Rosebay Willow Herb
At the beginning of the growing season I planted up containers
for myself and my sister in law. This has turned out to be a bit of an
experiment in plant car over the last two months. As hers flourished and gave colour to her
patio, ours have more or less withered and died back. I’d like to say that this
is because I gave her all of my best annual bedding plants but there’s probably
more to it than that. Her pots are watered regularly. She deadheads them often
and gives them a bit of a feed now and again. I do none of the aforementioned
as mine are more than three feet from the back door.
I have noticed a bit of an imbalance with how my vegetables
are growing this year and it’s all down to feeding the soil and mulching. In
areas close to the compost bins where the broccoli and beans are planted,
things are doing really well. Further away from the compost bins it’s not the
same story though as the luffas and kale struggle for nutrition. I think I have
the reason. It is because when I emptied the compost bins in spring I just
tipped them over and spread out the contents over the areas very close to the
bins.
It was very lazy on my part I admit, but my excuse is that the air came
out of my wheelbarrow tyre so I couldn’t move the compost around the garden as
easily. I could give a list of other excuses too but they are all as
implausible, I was just lazy and like in most things in life, you get back what
you put in. I’ll be mulching everywhere next year with manure, seaweed and
compost to get things back on track.
Rosebay Willow Herb
When I was a lad I spent a lot of time in the back of cars
with a bottle of pop and bag of crisps in car parks. I know teenagers do this
voluntarily but I did it because my parents were in the pub. Because of this
there are three plants that I look back on with a bit of nostalgia,
honeysuckle, and bindweed are two of them as I used to pick them for something
to do before it got dark in the car park. The third plant was the rosebay
willowherb. One of the car parks was next to waste ground where the plants love
to grow.
Rosebay willowherb, Chamerion angustifolium (also known as
Epilobium angustifolium) is a widespread perennial plant and loves embankments,
rocky places, mountain scree and open woodland.
The tall plant with small pink flowers is also known as
Fireweed, particularly in North America, this name reflects the plant’s
appearance following forest fires and other events which leave the earth
scorched.It’s also called Bombweed because the plant quickly populated derelict
bomb sites in the World Wars.
Rosebay willowherb flowers from June to September. Long seed
pods form containing masses of hairy/fluffy seeds which are carried on the
wind. There can be around 80,000 seeds per plant and some of these have been
known to travel 100km.
The plant likes cleared woodland and early stages of
coppicing but growth and flowering become restricted as the tree canopy
develops again. In reclaimed bogs in Ireland it is an important early colonizer
but disappears as the vegetation matures.
Rosebay willowherb tolerates shade and a broad range of
climatic conditions and seems to thrive in both acid and alkaline soils.
Rosebay Willowherb Uses
The plant has been used for a lot of things over the year,
from entertaining me as a child to natural cordage to fire-lighting to clothing
to edible roots, shoots, leaves and flowers as well as numerous medicinal
applications, some of which are still being investigated.
One use which was familiar to North American First Nations
as well as to Kamchatkan reindeer herders, was consuming the pith from inside
the stems – raw, cooked or fermented.
The most popular part of the plant is the inner section of
the mature stem, called the pith. The pith falls somewhere between cucumber and
unripe cantaloupe both in terms of texture and taste.
It has some sweetness to
it but sometimes also a slightly hot, peppery aftertaste. When collected up,
the pith becomes more gelatinous and slimy and browns quite quickly, so it’s
best eaten fresh.
The collected pith can be added to soups and broths both to
thicken them and add extra carbohydrate content. It can also add a little
flavour to otherwise bland concoctions.
Taking the pith from Fireweed is something which is easy to
do, just peel back the stem.
Other parts can be used too. The young shoots in spring are
absolutely delicious blanched the growing tips dried as green tea.
The raw baby
plants can be used raw in sandwiches too.
Rosebay willowherb is one of the more useful wilderness
plants but as always test a small bit first before cooking it up for the
family.
