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Downtime home and Gardening-National News Traveller’s Joy or Old Man’s Beard
| Traveller’s Joy or Old Man’s Beard |
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| Wednesday, 20 February 2008 | |
 Vigne blanche, Herbe aux gueux (Latin Clematis vitalba) The fluffy clouds of fruits of Traveller’s Joy decorate the wayside hedges from the end of summer and remain to decorate the bleak bare twigs in winter. They hang on even in the face of gale-force winds. Yet their structure is that of wind-blown seeds, which are carried in the air to a suitable site for germination. Each seed carries a long, fine thread, ornamented with many fine hairs. If these get wet they fold down and so offer no resistance to the wind. But surprisingly, the dry seeds do not blow away. I made a small study to try and find out why. I have pulled at the seeds with a pair of forceps and it can be quite difficult to pull them loose. Even in January, the main stem can be made to bend more than half an inch before the seed is dislodged. Each seed is attached by a short peg fitting like a dowel rod into the base. This rod dries slowly, becoming brittle and by the end of the winter releases the seed. In the warmer spring temperatures the ground is more receptive to a growing seed. The flower structure is similar to that of the buttercups. The fruits are just that bit different in having the long hairy appendage. The other oddity is in both its nature and method of climbing. If a leaf stalk touches a support as it grows, the cells on that side of the stalk shorten and those on the other side lengthen. So the leaf stalks can become extremely twisted. The stalks eventually become woody and the whole plant cannot be disentangled without secateurs. I wanted to look at this plant after reading over Christmas a classic French novel ‘Jacquou le Croquant’. In this tale of a 19thcentury peasant’s revolt, set in the Dordogne 30 years after Napoléon, the countryside, even after the Revolution, was still straddled with misery and arrogant landowners. In the book the clematis is called l’herbe aux gueux. This translates as ‘the plant of the tramps’ (downand- outs or travellers, va-nupieds). Gerard, the English herbalist, writing in 1597, says: “I have named it Traveller’s Joy’, from its habit of decking and adorning ways and hedges.” This is one of the few precise old records of a plant’s being given a popular name. So we can assume that there is no apparent connection between the French and English names. But a French reference says that in the Middle Ages beggars rubbed the plant on their skins to induce ulcers to arouse the pity of passers-by. The plant is toxic (it causes blisters) but can be used with caution to relieve arthritis, and in homoeopathy it is used as a cure for memory loss (so it is claimed). |
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