The Beautiful Healer

Asclepias tuberosa flowers

The flowers of the butterfly weed fairly leap out at you this time of the year. This unobtrusive relative of the milkweed is practically invisible until it blooms. The plant is smaller than milkweed with more narrow leaves, but the more garish flowers are really flat clusters of tightly packed tiny five petaled orange to yellow blossoms with elaborate structures around the anthers. In contrast, milkweed flowers are loose cymes of pinkish-white blossoms. In both species, the flowers are small, perhaps a quarter of an inch long, so it is the bright color and density that sets the butterfly weed apart.

True to its name, the butterfly weed does attract butterflies, but it doesn’t have the exclusive relationship with a species like the one between the monarch and the milkweed. Asclepias tuberosa attracts monarchs, but it also attracts bumblebees, eastern tiger swallowtails, fritillaries, hairstreaks, honeybees, painted ladies, pipevine swallowtails, and other species.

There are over 140 species of milkweeds. The genus name comes from the Greek god Asclepius, who is associated with healing. The common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, is the preferred food of the monarch butterfly in the northeast U.S. That species exudes a white latex—the so-called “milk”—from its leaves when they are broken, while A. tuberosa does not and its leaves are much narrower, so they can be told apart readily even when not in flower. A. tuberosa more closely resembles the lanceolate milkweed, so named for its narrower leaves, but that species exudes white latex as well.

Clump of butterfly weed in its natural habitat, an open field.

Butterfly weed is fond of growing in full sunlight and sandy, dry soil, which explains its regular presence along the roadways of Martha’s Vineyard. Its showy flowers and propensity for attracting (humming)birds, bees and butterflies makes it a popular ornamental. It grows well from seed, but make take a while to establish itself. It may not flower until it is two or three years old. Once it is ensconced, however, it is quite hardy. It is difficult to transplant because it has a taproot. Fully grown plants can be three feet tall. The stems are hairy and the lanceolate leaves grow in a spiral arrangement around the central stem. The seed pods are long and spindle-shaped and valued for dried flower arrangements.

Dried “pleurisy root”

Butterfly weed has many vernacular names and one of them—pleurisy root—refers to its medicinal use. Pleurisy is an inflammation of the lining around the lungs. A. tuberosa roots are the source of asclepiadin, which effective as an expectorant—it makes you cough—and reduction of inflammation. It greatly reduces the pain of the infection. The roots are powdered and a teaspoon is added to boiling water that is then drunk as a tea. It is often combined with angelica or sassafras to produce perspiration as well.

The part of the root used medicinally is spindle-shaped with a knotty crown. It is sold in a dried form in pieces one to six inches long. The taste is bitter and disagreeable.

So because it attractive to look at, easy to grow, attractive to wildlife, and medicinally useful, much of the information that you find on the internet about A. tuberosa is about how to grow it. Seeds can be sown in November, but better success is possible by cold stratifying the seeds in the spring. Sprinkle the seeds on one half of a moist paper towel and fold the other half over them. But the layered arrangement in a plastic bag and put it in the refrigerator for about a month. Sow the seeds after the final frost and they will germinate within a couple of days. You can also plant the seed indoors in the spring after cold stratification and then plant the seedlings outside.

Who Is This Joe Pye?

Joe-Pye weed has an identity crisis on a couple of fronts. First, its classification has recently changed from Eupatorium to Eutrochium. All the purple-flowered members of the old genus have been place in the new one. The purple-flowered species also have mostly whorled leaves, while those of Eupatorium are generally opposite.

Eutrochium maculatum

I have written about Joe-Pye weed before as an enthusiastic volunteer in our meadow garden. It, along with boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), were colonizers of the wetter portions of the side yard that we let go unmown until the first week of November each year. Now that I live in a different part of the village I see Joe-Pye and boneset growing together in the ditches everywhere.

Both have loose clusters of flowers—sort of a sloppy corymb–at the top of the plants and in some species sprouting from the stem joints. The plants tend to be about three feet tall, but they can be much taller. This year, perhaps because of the drought, the Joe-Pye weed seems to be done with flowering early; the blossoms are faded and ragged at the end of August. They are usually beautiful right into October.

The second identity crisis is the question of Joe Pye himself. Sometimes common names can have only tenuous connections to real people: what does Queen Anne have to do with Queen Anne’s lace? There has also been the suggestion that “Joe Pye” is a corruption of a native American word jopi or jopai for typhus, which a decoction of Eutrochium is said to have cured.

Eutrochium purpureum

In the case of Joe Pye there is an oft-repeated story that doesn’t seem to have any substance at all. In many places (that is, blogs and plant information sites), you will read of Joe Pye as a native American healer from Salem, Massachusetts, who saved colonists from an outbreak of typhus. It was said to induce sweating. This is interesting in that one of the symptoms of typhus is fever.

An excellent blog post by Richard Pearce at Praireworksinc.com, a site owned by a land stewardship and ecological restoration company, uncovered the likely true story of Joe Pye. Pearce identifies him as Shauquethqueat, a member of the Stockbridge “tribe” of western Massachusetts. Most of the surviving Algonquian people of New England took “Christian” names, at least in part because their own were so badly corrupted by the colonists. There were a lot of Pyes in the Stockbridge area, according to census records from the early 20th century. Shauquethqueat lived in the late 18th century and was a sachem for his people, which meant he probably did have knowledge of herbal medicine.

Goldenrod and late summer Joe-Pye weed

Pearce tracks down Shauquethqueat by following the earliest references to “Joe-pye weed” as a common name for various Eupatorium species. The first mention is in Amos Eaton’s Manual of Botany from 1818. In a revised edition of 1822 he adds a footnote that leads Pearce out into western Massachusetts; the president of Williams College reports curing himself of “an alarming fever” that Eaton implies was typhus-caused using a tea made from Joe-Pye weed.

Rationalist that he is, Pearce makes a tea from Eutrochium flowers that he buys in a story and finds that it does not induce a fever (but tastes delicious). He allows that his store-bought herbs may not be as efficacious as fresh ones, but does wonder whether Joe-Pye weed would really be effective against typhus. He cites a mortality rate of 10 to 20 percent for typhus. Typhus and typhoid fever are two different diseases, and he seems to be citing the dangers associated with the latter, which is said to kill 25 percent of victims without treatment. Typhus can kill up to 60 percent of its victims without treatment.

At any rate, Pearce makes a convincing case for the identity of Joe Pye, although its effectiveness as an herbal remedy is left in question.

Dahlias: the Plethora From Mexico

People in northern temperate climates will probably think twice about growing dahlias because you have to dig them up each fall, store the tubers carefully over the winter, and then plant them in the late spring when the ground temperature reaches 60 degrees. And yet dahlias are incredibly popular, with dahlia societies in major cities around the world.

Dahlia coccinea, a wild Mexican species

The origins of this cultivated plant are in the highlands of Mexico and Central America. It was important to the Aztecs and the Toltecs, who may have been responsible for spreading it southward through Central America into northern South America. Europeans first encountered it among the Aztecs, who may have been growing them to eat them and perhaps to use as medicine. The conquistadores brought along botanists who found the Aztecs to be growing what is now called the tree dahlia (Dahlia imperialis), which can get to be 20 feet tall and has hollow stems. It was called acocotli or “water cane”.

A portion of the medicinal lore of the Aztecs was preserved in the Badianus Manuscript written in 1552 by Juannes Badianus, an Aztec student in themselves Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in Mexico City. An illustration in this book shows a red, eight-petaled flower that resembles a plant later described as D. coccinea.

Later in the 16^th century Philip II of Spain sent Francisco Hernandez to Mexico to discover medicinal plants in Mexico. Hernandez produced Rerum Medicarum Novae Hispaniae, which includes illustrations of several apparent Dahlia species, including one that is a doubled-flower, suggesting it has been cultivated.

Dahlia pinnata, Mexico’s national flower

Jose Antonio Cavanilles, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Spain, was responsible for sending back to the Old World the first dahlia plant materials that could be grown. In 1789 he sent seeds back to Europe. By 1791 they had produced plants. He called them Dahlias after Swedish botanist Andres Dahl and called his first species, a doubled-flowered plant, D. pinnata. By 1796 he had named D. rosea and D. coccinea.

As successive generations of seeds are sown, an enormous variety of flowers is produced. These are given species names at first, but eventually it is realized that these are hybrids. Much later it will be discovered that dahlias are polyploids (octoploids in this case) with multiple sets of chromosome pairs in each cell. In addition, transposons, genes that readily migrated from chromosome to chromosome, are quite common in dahlias. These qualities allow for tremendous variation in each generation that is cultivated.

Over the years dahlias have been classified and reclassified. At one point the amount of variability in the group caused German botanists to begin an entirely new genus, Georgina, later shown to simply be more hybrid dahlias.

A so-called “cactus” dahlia

Much of the variation in the flower shapes is derived from reshaping of the petals. In some varieties they curve up and then down longitudinally; in others they curve down and then up; in yet others the petals roll up latitudinally. This sort of variation produces 14 groups of cultivars, many of them named for their resemblance to other flowers (e.g. peony, orchid, anemone, and waterlily) and some for their overall shape (e.g. pompon and ball).

Their enormous variety and many different colors (almost everything but blue) contribute to their popularity. In addition, they flower for months on end. Their origins in the Mexican highlands mean that they cannot make it through the winter if the frost penetrates more than 6 inches into the soil. Storing the tubers in the winter requires that they be kept cool and not too moist (a bit like some begonias or gladiolus).

They are sensitive to herbicides and fertilizers, so the soil they’re planted in shouldn’t be amended with potting soil. Dahlias prefer good old-fashioned dirt.

Fresh, Green, and Wintry

When I was a child hiking in the woods with my mother, she snapped off a twig of a cherry (or black) birch (Betula lenta), put it in her mouth and said, “Hmm, wintergreen.” I don’t actually remember where or when this happened, or even whether it was actually my mother who did it (although it was the sort of thing she would have learned at camp), but nonetheless I learned it, and eventually learned that yellow birch (B. alleghaniensis) twigs have the same flavor.

Gaultheria procumbens

I was probably not until I was in college that I actually saw true wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens), a small plant of the forest floor. Gaultheria is a calcifuge, that is it dislikes alkaline settings and is found in acidic soils, often beneath oaks. It is only 3 to 5 inches tall and spreads locally via rhizomes. Individual plants spring up from the rhizomes to bear three shiny dark green leaves and creamy “urn-shaped” flowers. The latter show are common among the ericads (Ericaceae or heath family). The leaves are evergreen, which most certainly accounts for its common name. The fruits are bright red and stay attached to the plant through the winter.

The odor that has become known as “wintergreen” is caused by a chemical called methyl salicylate. It is related to acetyl salicylate, more commonly known as aspirin. Both chemicals have analgesic properties in small doses, but are fatal if taken in larger doses. While 10 g of aspirin can kill an adult, it takes only 7 grams of wintergreen to do so. Wintergreen’s medicinal uses are largely, as with acetyl salicylate, to do with pain relief. It is, for example, an ingredient in Bengay.

Clark’s teaberry gum is wintergreen flavored

But wintergreen is probably more popularly known as a flavoring. It is used in toothpastes and chewing gums, in ice creams and candies. When mixed with sugar and dried it can build up an electric charge, which is released in the form of a spark when it is crushed. It is not an urban myth that sparks are visible when wintergreen Lifesavers are crushed in the dark.

In the past wintergreen oil was commercially produced by steam distillation of macerated leaves of G. procumbens. When the ericad proved difficult to procure in large amounts, birch twigs were also used. Yet another group of plants, the meadowsweets (Spiraea spp.) also harbor methyl salicylate and have been used as a source. If you simply sniff G. procumbens leaves, they don’t have a strong wintergreen odor. The odor (caused by the aromatic ring in methyl salicylate) is released through enzymatic action on a chemical called gaultherin. The leaves are fermented before being distilled in order to maximize the amount of methyl salicylate in the oil; it is as much as 99 percent of the oil.

Modern manufacturing now creates wintergreen oil esterifying salicylic acid and methanol. But it is still produced from botanical sources for the essential oil market.

Chopped yellow birch twigs

The birches are a more abundant source of wintergreen. B. lenta is not a large tree, but it is still a tree rather than a creeping herbaceous ground cover, and it is often a very common member of the mid canopy of the eastern deciduous forest. It is a smaller member of the northern hardwood community. B. alleghaniensis is a larger tree (and also part of the northern hardwood community) and generally not as common or widespread as B. lenta.

I learned to call B. lenta “cherry birch” first because of its resemblance to the Prunus species like black or choke cherry. When these trees are young their bark is smooth and dark, broken up by horizontal ellipses (lenticels). Their leaves are all oval and toothed. Other names for B. lenta include black birch, sweet birch, or spice birch. In addition to being the commercial source for wintergreen before the chemists took over, B. lenta also produces a sweet sap that can be cooked down like maple sap to produce a molasses-like syrup, although it takes three times as much sap compared to a maple.

The sap can also be distilled to make a birch oil, which is the flavoring for birch beer, a carbonated beverage that was once popular and can still be found in the rural areas of the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada.

 

Food and Medicine That Tastes of Lemon

Anybody who likes Thai cuisine likes lemon grass, as it is present in half the menu items of most restaurants from the soups and appetizers straight through the entrées. Many vernacular names are misleading, but lemon grass actually is a grass and it does smell and taste like lemons.

Lemon grass

The genus Cymbopogon is distributed from southern Asia and its adjacent islands over into Africa. The source of most culinary lemongrass is C. citratus, which is grown in Southeast and South Asia (but is native to southern India and Sri Lanka). It is hardy and evergreen in USDA Zones 10 and 11, but the roots may survive and re-sprout to Zone 8. It is a clump grass and grows to be between 2 and 4 feet tall.

As a kitchen item it can be purchased both fresh and in powdered form. The fresh plants resemble scallions and are used in much the same way. If the plants are fresh enough, you can even put them in a vase and get them to root and then start your own patch of lemongrass. It prefers full sun. It is not only useful for culinary purposes, but it also quite attractive as an ornamental planting.

Citral, an essential oil, gives lemon grass its lemony scent and taste. It is a mixture of two terpenoids (geranial and neral) and has strong antimicrobial qualities and pheromonal effects in insects (it seems to attract bees, but repel other insects). These qualities give not only culinary but also medicinal purposes.

Cymbopogon nardus or citronella grass is grown as a source for citronella oil, which is used in soaps, candles, and insect-repellent sprays. It is thought to be native to Indonesia, but is grown widely in tropical Asia. It is used as a companion plant to tomatoes and broccoli because it wards of insects. It spreads vegetatively by its roots though, and can take over a garden unless confined in some way.

Lemon grass leaves and oil are both used as medicine for a variety of complaints, including anything to do with the digestive tract, aching joints, and headaches. None of these have been verified scientifically.

Lemon grass bulbs

In addition to being used as a spice, lemon grass is also used to make tea in many cultures (Asian and in the tropical New World). While this tea is purported to be medicinal (e.g. reduces anxiety), that has not be verified.

But most people will be interested in growing it for use in the kitchen, and that is (if various websites can be believed) not that difficult. Not surprisingly, a plant that contains an oil that repels insects is not bothered by many pests, but it can succumb to spider mites when it is being kept indoors over the winter. The latter strategy is necessary in any area that experiences a frost. In a colder climate you can bring the plants indoors in the winter, trim them down to just a few inches tall, put them in small pots and stick them in a sunny window, keeping them barely moist to slow their growth.

Potted lemon grass

In the warmer months you can put them in large (>12-inch diameter) pots or tubs. They can be harvested as soon as they get to be 12 inches tall. You can separate the plants you want from a clump, making sure to get the entire bulb at the bottom and even a few roots.

The heart of the bulb has the consistency of butter. This is the most flavorful part and is the best for cooking. (The leaves and the rest of the plant can be used to make teas and to flavor soups and stews.) You can mince or purée the inner part of the stalk base and freeze it, breaking off small pieces as needed.

Mary’s Gold

When I was a kid we planted a lot of marigolds in our vegetable garden. The smell of the plants was so strong that it was easy to believe that they would keep away insect pests and nematodes. The marigolds were acting as a companion plant to members of the Solanaceae—tomato, eggplant, potato—tobacco, and chile peppers. Something that I didn’t hear as a kid was that they should not be planted next to legumes, as their roots secrete thiophenes, which kills the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the legume roots.

Calendula officinalis

More recently I have been told that marigold is important in herbal medicine, mostly applied topically to reduce inflammation brought on by various causes, include radiation therapy for breast cancer. But this marigold is a different one from the one that is so useful in gardens. The important herbal marigold is Calendula, particularly C. officionalis, while the insect repeller is Tagetes, often T. patula (“French” marigolds) in our garden.

The name “marigold” is applied to many members of the Asteraceae—the genera Calendula and Tagetes are both members of this family—but it is also applied as a vernacular name to plants like the marsh marigold, which is a member of the Ranunculaceae (buttercup) family (but has flowers that resemble those of T. tenufolia). This vernacular name is an elision of “Mary’s gold,” with Mary of course referring to the Virgin Mary. The original connection to the mother of God is not recorded, but the name appears to date from the 12^th century, when it was applied to Calendula, which is native to the Mediterranean region of Europe.

Tagetes patula “Bonanza Yellow”

Both Calendula and Tagetes, many species of which are native to Central and South America, are annuals. At least the most frequently cultivated and hybridized species are annuals; perennial species exist and are gaining popularity of late in horticultural circles. While perennials tend to bloom during a short period of time each year, annuals tend to have a much longer flowering period. In the climate of western Europe Calendula flowers almost year round and therefore manages to be in bloom for nearly every festival to the Virgin Mary from the Feast of the Annunciation in February, when the last blossoms of the previous year cling to old plants in southern Europe, to the Immaculate Conception in December. This is also has the genus got its Latin name; it is in flower on nearly every calends (first day of the month) through the year.

C. officinalis is a typical looking aster with small disc flowers at the center of the blossom and prominent oval ray flowers radiating out from the central disc. This arrangement and the golden color of the petals evoked the common depiction of the Virgin Mary, with golden rays of light streaming out from her head.

It is perhaps not coincidental that this was a plant already prominent in herb lore because of its ability to speed the healing of wounds and reduce skin inflammations. This would appear to be part of a wider phenomenon of pagan culture being incorporated into the Christian tradition as the latter displaced the former in peasant culture throughout Europe during the Middle Ages.

Tagetes essential oil from T. minuta

The marigold flowers are pulverized and suspended in oils and made into a tincture and applied directly to the skin to treat wounds and rashes. This application is somewhat accepted by Western medicine, but taking C. officinalis internally to easy stomach cramps and constipation is greeted less enthusiastically but not entirely dismissed. The important ingredient would appear to be flavonoids, which are present in high concentration in Calendula. These anti-oxidants are known to protect the body from unstable molecules (free radicals), viruses, and bacteria.

Tagetes have oil glands in the leaves and the plants have a strong odor. The main components of this oil are limonene, ocimene, tagetone, and valeric acid. In addition to its use as a companion plant, Tagetes species are also used in herbal medicine as as an antibiotic, antimicrobial, anti-parasitic, antiseptic, anti-spasmodic, disinfectant, insecticide, and sedative substance. All parts of the plant are steam distilled to yield an essential oil called “tagetes oil.”

Thinner From Trees

While there is such thing as a turpentine or terebinth tree (Pistacia terebinthus, a relative of the pistachio), most turpentine in this country is collected from southern pines, often the longleaf (Pinus palustris) and loblolly (P. taeda) pines, and western species like ponderosa (P. ponderosa) and Jeffrey (P. jeffreyi) pines. Specialized turps with shorter lists of organic molecules are derived from other species.

Pure gum spirits

The word “turpentine” is ultimately derived from the Greek terebinthine. The tree is native to the entire Mediterranean basin and has been a source of turpentine since the era of the Old Testament, where it is mentioned. The entire plant, which is a large shrub or small tree, gives off a pungent, medicinal odor.

Historically the oleoresin of pines was harvested by stripping the bark off several feet of the trunks and then cutting into the sapwood with a series of chevrons. The exuded liquid is collected in a V-shaped trough attached parallel to the freshest incision. It drains on an angle into a bucket.

The oleoresin is added to a distiller and the turpentine is drawn from the portion that is boiled off and collected by the condenser.

Harvesting oleoresin from pines.

A more modern and mass-intensive method for turpentine production involves destructive distillation or “cracking.” In this process the wood is heated to over 400°F, which drives off the volatile organics, also breaking them down into smaller molecules (pyrolysis). The non-volatile carbon molecules become charcoal, activated charcoal or methanol. During the production of turpentine the solid substance left behind is called rosin.

The turpentine, rosin and other derivatives produced from living trees are referred to as “gum naval stores.” Those derived from the pulping of the wood and destructive distillation are called “sulfate or wood naval stores.”

Most people are probably familiar with turpentine for its use as a oil paint or varnish thinner. It is also used to clean up equipment, brushes and your hands after working with paint or varnish. In actuality, most turpentine that is manufactured is turned into a source of other products. Pine oil—which gives Pinesol and other similar cleaning products their “pine smell”—is one such product. Other fragrance or flavor products include camphor and menthol.

Turpentine making

The starting molecules in the tree itself are terpenes, a type of aromatic hydrocarbon (molecules with alternating double and single bonds in rings). Different terpenes are found in various plants. They are constituents of the “essential oils” associated with these species, which are the source of many fragrances and flavors. The aroma of hops (and beer) is caused by a terpene.

Turpentine is toxic to drink or even inhale in large quantities, but turpentine oil in small quantities are used in alternative medical treatments. Turpentine oil is applied to the skin for joint pain, muscle pain, nerve pain, and toothaches. People sometimes breathe in (inhale) the vapors of turpentine oil to reduce the chest congestion that goes along with some lung diseases. Even small quantities should never been taken orally.

According to Jeanne Rose, a Yahoo Network contributor: “Turpentine is also used as a treatment for lice in some cases, if applied externally on the affected area. Although turpentine is toxic to ingest, there is no direct harm if applied to certain areas of the skin. We do not commonly use turpentine as a treatment for lice today but it still is effective and might be an ingredient in some lice treatment medications you use. Turpentine was often used in the ancient times as a remedy for just about anything, but since it can be harmful if ingested we have limited the medicinal uses of turpentine.”

Although the advent of paint thinner may have diminished the use of turpentine as a paint and varnish solvent, it has been used for a wide variety of purposes for decades. Witness the list of Warren C. Ward of the U.S. Agriculture Forest Service who found 50 uses for it in 1930.

Nostalgia Redux For Rhubarb

Rhubarb stalks and leaves

When in a recent Facebook post a friend touted the curative properties of rhubarb I was immediately seized by the twin emotions of mild revulsion and gentle nostalgia. Revulsion because I have never really liked the taste of rhubarb and felt that it was simply the ingredient that ruined a perfectly good strawberry pie. Nostalgia because I associate the plant with the part of my youth that I spent in New Hampshire.

As an experiment I typed “rhubarb” and “nostalgia” into my search engine. Sure enough, I was not the only one who saw Rheum rhabarbum through sepia-toned glasses. Joe Bonwich of the Cleveland Plain Dealer quotes Sam Wiseman: “It’s such an old-fashioned crop. A lot of people remember it from their youth, seeing their grandmothers grow it in the garden.”

A blogger at Chicago Now named Julie is more ambivalent about the purple-stalked plant, but at some point admits: “I have a vague recollection of a childhood strawberry-rhubarb pie that has attained a mythical status in my mind.” She then goes on to describe how much she dislikes the taste of it and how her chemist husband puzzles over the fact that the stem are edible and the leaves are poisonous.

Although through the 20^th century in the United States, rhubarb steadily became increasingly the province of pie-baking grandmothers, it was once a very sought after vegetable. It is native to temperate Asia and was much used by the Chinese for its medicinal properties. According to Chicago Now’s Julie, Chinese rhubarb was regarded as three times more valuable than opium in the 19th century.

Rhubarb roots

It is the roots of R. rhabarbum that have the laxative properties so prized in pre-modern medicine, East and West, with its fixation on purging things from the body. The active ingredients are anthraquinones, which were subsequently occasionally isolated to serve as dieting aids.

The leaves, as has been noted, are poisonous, although not likely to be deadly. The Chicago Now blogger reports that one would have to consume about 5 kg of the leaves to reach the LD₅₀ level (quantity at which half the rats in an experiment perish) of oxalic acid in the typical leaf. She notes though that anthraquinone glycoside is thought to be present in the leaves as well, adding to their toxicity.

Rhubarb grows best where the average summer temperature is below 75°F and the average winter temperature is below 40°F, which is to say a cool temperate climate. Little wonder then, that the Greeks learned about it from the Scythians, who were living in the Ukraine a few thousand years before the birth of Christ. The very name is derived from Greek, where rha refers to both the plant and to Volga River. The -barb part of the word comes from the trivial part of the binomial barbarum, which is the plural of the word barba, the Greek word for “beard” (code among Greeks for “uncouth person”).

I don’t know if this refers to the Scythians who, unlike the Greeks, were bearded or is some sort of fanciful reference to the form of the inflorescences, which consist of large yellowish bundles of tiny blossoms arranged in a rough panicle shooting up well above the leaves.

Rhubarb flowers in the UK.

Come to think of it, there must have been precious few places where rhubarb could have been cultivated successfully on the Greek peninsula. Perhaps there are places in the mountains where the Mediterranean balminess is sufficiently far below. Like many aspects of the Classical world, rhubarb was lost and found again through other avenues. It came into Europe through the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century and through Modern time spread across Europe up into the British Isles, where it remains popular among a small, but devoted following.

In early 19th century it was planted in Maine and Massachusetts and spread west with New Englanders fleeing the crummy farmland and short growing seasons of the northeastern U.S. It continues to grow in New England, but does not to my knowledge become invasive like, say, daylilies, which spread out of front yards and along the roadsides of the northeast in dense stands. In contrast, rhubarb seems to remain in its corner of the vegetable garden, one of the first things to green up year after year.

With the advent of foodie culture, these persistent stands of R. rhabarbarum may be getting harvested once again, occasionally as the Facebook post attests, for its medicinal properties, but more often for its tarty buttery flavor, brought under control with judicious amounts of sugar in compotes, jams, pickles, and, of course, pies.

Flowers Without Foliage

Colchicum sp.

The genus Colchicum gets its name from an early kingdom (sixth to first century B.C.) of what is now western Georgia along the east end of the Black Sea. Colchis was home of Medea and a destination of Jason and the Argonauts. The old kingdom represents the eastern boundary of the geographic distribution of Colchis autumnale, which receives its scientific binomial in 1753 from Linneaus himself.

Most Americans know the plant as the “autumn crocus” for its crocus-like flowers and odd habit of sending up a flower from the tuber-like corm between August and November and then sending the leaves up later. Many members of the Colchicaceae family have this habit. To make matters somewhat confusing some actual crocus species flower in the fall as well. (Furthermore some Colchicum species send up leaves in the spring and flower in the fall, and some flower and send up leaves and flowers at the same time.) The Crocus and Colchicum are quite unrelated, however; real croci are members of the order Aspargales, while Colchicaceae is in the order Liliales. It is a reasonably good example of convergent evolution; two unrelated taxa develop similar appearances.

Colchicum foliage with seed pods at the center.

It is perhaps not coincidental that Medea is usually represented as a sorceress, helping Jason to kill various monsters and people with her potions, and the leaves, seeds and corms of Colchicum are laced with the alkaloid colchicine, which at higher dosages is poisonous, but has been used in folk and modern medicine to treat a variety of ailments, including gout. It has even been investigated as an anti-cancer drug (but what hasn’t?).

Another fascinating use of colchicine is in the production of new plant varieties. Prof. T. Ombrello of Union County Community College in New Jersey writes:

Another major use of colchicine is based on the chemical’s effect on cell division in animals and plants. It interrupts the cell division process of mitosis, and as a result some treated cells become polyploids (having some multiple of their normal compliment of genetic information). Plant breeders have found this to be particularly useful in the development of new cultivated varieties of plants. Numerous plants available to the consumer today are the result of colchicine treatments to induce polyploidy. Interestingly enough, the polyploid inducing and anti-inflammatory effects of colchicine may have a common denominator: the chemical’s disruption of a cellular component called the microtubules.

Colchicum‘s beauty and exotic, leafless appearance has contributed to its long-lasting popularity as an ornamental. There are many, many cultivars of C. autumnale alone, but only a few other species out the 45 in the genus – C. speciosum, C. album, C. corsicum and C. agrippinum – have attracted horticulturalists. There are about 15 genera in the family, which distributed through Europe into west Asia and then down through eastern Africa to the Cape of Good Hope. (According to the USDA, over the years C. autumnale has been naturalized in a few areas in the U.S. and Canada.)

Colchicum in the lawn

Growing Colchicum from corms is apparently very easy as long as they are planted in well-drained areas in dappled shade (under large trees with high canopies). They can forced by simply leaving them on the windowsill. Growing them from seed, however, requires soaking them for a few days prior to sowing them, and they should scattered in a grit mixture. One horticulturalist recommended sowing C. speciosum seeds in a pots in a cold frame, predicting that they may take as long as 18 months to germinate (they require a summer drought and a winter cooling period). Once these seedlings have germinated they make take three to six years to send up their first flowers.

I have seen isolated bunches of Colchicum planted and found them to be startlingly beautiful because they are such are surprise at this time of the year and because they are often under over hanging branches, which adds to a sense of mystery. However, professionals recommend planting hundreds or thousands of them in wide drifts across open areas under large trees (your classic “park-like setting’ a la Olmsted). The petals of the flowers are translucent, so on a bright autumn day the ground can appear to be glowing with lavender light.

The Old Roadside Elegance

Hemerocallis fulva is the botanical name given to it by Carolus Linnaeus himself. It was already a common European garden perennial in his day, the 18^th century. It was even already well established in colonial North America at the time. It was brought over by the earliest settlers because it could survive the journey by sea and wagon cart to a new location, and once planted it grew with little care, and spread quickly. I am talking about the daylily, the orange variety that grows along roadsides all over North America. Anyone can be forgiven for thinking that it is a native plant.

Hemerocallis fulva on North Cayuga Street, Ithaca

I associate H. fulva with New Hampshire. In childhood I saw the naturalized ones growing along the roadsides there, but did not see them in the 1960s on the north shore of Long Island. In hindsight I suspect that the old-fashioned H. fulva had long since been replaced by more recent cultivars everywhere on Long Island. But in New Hampshire the old species, or something close to it, spread out of perennial beds and along the ditches hundreds of years ago.

H. fulva is an upland species native to the Caucasus through the Himalaya to China and Korea. They were widely known in Asian cultures as both edible and medicinal. In 1576 de Lobel published in the Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia a picture of the yellow daylily, H. lilioasphodelus, under the name of Lilioasphodelus luteus liliflorus; in addition he also described H. fulva for the first time under the name Lirioasphodelus phoeniceus, and the first picture of H. fulva was presented.

Hemerocallis fulva at the Cayuga Nature Center

Until the 19^th century only wild types were cultivated, but by the end of the century four cultivars had been produced from H. lilioasphodelus. It was not until A.B. Stout of the New York Botanical Garden turned his attention to the daylilies that H. fulva received attention.

In my own opinion it was all downhill from there. While Hemerocallis cultivars are wildly popular, I have never seen one that I found attractive. Many different color flowers have been developed, as well as doubled varieties, varieties with ruffled or ribbed petals. They are almost all incredibly gaudy.

The naturalized H. fulva, or tawny daylily, has a simpicity and elegance that is unmatched. The leaves are long – easily 18 inches in many cases – and lanceolate, arcing up from the crown just below the grounds surface and then drooping downward. The scapes – the flower stems – rise from the crown up to 4 feet, but usually around 3 feet high and are a slightly lighter green than the leaves. The scapes invariable bend slightly under their own weight, always toward the greatest light and are multiply branched. In the slightest breeze they quiver. A passing car will send a ripple of motion down a long roadside stand, leaving the flowers bobbing gently; they are hardly ever perfectly still.

Full flower, unopened buds, and spent blossoms

True to their name (hemero “day” and callis “beauty”) individual blossom last only one day. One of the poignant charms of a large healthy clump is to see the flowers in full bloom, the unopened tubular buds show varying amounts of orange blush, and the withered yellow to brown spent flowers … all side by side. You feel that you are looking at human life itself, it’s early unfufilled promise, its beautiful but often brief realization of that promise, and its inevitable passing.

The plants spread vegetatively and develop extensive, dense clumps quite rapidly. A large clump sends up dozens of multi-branched scapes, so that it can continue blooming for several weeks, although from day to day it is never the same flowers. It is possible that subconsciously we can detect the daily evolution of the relative positions of the flowers as different flowers burst into full bloom, making it hold our interest day after day for reasons we can’t quite put our finger on.