Over the next few months we can look forward to one of the great treats that the natural floral world has to offer, tall plants that provide a continuous display of flowers lining the verges of many of our well used local highways, an effect that many gardeners spend years to perfect. I wonder why these particular wild flowers are so often under -rated, regularly overlooked and in some locations actively discouraged.
Maybe it is because they are uniformly white and each flower only a few millimetres across. There are hundreds of these florets on each umbrella-shaped head or umbel borne on stems that often exceed a metre in height, many stems to a plant, repeated for mile after mile to create a spectacular display. I love the overall effect of these filmy white clouds set against the bright green foliage of the hedgerow behind. Welcome to the botanical family Umbelliferae, or umbels as they are more conveniently known! The species with the most commonly known name is the hedge or cow parsley, although I think that the more elegant 'Queen Anne's Lace' gives a more apt description of its appearance en masse. They are fairly robust plants, appearing first as a rosette of leaves that do indeed resemble (in appearance only) those of the culinary flat-leaved parsley. The flowering stems grow rapidly when day-length and temperature reach the appropriate levels and burst into flower in a matter of a few weeks in late spring.
Two other species of umbels succeed Anthemis sylvestris (Queen Anne's Lace); these are rough chervil, Chaerophyllum temulum in early summer and hogweed, Heracleum sphondylium later in the season. Ofcourse you don't need to know the botanical names to appreciate this succession, perhaps just take the time to observe the changes over the next few months. The Latin botanical names just make identification easier; in different parts of the country they were often given a local name, often quite strange-sounding such as badman’s oatmeal, grandpa’s pepper or stepmother!
Now that roadside spraying of herbicides has largely stopped there is still one threat to these plants - annual cutting of the verges which has to be carried out in the interest of road safety. But if the cutting is carried out later in the season after the seeds of the roadside species have been allowed to mature there will be plenty of plants in subsequent years. One year a wonderful display of Queen Anne’s Lace (on the Gulworthy to Bere Alston road) was devastated by an early cut and it took several seasons to return to its former glory. I believe that more care appears to have been taken in recent years helping the survival of many smaller and less common plant species and ofcourse the bees and other insects which feed on them.
Once you start to notice the many species of umbels you will see them in a wide variety of habitats. But beware, to the untrained eye many look very similar and it may take a skilled botanist to provide a positive identification. Some are the wild relatives of well known vegetables or culinary herbs such as carrot, parsnip and fennel. In spring the yellow flowers of alexanders may have caught your eye growing in abundant clumps in hedges or by the side of roads. And many gardeners will recognise the hogweed with its long tap root and its pig-like smell and they may also know that its sap can cause nasty skin blisters particularly in warm weather. Hemlock water dropwort which grows in wet habitats such as ditches and around ponds has been mistaken for celery but is in fact very poisonous. Another umbel which should definitely be avoided and infamously is said to be responsible for the death of Socrates is the deadly hemlock but it is easily distinguished by the purple blotches on its stems and in any case it is quite rare.
I hope I have given you a glimpse of this fascinating and useful but often overlooked group of plants many of which can be found growing here in West Devon and the Tamar Valley.