THREE HANDSOME WEEDS
At the end of the drive, near the front door, another white gate leads
to the "nag" stables, where Mr. Hammond keeps the two horses which he
rides and drives. Billy, the old brown pony, has a little stable of his
own close by, and further on are the granary and the poultry yard.
Perhaps you have heard the saying, "Ill weeds grow apace." It is
certainly a true one, for most of the plants which we call weeds grow
quickly and well wherever they are allowed to remain. We shall not have
far to look for the three weeds which I want to show you this morning.
The first of them is the Stinging Nettle. It grows round the wood-pile
in the middle of the poultry-yard, and there are great clumps of it
beside the hedge which divides the poultry-yard from the kitchen garden.
It is really a very handsome plant, though you may not have thought so
before. Look how tall and straight the stems are, and how evenly and
regularly the dark green pointed leaves grow from it. They grow in
pairs, on opposite sides of the stem, and are serrated. There is
something rather unusual about the stem of the Nettle which we will
notice at once. I have brought out a pair of thick leather gloves, so
that we can pick a stem without being stung.
You know what shape the trunks of trees are. Round? Yes; round or nearly
so. So are the stems of most plants; the stems of the Red Valerian are
round. The stem of the Nettle, however, is square, or if not perfectly
square, it has four distinct sides. Perhaps you had never noticed this
before, for the Nettle is certainly not a plant with which one cares to
have very much to do.
Both the stems and leaves are covered with tiny hairs. These hairs are
really small hollow tubes ending in a sharp point. When the Nettle
stings you it first pricks the skin with these sharp points, and then a
drop of poison falls from the tube into the wound the point has made.
If you happen to get stung by a nettle do _not_ bathe your hand with
cold water; that will only make the pain worse. While you are waiting
for the pain to pass off remember that in India there are nettles whose
sting causes great pain which lasts for several days. You might be much
worse off, you see!
The small greenish-yellow flowers of the Stinging Nettle grow in long
feathery clusters on stalks which spring from the main stem close to a
pair of leaves.
The young leaves of the Nettle are said to be very nice boiled as
vegetables; I cannot say that I have ever eaten them myself. Years ago
country people used to take a great deal of nettle tea as medicine in
spring. Nowadays they seem to prefer patent medicines from the chemist's
shop. A dye is made from the roots of the Nettle, and another dye from
the stem and leaves. The young leaves or tops, when chopped up, are good
for poultry, especially for turkeys. So nettles are useful, you see--not
merely stinging weeds. The Nettle, too, is a relation of the hemp plant
from which we get our string and ropes.
[Illustration: TRAVELLER'S JOY.]
You may sometimes see or hear of the White, Red, and Yellow Dead Nettle,
but these are not really nettles at all. Their leaves are somewhat
similar, but they are quite different plants.
Hanging over this great patch of nettles by the hedge there is another
weed, the Traveller's Joy, or Old Man's Beard. Its stem has climbed not
only up the hedge, but high into a hawthorn bush which stands there. It
has many small white feathery flowers with a pleasant scent. On each
leaf stem there are usually five leaflets, one at the end of the stem
and two pairs lower down. These leaf stems are long and tough, and it is
chiefly by them that the plant can climb as it does; they twine round
any branch or twig they touch, and give the Traveller's Joy a firm
support. I have seen trees in woods covered with this plant to a height
of twenty feet from the ground.
In the autumn and early winter you would admire the Traveller's Joy as
much as you do now. The flowers will certainly be gone, but each seed
which takes the place of a blossom will have a little plume of silky
white threads attached to it--a sort of feathery tail. These serve as
wings by which the seeds are often carried long distances by the wind.
The seeds of some other plants which we shall see have something of the
same kind.
There is another climbing plant in the hedge, the Large Bindweed or
Convolvulus. To look at it, however, we will go round into the garden
where there is more of it than Mrs. Hammond cares to see. It is
certainly a beautiful plant, with its large three-sided pointed leaves,
and its great pure white bell-shaped flowers--something like the mouth
of a trumpet.
In the farmhouse garden, however, it is certainly a weed--a plant in the
wrong place. We see that at once. Close to the hedge are some gooseberry
and currant bushes, and into these the Bindweed has climbed. The
Bindweed's stems are twined round the stems and branches of the bushes
till they are almost hidden by it, and are bent down by the weight.
[Illustration: LARGE BINDWEED.]
The Bindweed climbs, as we see, by twisting its stem round the tree to
which it clings; but though it is a climbing plant its stems can grow
for a foot or more from the ground without support. Some of the shoots
of the Bindweed are two or three feet away from the stems of the fruit
bushes, but they have grown unsupported till they could reach an
overhanging bough and cling to that.
Every now and then, Dan, who looks after the garden when he has time,
cuts oft all the Bindweed close to the ground, and pulls some of it up
by the roots; but fresh shoots soon appear again. It is of little use to
dig up the ground near the bushes, for the Bindweed is twisted all among
their roots.
You think the Bindweed and the Traveller's Joy beautiful flowers, and
so they are. At the same time these plants are far more troublesome and
dangerous weeds than the Stinging Nettle. Nearly all plants that cling
to other plants do harm; they prevent the stems and boughs to which they
cling from swelling freely. See how tightly the Bindweed stems are
twisted round the boughs of this currant bush. Ivy, Bindweed, and other
clinging plants often kill or seriously injure valuable trees in this
way.