow. By summers end it had transformed, so many species appeared, fine grasses and multiple varieties of wildflower, all must have lain dormant, perhaps for decades, waiting for light and warmth to bring the fields slumbering seed bank to life.
First up is the foxglove, this was a surprising sight, not a plant of meadows but up popped a half dozen of them. They were marked with canes and mown around so that the following year their seed could be saved and scattered in a newly planted shelter belt. They haven’t reappeared, but the rapidly establishing shelter belt floor is now thick with their offspring.
Next is Wild Angelica, a plant that introduced itself within a couple of years of the fields reincarnation as a meadow. Like the foxglove above they’re a biennial but they sit low enough in their first year of life to be unbothered by the meadows Autumn mowing regime. For us they’re quite statuesque, often achieving a height of four feet or more but travel half a mile from here to the wind scoured headland of Brims, where they duck the easterlies ripping in off the sea, and they are barely twelve inches tall.
Next up is the Yellow Iris, not truly a plant of the meadow, at home they live in an old boat noust, a natural or man made hollow where boats would be hauled up out of harms way of Winter storms. The noust here is man made and sits half way up the low cliff, where meadow falls to sea, and must at some point have had a winch or pulley system to drag a boat twenty feet up a now long disappeared timber ramp. Yellow iris has a long history of multiple uses, among others the rhizomes of the plant were used to produce a black dye for ink, the leaves were used for basket weaving and thatching and a potion could be made that was said to cure toothache. The seeds were ground up to make a form of snuff. On the Orkney mainland remains of Yellow iris were found in the 5000 year old middens of Skara Brae.
Next comes Yarrow, a plant that on Hoy is seen on the coasts and amongst dry grasslands but is absent from much of the island due to its dislike of wet feet and acid soil. At home they’re a late Summer flower, just getting into their stride when many other species have already faded to seed. As with the Iris there’s a list of old uses as long as your arm. It’s said to be a healer of wounds caused by iron weapons and a hint for this comes from its latin name, achillea millefolium, a reference to Achilles. In Orkney tea was and likely still is made from it and across the pond indigenous tribes used it as a mosquito repellent.
Next comes another late Summer flower, the Devils-bit scabious, whose blue pom-pom flowerheads are a magnet for butterflies. We had a small group of them appear and as they set seed and multiplied young plants were lifted and dotted through the meadow. They’re quite low growing and we were careful to choose areas that had little competition from grasses, slowly but surely they are starting to spread. In medieval times it was a seen as a cure for scabies and its name comes from a story that the Devil, in a fit of jealousy over the plants virtue, bit off a lump of its admittedly stubby root.
Last but not least comes Cats-ear, the plant, that in the first Summer after clearing the field made all the hard work worth it. Within a few weeks, once we had stopped mowing the now scalped field, cats-ears appeared in abundance, not one or two but a literal carpet of yellow. I would love to know how long the seeds had lain dormant, the seeds are dandelion like but with none growing on adjacent ground I doubt that any blew in. The seed, in a field that had not been mown or grazed in living memory, must simply have been biding its time. Since then they’ve spread to other parts of the plot, the edge of the shelter belt and recently onto an area of ground disturbed by the laying of a cable at the edge of the moor. One of natures pioneers.
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A garden in Orkney 