If you are considering ferns as weeds looks no further than bracken. Not only is it carcinogenic but also Allelopathic. I would hate to have a hill side of them to clear.



This description is worth a read, and the Japanese actually eat it!

The curling fern that seems to spreading like a bad, green rash across moor and heath at an alarming rate is not only spoiling the countryside, but harbours a tick that passes lyme disease to humans, causes poisoning in cattle, horses, sheep and people and its spores are one of the latest cancer suspects.

This botanical pest is considered something of a delicacy in some parts of the world. The Japanese, for instance, often dine on the young bracken sprouts known as fiddleheads (pictured) and it is considered a treat in some areas of Canada and the US too. The trouble is, bracken, while edible, is also highly toxic - especially the fiddleheads - and has been causing bellyache for farmers for centuries where unwary ruminants might graze on the succulent curling shoots.

Bracken poisoning causes depression of bone-marrow activity which leads to severe leukopenia - a form of white blood cell anaemia, - thrombocytopenia - an abnormally low blood platelet count - and hemorrhagic syndrome. In addition, the uncooked plant contains the enzyme thiaminase, which can destroy thiamine (vitamin B1) and cause a possibly fatal disease similar to beri-beri in non-ruminants such as horses.

Not very pleasant. But, in addition to nasty effects on the blood Pteridium aquilinum was also found - in 1960 - to be highly carcinogenic causing polyp-type bladder and intestinal tumours in grazing animals who ate large amounts of bracken or were fed bracken-containing fodder. The carcinogenicity of bracken was demonstrated definitively using lab rats, a result that was later reproduced by several research groups.

It also sends out toxins to inhibit competing plant growth.

jeez thanks for that Squire

Squire wrote:

If you are considering ferns as weeds looks no further than bracken.

A weed is a plant growing in the wrong place. So a geranium growing in your tulip bed is technically a weed.

The ticks are skirtauns (spelled phonetically), I assume it's Irish for tick. But you can get them from any plant in summer. Horseflies also love hiding in bracken. Wear gloves if your pulling up bracken as the fibres in the stalks can give you a nasty cut.

Auditor #9, I don't think either of your Bluebells are actually Bluebells. And I'm not sure about your thistle either.

The Blue bells one lot look like hare bells (Campanula rotundifolia) the other like a variety of vetch.

On blue bells there are two types the Spanish Bluebell which is an introduced species and not as delicate as the European Bluebell. Bluebells are a woodland undercover plant and that is why they flower in spring, nice and early before the leaves from the trees blocks out the sunlight, Beautiful in the woods here in spring, one of my favorite plants.

fuchsia is commonly mispelled as fuschia ( by me, as well as others)

cactus flower wrote:

fuchsia is commonly mispelled as fuschia ( by me, as well as others)

Oh, and me I think.

Fuchsia is commonly mispronounced too.
The normal (wrong) way people pronounce it is the same way it's commonly mis-spelled , ie. fuschia.
It should really be pronounced fuck-see-ah or something like that.
Maybe that's why it's mispronounced so often.

AfricanDave wrote:

Fuchsia is commonly mispronounced too.
The normal (wrong) way people pronounce it is the same way it's commonly mis-spelled , ie. fuschia.
It should really be pronounced fuck-see-ah or something like that.
Maybe that's why it's mispronounced so often.

Oh would you ever fuschoff.

I haven't seen a good pic of sorrel yet. There's none in north Dublin. I know there's buckets of it in Meath. Lovely edible sour leaf. We used to call them sour bellies.

Oooh I have loads of sour bellies in my garden.
I'll try to take some pictures but there's no guarantees.

AfricanDave wrote:

Oooh I have loads of sour bellies in my garden.
I'll try to take some pictures but there's no guarantees.

Best effort will suffice AD

The formerly unidentified weed now known as...



Meadowsweet

An importatnt plant. It contains lots of salicylic acid. Felix Hoffmann and Bayer AG developed Aspirin from it in 1897. The brand name Aspirin came from it's old botanical name Spirea Ulmaria. It's now called Filipendula Ulmaria. In herbal medicine, chewing the root was used to relieve headache. And now we know why.

Lestat wrote:

The formerly unidentified weed now known as...
Meadowsweet

An importatnt plant. It contains lots of salicylic acid. Felix Hoffmann and Bayer AG developed Aspirin from it in 1897. The brand name Aspirin came from it's old botanical name Spirea Ulmaria. It's now called Filipendula Ulmaria. In herbal medicine, chewing the root was used to relieve headache. And now we know why.

That's very interesting Lestat - and useful. I'm sure I've woken up in fields after a good night, unconsciously trying to chew on those roots like a character out of Beckett. There must be a fair amount of medicines out of plants all the same that we're even still missing.

Here are a few from Clare again

Purple daisies


Fuscia-type orange rush flowers


A white bluebell from the Burren. (very rare)


A thistle and a bee with a red arse.

What camera were you using Auditor?

Are you impressed or not johnfás? The second two were taken in poor misty conditions next to the Poulnabrone Dolmen in North Clare. So - what do you think? Be honest - I won't die.

It is montbrecia. Crocosmia is similar but a bit larger and flowers are closer to red than orange.

In Conamara the Montbrecia is called "An Giolcach Spáinneach" (The Spainish reed) I`ve heard it said that the reason was that it was introduced to the country by trade with Spain. The story goes that it was used to cushion wine bottles in crates coming from Espana and was then disregarded when the crates were opened.

anmajornarthainig I like that tale about the use of flowers for padding - they have to have a use other than to eat or get medicine. The spanish landed in clare years ago or crashed there as you probably know better than me and I took that photo in a ditch near Spanish Point (Rinn na Spáineach) in Co. Clare.

johnfas i'm using a sony ericsson w810i phone which is pictured on the first post of this thread. It's good enough at the moment but I'll get a bigger MP one soon. The phone has 2 MP but the resolution is shite at a distance if you are trying to make out figures inside hotel windows or in parked cars or on beaches - very disappointing as you have to get up closer which can be dangerous depending on the wildlife you're trying to catch on camera.

Speaking of all that, I came across an article which says we could be using the humble dandelion lat. dormimus urinatimus soon to make RUBBER ! Check it out
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/05/dandelion-rubber.html

There's even a pitcher on Treehugger


Amazing what you can get out of plants all the same.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Are you impressed or not johnfás? The second two were taken in poor misty conditions next to the Poulnabrone Dolmen in North Clare. So - what do you think? Be honest - I won't die.

I'm impressed, that's why I was asking

Just out of interest - I wonder can one set the parameters of the forum so that if you post a large photo it automatically scales it? Some larger (wider) files tend to drift off to the right and you can't see it.

johnfás wrote:

Just out of interest - I wonder can one set the parameters of the forum so that if you post a large photo it automatically scales it? Some larger (wider) files tend to drift off to the right and you can't see it.

I'll have a look. Are the ones above ok? You can change the size as you're uploading. The ones above are 640 and 800 fits fine for me too but my monitor resolution is set to the highest.

Early start and hard to beat this class bit of vintage BBC. No wonder the world is going to pot if this is what the baby boomers were raised on.

Auditor, they crashed all over the West Coast during the Armada but they had also been trading extensively etc. before that. I`ve heard some surnames in the West being mentioned in relation to Spaniards. The name Igoe (a Galway/ Roscommon and Mayo surname said to come from Diego) is one for instance. The Spanish in Spanish point were massacred by the way.

Another 2 nuggets for those of you interested in those sort of things the Irish for fern is raithneach which is also used, by some, as slang for cannabis. One of the ways for saying love child in Irish is a "peata raithnigh"= pet of the ferns.