Botany, Miss Spooner?

"What makes you think I would be interested in something so tedious as botany?"

While I wouldn't go so far as to declare myself interested in botany, exactly, I have found that poking through Jenny's book on British flora is a great deal more enjoyable than I might have expected. She started keeping a notebook of common British plants a while back, since most of her stories take place in Britain, but it was not until I reread The Eagle of the Ninth last month that I realized how shockingly little I know about the details of the British landscape. So I started my own notebook, sketching plants and writing down their basic information. I haven't gotten very far (right now ships' rigging, cannon balls, and the names of all the ships in the British Navy around 1803 are more in my line of research), but here are the plants I have completed pages on so far.

Gorse (Ulex europaeus): Also known as "furze" or "whin." An evergreen shrub; grows 7-10 feet tall; covered in long spines. Flowers are yellow and pea-like, clustered on stems 2-6 ft tall; blooms March-May (primarily). Extremely common on heath and grows throughout Britain. Falling into it is not advised.


Purple Heather (Erica cinerea): Also known as "Fine-leaved Heath" and "Bell Heather." Low-growing shrub, leaves growing three-in-a-whorl. Flowers are purple, rarely white, and bell-shaped; blooms July-August. Grows on heath; extremely common. Used as ornamental flower.

Broom (Cytisus scoparius): Also known as "Common Broom," "Scotch Broom," and "English Broom." Deciduous shrub growing 3-9 feet tall, leaves silky. Covered in spring and summer with yellow flowers, sometimes blotched with red; blooms May-June. Seed pods are black and mature in late summer, opening with an audible crack. Grows on heaths in sun and dry, sandy soil. Hardy; withstands temperatures as low as -25 degrees Celsius.

Spear Thistle (Cirsium vulgare): Also known as "Scotch thistle," "Bull thistle," "Plumed thistle," and "Roadside thistle." Biennial/annual plant growing up to 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide; stems have vertical, spiny wings. Thrives in light, well-drained, sandy/stony ground. Flowers are deep pink to lavender, blooming July-September. Uses: receptacles are edible and were once eaten like artichokes; oil from seeds used in cooking; hairs on stem used for stuffing pillows.

Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris): Also known as "Kingcup," "Mayflower," "May Blobs," "Mollyblobs," "Pollyblobs," "Horse Blob," "Water Blob," "Water Bubbles," "Gollins," and "The Publican." Grows 2-3 feet tall; leaves are kidney-shaped, with waxy texture. Flowers are bright yellow, blooming March-April. Grows in marshes, woodland, fens, and ditches; rare on peat. Thrives in partial shade. Poisonous.


Red Campion (Silene dioica): Grows ~3 feet tall; hairy, sticky leaves and stalks. Flowers are dark pink to red and bloom May-October. Grows in woodlands and rocky slopes, particularly damp soil. The crushed seeds have been used to cure snake bites.

White Campion (Silene latifolia): Hairy plant growing 2.5-3 feet tall. Flowers are white, blooming May-September. Grows in open habitats such as fields and wastelands. Also called "Grave Flower," because it grows in cemeteries.


Cichory (Cichorium intybus): Also called "Succory," "Blue Sailors," "Coffeeweed." Grows ~3 feet tall; stems tough and branched. Flowers are blue, lavender, and occasionally white, blooming July-October. Grows in fields and by roadsides in chalky, sandy soil. Uses: Leaves are edible, cultivated for livestock.

Black Horehound (Ballota nigra, sp. foetida): Hairy/fuzzy plant with strong smell, grows up to 3 feet. Grows in hedge banks, wasteground - England, Wales, local in Scotland and Ireland. Flowers are pale purple, blooming June-September. Uses: medicinal - expectorant and astringent; used to cure motion sickness, prevent spasms, and as a sedative to prevent hysteria.

Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis): Also called "Red Pimpernel," "Red Chickweed," "Poorman's Barometer," "Poor Man's Weather-glass," "Shepherd's Weather-glass," "Shepherd's Clock." Ground plant, stems grow up to 50 cm. Flowers are usually scarlet and sometimes orange; rarely blue. Blooms June-September. Grows in cultivated- and waste-land, prefers sandy soil.

Lesser Wintergreen (Pyrola minor): Most common species of Wintergreen in Britain. Also called "Common Wintergreen," "Snowline Wintergreen." Low-growing, but with tall stalks; grows in woods, moors, dunes, mostly in Northern Britain. Flowers are pink and bloom June-August.

Accents

My latest completed novel (read, not written) is Richard D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone, a romance set in Exmoor, England, during the late 1600's. I have long been aware of the variety of accents contained in Britain - think Henry Higgins - but I don't believe I have ever read a novel with such untranslatable written accents as Lorna Doone. Fortunately the main characters are not given accents, but for the lesser characters, Blackmore renders their ways of speaking phonetically; and when one of the good men of Exmoor relates a fairly important (and fairly lengthy) story about highwayman Tom Faggus, I could not understand one fourth of what he was saying.

But for all that, I found it to Blackmore's credit that he went to all that trouble to accurately portray the speech of country folk in the regions covered in Lorna Doone. While many people think that a British accent means dropping one's h's in Cockney style, in reality the whole of Britain is covered by different "dialects," which can vary even between two towns in the same county. Some are less noticeable than others, but the interesting thing about watching an excessive amount of British television is that, after awhile, you begin to notice different accents among the actors. These are often masked by voice training; for example, Colin Morgan, who plays Merlin in the BBC series 'Merlin', is Irish, but hides his accent in the series so that it only slips out on rare occasions.

Another book that uses British dialects, but less overwhelmingly, is Burnett's The Secret Garden. Taking place in Yorkshire, Burnett brings in the Broad Yorkshire speech of the working class, which has the two-pronged effect of grounding the reader in the location and portraying the different levels of society. These are even more clearly shown in the 2004 British TV serial "North & South," based on Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South. Whether it was intentional or not, I found it interesting that the change from the rural, slow-moving, peaceful South to the fast and industrial North is reflected in the different ways of speaking between the Hales (who have moved up from the South) and the Thorntons (a very Northern family). Daniela Denby-Ashe, who plays main character Margaret Hale, has a very soft and "round" voice, whereas Richard Armitage, who plays Mr. Thornton, speaks through his nose and with his jaw set, giving him a harsh tone. The series also differentiates between the workers and the masters of the cotton mills, for among the workers, the dialect of the region is much more pronounced than among the higher-class "masters."

Accents must be used with more caution in writing than in film, since phonetically-rendered speech can be cluttered and confusing, rendering the dialogue unintelligible. However, they are exceedingly useful and interesting when done well and deserve at least a passing acquaintance, as some knowledge of the dialects of different regions, whether British or not, bring depth and accuracy to writing.