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| Nature Notes |
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| Thursday, 17 April 2008 | |
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Lesser Celandine or Pilewort Ficaire, Petite Chélidoine, Ranunculus ficaria (Latin). The lesser celandine is a common early spring flower yet last year it was difficult to find. This year, it is in abundance but then the weather has been particularly mild. Botanists classify it as a buttercup but, apart from the yellow flowers, it is hard to see much relationship. Generally buttercups are poisonous, but the young leaves of this plant can be eaten in a salad. The glossy, thickish heart-shaped leaves, often marked with a dark central stripe or whitish blotches, are not at all like those of the usual buttercups. Buttercups have five petals but this species has anything between eight and twelve. There are three sepals (not five) hiding underneath the petals. The flowers fold up at night and in low temperatures. Another botanical oddity is that the germinating seeds only have one seed leaf. These structural features all suggest that, in evolutionary terms, the plant is close to the ancestors of both branches of flowering plants – the dicotyledons and the monocotyledons (which include grasses, onions and lilies). But the very glossy petals reveal the buttercup relation. They are unusual among flowers and possibly unique to buttercups. Remember the game ‘Do you like butter?’ as a yellow light is reflected onto a child’s chin from a shiny flower held below. The pip-like fruits, arranged in a spiral heap on each flower base are also characteristic of the buttercups.  There is some mystery about its name. The French ficaire and the Latin ficaria are said to refer to the roots looking like a bunch of figs (Latin ficus). I can’t agree. The roots are a tiny bunch of elongated tubers, which some ancient herbalist claimed looked like haemorrhoids or piles, explaining the name of pilewort. The French even list it as herbe aux hémorrhoides. The ancient herbalists followed the misleading ‘law of signatures’ whereby a similarity to the symptoms was considered a cure for the affliction. Further confusion comes from the same name being used for a quite unrelated plant – the greater celandine. Celandine and chélidoine both derive from the Greek word for a swallow. The only reason for this seems utterly absurd: the Greeks (according to Aristotle) had a myth that swallows fed the lesser or the greater (probably the greater) celandines to their nestlings to improve their eyesight. If you see the flower, search for tiny swellings or bulbils in the axils of the leaves. One subspecies has them, another does not. They readily fall off and create new plants. But its seeds are mostly infertile. In my region, I have so far only found the subspecies without these bulbils. Gardens Galore The www.parcsetjardins.fr website (under ‘Qui Sommes Nous’ you’ll find a presentation in English) claims to list all the parks and gardens in France. There is a scalable map for finding gardens in a given area. Not listed, though, is the ‘Jardins de la Brande’, midway between Bergerac and Périgueux (24), which is holding an exhibition of little-known plants on May 3 and 4.  On a grander scale the Domaine de Saint Jean de Beauregard (91) hosts its ‘Fête des plantes vivaces’ on April 10, 11 and 12, with this year’s theme ‘les valeurs sûres du jardin’. Conferences led by experts address topical and traditional issues; there is a bourse des plantes and a children’s workshop. The festival is held in the grounds of the château, a historic monument open to the public. The entry fee (e8-11; under-10s free) includes a shuttle from the gare d’Orsay. At Chaumont-sur-Loire their international festival opens on April 30 and runs all summer. The park, designed by Jacques Wirtz, contains 26 individual enclosed gardens where, from hundreds of hopefuls worldwide, selected designers develop their own version of the contemporary, fun (as illustrated) and futuristic.  Garden passion at the Domaine du Coq, Mérignac (33) covers perhaps the most ground, thematically at least. Jean Michel Bertrand has developed this free event to include growers, wickerwork, bees, handicrafts, animals, garden machinery, sculpture, ornaments, and an official opening by gardening expert and author Philippe Prévôt. Jardins de la Brande Philippe Burey, 24380 Fouleix 05 53 07 47 85 Domaine de Saint Jean de Beauregard (91940) www.domsaintjeanbeauregard.com 01 60 12 00 01 www.chaumont-jardins.com 02 54 20 99 22 Domaine du Coq April 12 and 13 33700 Mérignac 05 56 34 30 87 www.collectionp.com |
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