Journal
Tansy - its history and use
Tansy (Tanecetum vulgare) grows in the Studio Meadow - flowering through July and August, bright buttons of mustard flowers amidst the grass. It is in two large clumps, one at the top edge of the path, one down by the studio door. I think it must have been part of the original wild flower mix that we threw down on the bare soil right at the beginning. Here, in the damp cool Scottish climate, in our heavy soil, it spreads gently, it is gradually moving down the slope. In hotter countries though it multiplies faster - self seeding in light soils, bulking up fast. In many States in the US it is on the lists of noxious weeds.
Here in Scotland though it was an important useful plant in past centuries - one of the home herbal plants that were grown in gardens. It often stands as a marker of a dwelling in the landscape, persisting through the nettles and docks, the ghost of a croft.
The Ancient Greeks were the first that mention Tansy as a medicine. Its common name is derived from the Greek word for immortality Athanasia - in Greek mythology Zeus gave the shepherd Ganymede a drink of tansy to make him immortal.
But the main uses for tansy over the years have largely been due to its toxicity - it produces the toxic ketone thujone, which is also in wormwood. Thujone is an insecticide, it can kill parasites, cause hallucinations and, perhaps not surprisingly, can also be fatal. The amount of thujone differs wildly from plant to plant, which must have made its use medically a bit hit and miss.
The main use of tansy in medieval times was as an insect repellent - the stems were collected and dried in August. They were then used as strewing herbs on the floor (along with meadowsweet), put between mattresses and sheets to deter lice, and made into a rub for raw meat to stop flies.
The dried flowers were worn in shoes and on belts for a wide range of ailments - but particularly for rheumatism and infertility in women.
The latter is ironic as tansy tea, basically what I have been boiling up in my dye pot this month, was one of the main methods of abortion from the thirteenth to nineteenth century. Illicit printed guides of the time suggested drinking tansy tea daily for a week to 'bring on delayed menses'. The infamous C19th New York abortionist Anne Lohman (Madame Restell) gave out concoctions of tansy and turpentine to her patients from her 5th Avenue consulting room. Relying on toxicity to work, these methods probably caused liver, kidney and brain damage, possibly even death, in many of women who resorted to them.
This natural toxicity also works in the garden - it will deter ants (if you really want to do that) and scientists looking for organic ways to deter the Colorado potato beetle in the US found tansy to be the most effective - planting it in strips surrounding the potatoes kept them beetle free. Ladybirds love it though.
Slightly peculiarly, given that it is well known to be poisonous, tansy has traditionally been used in cooking - it is associated with lenten cooking in the Christian church, and was cooked into Easter Day cakes as a reminder of the bitter herbs of the Jewish Passover.
I really wouldn't recommend eating it though as the toxic compounds vary from plant to plant and there is no way of telling.
I grow tansy as a dye material - weld, which is a traditional dye plant giving yellows, struggles in the Scottish climate so tansy has long been an alternative source of yellow dye. It gives a clear bright yellow which can then be over dyed with other colours like blue from indigo to give bright green.
I dyed some alpaca house socks for sale and a selection of wool for a striped jumper that I'm gradually knitting. It is a simple dye - simmer the flowers and/or stems for an hour and leave to cool then strain. I found that leaving it for a long time in the pan caused a saddening of the colour to a gold.
The history of Scotland's kelp industry
When we think of the Industrial Revolution we tend to think of cities. That is how it is taught in schools – the dark satanic mills, the factories and urban development – but that is not the whole story. Where there were natural resources – and people – to exploit, industry rooted itself in rural areas too, changing the landscape, the ecology and society. One of the biggest and most important industries in C18th Scotland was kelp production – employing tens of thousands of people in Orkney and the Hebrides. All that survives today is the buildings – odd drystone structures on the beaches, low strip walls for drying kelp, stone sheds for storing it, often covered in generations of sand. In the late C18th, however, Stronsay in Orkney was described as looking like a volcano; with all the kelp burning, crops were contaminated, cattle and horses dying, limpets (the food of the crofters in hard times) falling dead from their rocks, workers going blind. Arsenic deposits - concentrated from the seaweed – can still be detected in kelp burning areas. Industrial contamination.
Why did kelp become important?
In the C18th landowners in Scotland began to look for more of a financial return from their land. The traditional farming system in many areas was open fields, divided into strips and allocated anew each year. They were drawn by lot and farmed individually, and managed by a middleman tacksman who paid rent to the landowner, keeping some profit for himself. The tacksman was usually related to the laird and the system shored up a landowner or clansman’s personal power and feudal connections, but was not financially efficient. During the C18th the tacksmen were removed from their positions and a new system of crofts replaced the earlier run-rigs. Crofts were individual tenancies, with rent directly payable by the crofter to the landowner, there were no tenants’ rights and the size of a croft was deliberately too small to allow self-sufficiency. Rent was usually to be paid in cash, rather than kind, and it was estimated that 200 days’ work off farm would be required for a family to survive.
One of the main reasons for the move to a croft system in Scotland’s islands was the need for a workforce that would process seaweed into kelp.
Seaweed, when burned into ash, provided the alkali for making soap and glass - especially valued for the fine window glass that had become popular in the mid C18th. It could also be further processed elsewhere to extract iodine and silver iodide. By the early C19th 60,000 people were working in kelp manufacture in Scotland and £70,000 profit was being made in the Hebrides alone. At its peak crofters on Orkney were producing 3000 tonnes of kelp ash a year - it was worth £22 a tonne. The crofters were paid £2 a tonne.
Making kelp ash
This was an activity for all the family, the men collecting the seaweed, the children dragging it to dry and the women tending the fires. To make a tonne of kelp ash you need to collect about 20 tonnes (dry weight) of seaweed. The kelp burning season was June to August, so the seaweed was collected from the winter and spring storms and dried out on low drystone walls (kelp ricks which were covered with a heather thatch to protect from rain) and then stored in rough stone buildings until the summer. Seaweed can grow 30cm a day in the summer and a summer crop would be cut from the rocks with sickles and dried. The best part was the stem of the weed and it was important that no sand got into the mix. When it was time to burn the seaweed, a pit would be dug in the sand to collect the oily ash, it would be lined with flat stones and an iron grid put over it. The kelp would go on top and be burned. It needed to be kept moving constantly while it burned, stirred with long iron poles – a job done mainly by women – it took 14-24 hours to burn down and it was a heavy, smoky, stinking job. The putrid oil would drip through the grid and gradually harden into a solid mass. This stage of the process affected people’s eyesight and could lead to blindness. The cooling of the oil into a grey blue solid took between a week and a month - depending on the size of the pit - and it would be chopped with a flat iron spade when still soft into foot square lumps that could be more easily chiseled out and transported.
The end of the industry
What eventually led to the decline of the kelp industry wasn’t the terrible working conditions though, it was purely economics. The whole industry had been sustained by high import duties and a war with France. By 1822 the war had finished and trade agreements changed, as a result he price of kelp ash fell from £22 a ton to £5 and the profit disappeared. Without the kelp industry, life on the coastal crofts became untenable and there was mass depopulation. Some crofters headed to Glasgow and Edinburgh, others to North America.
All that survives now is the kelp ricks where the seaweed used to dry.
The ones on Westray in Orkney are particularly beautiful – parallel lines of drystone walls like an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture, looking out over the sea.
Photo: Brian Yurasits
The good foraging code
As foraging becomes more popular it is important to know what the rules are - both the legal rules and the ecological rules - before you set out with your basket.
Where can you pick?
Right of access to land (the right to roam in Scotland) does not mean a right to forage. If the land is privately owned then you must ask specific permission of the landowner to pick anything. This is especially important on farmland and the edges of farmland where, as well as livestock and crop issues, there may well be activities going on that you don't know about - whether that is a habitat restoration or chemical spraying, you do not want to be foraging there.
General foraging is usually not allowed in parks or recreation areas, but there may well be a specific area where it is allowed.
You can get a list of common areas from your council.
On a lot of land managed by the National Trust, the Woodland Trust and National Parks foraging is allowed but it is important to check as some have areas designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest or areas where ground nesting birds are common where it is not permitted.
The UK coast is mainly owned by the Crown and Conservation charities - both of which tend to be fine about foraging for personal consumption - though it is worth checking, particularly where there may be rare species under protection.
Where would you want to forage?
Think about what might have come before you - cars, peeing dogs, people's feet, chemical sprays, industrial residue - and make sensible decisions. Picking meadow buttercups from industrial wasteland isn't an issue but I'm not sure I would want to eat anything growing in that ground.
What can you collect?
The guide is that you can collect the 4 Fs - foliage, flowers, fruit and fungi. These are basically the parts of a plant which will naturally regenerate.
What can't you collect?
Anything that is protected - you can get a list of the protected species in the UK here.
You cannot uproot anything without express permission - this includes things like digging up wild garlic and replanting in your garden, just as much as taking rare orchids. It also includes lichen and moss. If you want lichen pick windfall pieces as they are already uprooted but leave anything on a tree, even a dead tree.
Anything not for your own consumption (commercial foraging needs proper permissions as so many areas have been destroyed by it)
I would add . . . .
Don't collect the first 10 of anything you see and never pick more than 10% from an area. Remember that this is food and habitat for birds, insects, amphibians, small mammals.
Never pick more than you KNOW you are going to use. Don't pick if you don't have the correct equipment with you - so don't pick flowers if you don't have water to carry them in, don't forage for mushrooms if you are stuffing them in pockets.
Always make sure you know what you are picking BEFORE you pick it.
Inspect for signs of insect eggs BEFORE you pick.
Do not trample an area while picking.
Consider whether taking your dog is appropriate - dogs can spook wildlife and farm stock even if they are well behaved and under control. Spooked birds abandon nests, spooked sheep can miscarry, you may not even realise.
It is really all about respect - respect for other people, respect for wildlife, respect for the countryside.
Foraging for wood sorrel
Earlier this week, walking in the woods that fringe the East bank of Loch Lomond I spotted wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) for the first time this year. It is likely to be there for the next couple of months.
Wood sorrel is a perfect walkers plant - it has leaves that can't be confused with anything toxic, so you can eat it as you walk. They look like bright green, large clover, growing in the moss on fallen trees in established woodland.
The leaves are larger than clover and have no markings, they hang backwards like a pinched handkerchief. The flowers are delicate, white or pale pink with feint markings, held on fine stems. Wood sorrel grows under trees - often rooting into fallen trees and branches on the forest floor.
It tastes like sherbet, lemony, sparkly on the tongue, refreshing - and traditionally it has been used to quench thirst on long walks. Take an apple and a knife on your foraging walk and cut fine slivers of apple to sandwich your wood sorrel leaves between - the perfect combination.
The fizzy sour taste comes from oxalic acid, which is present in many spring plants - rhubarb, cultivated sorrel, fat hen, purslane - as well as chocolate, nuts and sweet potatoes.
Though oxalic acid shouldn't be consumed in vast quantities, you would need to eat kilos of wood sorrel leaves to cause any problems. Old books suggest that 20 lbs of sorrel leaves can give you 2 oz oxalic acid for taking ink out of linen. It was also used to make a jam or sugar syrup which was used to treat scurvy.
In folklore it was believed that the cuckoo eats sorrel leaves to strengthen his voice, In Scotland it was known as gowke-meat (gowke is the Scots for cuckoo as well as for fool) and in France a common name is pain-de-cou-cou. It appears in church decorations, especially pre-reformation paintings - where the clusters of three leaves symbolise the trinity and is one of the contenders for being the original shamrock used by St Partick to explain the Holy Trinity when out evangelising.
Recipe ideas
Cooking dulls the sweet/sour kick of these leaves - I think the best way to eat it is on the hoof, strolling along, relishing the acidic pop in your mouth.
If you want to bring it home to add to meals it is best kept raw, as a vibrant accent to a salad, or sprinkled on top of a risotto right at the last minute.
Wood sorrel is a favourite of fashionable scandi-chefs and works well as a garnish on Smørrebrød, especially with smoked fish, or as a bright decoration in gin cocktails.
Always forage for wild plants responsibility - I have put together a Good Foraging Code with the main things to think about before you head out to pick anything.
Foraging for flowers
In my mid 20s I lived in a city. I didn't have a garden. I didn't have any cash for regularly buying flowers and I also had serious ecological reservations about how cut flowers were being grown.
However I did have a driving, nagging need to have nature in my home. I had a perfect little shelf in front of my bedroom window, next to my desk. I had a collection of old glass bottles.
Throughout the year I would arrange flowers, grasses and seed heads in the bottles on that shelf - a connection to the seasons that I was missing.
There is something about taking commonplace things - a few stems of grass, a sprig of ground elder, a bunch of creeping buttercup - and displaying it with intention and reverence that transforms them.
Simply putting the grasses into a vase transformed them into a flower arrangement. They became special, worthy of attention and study.
I would pick my 'flowers' from wasteland that I passed on my walk home from work - through the West End of Glasgow to Broomhill. There were garage forecourts where poppies and barley struggled in the dust, there were cracks in the pavement where buttercups grew and walls where fireweed had split the coping. All became something exotic when they were arranged by my window.
I've continued this to this day - even when my cutting garden provides me with armfuls of fresh flowers, I still treasure those weeds, bringing them in, really looking at them.
There is something special about the spareness and simplicity of wild flowers - something that you can never achieve with something more lush and grandly grown.
When you forage for flowers it is especially important to condition them well when you get home (though grasses and seed heads will be fine without conditioning) as you have probably been carrying them home.
It is also important to remember that it isn't just you that likes flowers - bees, butterflies and other insects need them - so only pick where there is a profusion.
You can get my free magazine with my tips for conditioning flowers to give them amazing vase life HERE.
If you enjoyed this you might be interested in reading this article about making a windowsill arrangement.
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