Mid – January can be a difficult time of year. The mornings are dark, cold, and wet. Grey skies rule over the cold, crisp, snow-filled winters of not so long ago.
The days are short, and the chances to get out into nature may be few and far between, even more so during the current lockdown throughout the UK. For the hardy, who have layered up their clothing and waterproof boots, there is a lot of new life in the countryside – even in the middle of January.
In this blog, we are looking at six plants that you should be able to spot growing wild in your local area that heralds the brighter days that lie ahead.
Alexanders Smyrnium olusatru
Alexander’s is an edible flowering plant of the family Apiaceae. They are also known as alisanders, horse parsley, and Smyrnium.
They are biennial. They are believed to have been introduced to the UK by Roman Soldiers who bought the plants and seeds as part of their travelling food rations.
Alexander’s are tall plants – growing up to 1.5 metres. They have greenish-yellow flowers in umbrella-like clusters with a pungent, myrrh-like scent.
The shiny green leaves are toothed, arranged in groups of three at the end of the leaf stalk, and smell like celery. The round fruit is ridged and ripens to a blackish colour. They can be confused with cow parsley, but they are generally much more extensive and thicker stemmed.
Alexander’s are commonly found in coastal areas of England and Wales. They are rare in Scotland. Being Mediterranean natives, they have little resistance to frost. They can be found on cliffs, hedgebanks, roadsides, quarries, and other uncultivated areas. They are often found in the ruins of old castles and Abbeys.
Alexanders have been used as food since Roman times. They were cultivated for centuries as table vegetables and were once a common sight in ancient gardens. It is now primarily a wild plant.
Like many of its relatives in the Apiaceae family, Alexanders exude aromatic oils with a pungent but sweet smell that attracts a wide range of pollinating insects. It got its botanical name because of its distinctive myrrh-like fragrance.
Alexanders were once known as ‘black potherb’ because of their black, spicy seeds. The leaves and stalks can be blanched or steamed to add to soups, broths, and stews. The plant tastes similar to celery. The flowers can be used as a spice and decoration for salads. Every part of this plant is edible.
In the past, almost every aspect of the plant was used, from the young flower buds, which were pickled like miniature cauliflowers. It has a unique taste but is similar to Angelica.
Irish matrons made a soup called ‘Lenten potage’ made of Alexanders, watercress, and nettles in the 18th century. Fruits are a rich source of protein, carbohydrates, and fatty acids. The plant contains flavonoids and other bioactive compounds.
Apothecaries used Alexander’s to clean the blood and as a digestive herb to strengthen the stomach. Seafarers used it to treat scurvy, and herbalists used it to relieve stomach and urinary problems. It was also a remedy for headaches, toothaches, swellings of the body, cuts and bruises, asthma, and tuberculosis.
Did You Know?
In Latin, the name means the parsley of Alexandria. In the middle ages, the dried stalks were bundled and used as cattle fodder or fuel for the fire.
Common Hazel Corylus avellana
Corylus avellana, The Common Hazel, is a small tree or shrub found in woodlands and hedgerows. It is native to Britain and grows throughout Europe.
The toothed leaf is heart-shaped and soft to the touch. The leaf has a sharply pointed tip. The underside of the leaf is covered in fine white hairs.
The bark is shiny and has horizontal lines of ‘breathing pores’ known as lenticels. Hazel is usually multi-stemmed in old woodlands, having been cut repeatedly every eight years on a rotation basis to produce ‘poles’ – this ancient craft is known as Coppicing.
Male catkins open from December to April, and Hazelnuts ripen by September. Hazel is monoecious, meaning each plant has male and female flowers but must be pollinated by other hazel trees.
The yellow catkins appear before the leaves and hang in clusters from late January to mid-February. The catkins are male flowers that hang down, ready to release pollen into the wind. There can be over 200 uni-sexual male flowers on a single catkin.
After it has released its pollen, the male catkin drops off the tree. Female flowers are red and very small. You will find them in a flower bud on the branch above the catkin. Each flower has two crimson stigmas that stick out the top of it.
The stigmas are receptive to the pollen released from the male catkins. Each flower bud, once pollinated, will develop into a cluster of one to four hazelnuts.
Today, hazel coppice has become an important management strategy in conserving woodland habitats for wildlife. The resulting timber is used in lots of ways, and Hazel leaves provide food for the caterpillars of moths, including the large emerald, small white wave, barred umber, and nut-tree tussock.
In managed woodland where Hazel is coppiced, the open, wildflower-rich habitat supports species of butterfly, particularly fritillaries. Coppiced hazel also shelters ground-nesting birds, such as the nightingale, nightjar, yellowhammer, and willow warbler.
Hazel has long been associated with the dormouse (also known as the hazel dormouse). Not only are hazelnuts eaten by dormice to fatten up for hibernation, but in spring, the leaves are a good source of caterpillars, which dormice also eat.
Hazelnuts are also eaten by woodpeckers, nuthatches, tits, wood pigeons, jays, and other small mammals, such as squirrels. Hazel flowers provide early pollen as food for bees.
However, bees find it challenging to collect Hazel pollen and can only gather it in small loads. This is because the pollen of wind-pollinated Hazel is not sticky, and each grain actually repels against another. Hazel trunks are often covered in mosses, liverworts, and lichens, and the fiery milkcap fungus grows in the soil beneath.
Hazel’s value as food is for the Hazelnut. The nut is a staple for squirrels and Hazel Dormouse, who use the nut’s protein and fat to build fat reserves up for winter.
Of course, many people enjoy Hazelnuts too. They were widely cultivated in the UK until the early 1900s when demand dropped. Kent is the main area where the cultivated Hazelnuts, known as ‘cobs’, are still grown today. Despite the resurgence of hazelnuts in vegan dairy-free milk and chocolate products, the majority of these are imported.
Did you know?
Hazel has a reputation as a magical tree. A hazel rod is supposed to protect against evil spirits and be used as a wand and for water divining. In some parts of England, hazelnuts were carried as charms to ward off rheumatism. In Ireland, Hazel was known as the ‘Tree of Knowledge, and in medieval times it was a symbol of fertility.
Green hellebore Helleborus viridis
Green Hellebore is a native species in the UK and widely across central and western Europe. It is a relative of the garden varieties which might be more familiar as late winter/early spring flowers in an ornamental setting.
Hellebores are actually a member of the Buttercup family.
The arrangement of petals and sepals and the shape and structure of the leaves give this away on more careful scrutiny. Flowering time is early in the year – generally February and into March – making it one of the earliest flowering spring species. Plants grow to around 60cm high and often form stands thanks to their rhizomatous roots.
This plant is found in the southern parts of the UK and is common throughout Europe. This plant likes damp places and can be found in wet meadows or beside rivers and streams.
The green flower buds appear first and are then followed by the leaves. Sometimes the stems are tinged with purple. The entire plant can grow up to a metre in height.
Green Hellebore contains a toxin common to all buttercup family members, protanemonin, produced when the plant is wounded or crushed, causing side effects from skin irritation and blistering to poisoning if ingested.
Historically, this species was used to treat worms, but such are its toxic properties that inappropriate administration posed a significant risk of harming the patient as much as the parasite! All parts of the plant are poisonous, leading to severe vomiting and seizures.
Green hellebores provide much-needed nectar and pollen source for honey bees who are out foraging on one of those lovely warm winter days.
Did you Know?
The hellebore name is derived from the Greek helleboros, meaning “to injure” Most species are poisonous.
One fascinating folk story is about an English herbalist, Mrs Maude Grieve, who claimed that powdered hellebore scattered in the air or spread on the ground would make you invisible when you walked on it.
Lesser Celandine Ficaria verna
Lesser Celandine is a small, low-growing perennial herb in the buttercup family. Lesser Celandine has a bright yellow star-shaped flower. Each flower is about 3cm across with eight to twelve petals. It has rosettes of glossy dark green, heart-shaped, mottled, long-stalked leaves. Look out for it on path edges in early spring.
Lesser Celandine loves damp woodland paths, tracks, stream banks, and ditches. You can also spot it growing in gardens, meadows, and shady hedgerows.
Lesser Celandine is also known as pilewort, which hints at its primary medicinal use as a treatment for haemorrhoids. This was based on the doctrine of signatures which suggested the knobbly tubers were thought to resemble piles. The leaves are high in vitamin C and were often used to prevent scurvy.
As one of the first flowers to appear after winter, they provide an important nectar source for queen bumblebees and other pollinators emerging from hibernation.
Did you Know?
It was once thought that you could use lesser Celandine to predict the weather as they close their petals before raindrops.
Wordsworth was such a fan of the lesser Celandine he wrote three poems about them: The Small Celandine, To the Same Flower, and To the Small Celandine.
21st February is known as “Celandine Day” In 1795, the renowned naturalist Gilbert White noted that the first celandines usually appeared in his Hampshire village of Selborne on this date, and a similar result has been recorded over the centuries.
The Lesser Celandine is said to be the floral equivalent of the swallow: both reappear around the same time each year and herald the coming of spring. In fact, the word ‘celandine’ comes from the Greek chelidon meaning ‘swallow’ This also gave the lesser Celandine the name ‘spring messenger.’
Snowdrop Galanthus nivalis
Galanthus is a small genus of approximately 20 species of bulbous, perennial, and herbaceous plants in the family Amaryllidaceae.
Listed as Near Threatened on the global IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Perhaps the first sign that spring is just around the corner is the Snowdrop poking its way through the frosted soil of a woodland. Snowdrops can survive the cold winter and flower early because they grow from bulbs. Standing around 7–15 cm tall, snowdrops have white bell-shaped flowers at the end of an erect flowering stem with two to three leaves.
Snowdrops don’t have petals. The flower is composed of six white segments known as tepals (they look like petals). The inner three tepals are smaller and have a notch in the tip, with a green upturned ‘v’ pattern visible.
Snowdrops are found across the UK. They favour damp soil and are often found in broadleaved woodland and along riverbanks, but can also be seen in parks, gardens, meadows, and scrub. The species usually flowers in January and February, but an increasing number of December flowerings are being recorded and even the occasional November sighting.
Despite its long history in the UK, it may not actually be native here; it is a native of damp woods and meadows on the continent but was not recorded as growing wild in the UK until the late 18th century. Nevertheless, it has undoubtedly become naturalised and can now be seen nationwide.
Snowdrop bulbs are poisonous if eaten, but traditionally, snowdrops were used to treat headaches and as a painkiller. In modern medicine, a compound in the bulb has been used to develop a dementia treatment.
Snowdrops do produce seeds, provided there are pollinators around. Early emerging queen bumblebees will help spread them if the weather is warm and dry. However, as they flower so early, snowdrops rely on something other than pollinators to reproduce. Instead, they spread via bulb division.
Did you Know?
In the Language of Flowers, the Snowdrop symbolises chastity, consolation, death, friendship in adversity, hope, and purity. The flowering of snowdrops is one of the first signs that winter is ending. As a result, the flower has long been viewed as a symbol of hope for better times ahead. However, seeing a single snowdrop flower was once viewed as a sign of impending death; taking one into a house was considered bad luck. Christians dedicate snowdrops to the Virgin Mary. On Candlemas Day (2nd February), snowdrops were once scattered in place of her image on the altar. Avid collectors of snowdrops are known as galanthophiles.
Winter Aconite Eranthis hyemalis
The winter aconite is a species of flowering plant in the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae, native to calcareous woodland habitats in France, Italy, and the Balkans and widely naturalised elsewhere in Europe.
The winter aconite is a hardy tuberous perennial that forms golden carpets of jewel-like flowers. It glows in the sunlight above ruffs of bright, green leaves in late winter and early spring.
The plant’s official name, Eranthis hyemalis, comes from the Greek “er”, meaning ‘spring’ and “antho”, meaning flower, combined with the Latin hyemalis, meaning ‘winter-flowering’. The common name, winter aconite, alludes to the leaf shape, a characteristic by which plants were classified in the 16th century.
Winter aconite has similar foliage to plants in the Aconitum genus, which includes monkshood and wolfsbane and belongs to the same family. Wherever you find it, it has probably escaped from a garden or cemetery, but it is well-naturalised, typically in shady or wooded areas dotted around the country.
All members of Ranunculaceae are toxic, although they don’t all have the same chemical composition. Substantial ingestion of any part of winter aconite causes symptoms of nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, colic, bradycardia, disturbed vision, dyspnoea, and even cardiac arrest.
Winter aconite contains pharmacological chemicals such as khellin. Khellin is a vasodilator, but because of its toxicity, it is rarely used therapeutically.
It can be converted into sodium cromoglicate, used as prophylaxis against asthma attacks, and amiodarone, which has anti-arrhythmia actions and is used for atrial fibrillation and other arrhythmias.
The nectar and pollen-rich flowers of the winter aconite are a magnet for early insects such as Queen bees.
Now is a great time to get out and enjoy the wildlife in your local area. Walking for just an hour a day can bring physical and mental benefits, whilst the fresh chill air will help boost your immune system and help to keep your body active.
We all feel like hiding away more in the dark days of winter, but a world of intrigue and beauty awaits those who venture from their warm houses.
Further Reading
Best wildflowers to spot in late winter by Countryfile.com
Top 10 British native wildflowers by RHS
If you spot any of the plants we’ve looked at in this blog, it would be good to hear your comments and pictures.
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