Tuesday 30 July 2013

I found this on the Downs above Great Ballard, Eartham. My brother says, after having great difficulty in looking it up, that it's called Phacelia tanacetifolium and is an annual garden flower used as agreen maure or to attract insects. It's sometimes called scorpionweed. Of course its not in the wild flower books. It isn't pretty, but rather striking. 

By Michael
This is Halnaker mill, as in the poem by Hilaire Belloc

Ha'nacker Mill

Hilaire Belloc


Sally is gone that was so kindly,
Sally is gone from Ha'nacker Hill
And the Briar grows ever since then so blindly;
And ever since then the clapper is still...
And the sweeps have fallen from Ha'nacker Mill.

Ha'nacker Hill is in Desolation:
Ruin a-top and a field unploughed.
And Spirits that call on a fallen nation,
Spirits that loved her calling aloud,
Spirits abroad in a windy cloud.

Spirits that call and no one answers --
Ha'nacker's down and England's done.
Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers,
And never a ploughman under the Sun:
Never a ploughman. Never a one


Sunday 21 July 2013

UK, Opium poppies

Years ago, in Andalucía, I saw a field of what I could only think were opium poppies. I had no idea! I thought they were all grown illegally in Afghanistan. Apparently not. Yesterday, walking on the chalky downs at Eartham, West Sussex, we saw clumps and fields of big pink poppies and fat green seed heads. Very pretty. Apparently they're all over the place, quite legal.
This is what the Kew Gardens website says:

Opium poppy

Opium poppies yield valuable alkaloids used as medicines. Medicines produced from opium poppies include morphine and codeine. Its cultivation and production is strictly controlled because opium poppies are also used to make illegal and highly addictive drugs such as heroin.
Botanical illustration of an opium poppy with a flower.
British opium poppies
In the nineteenth century opium poppies used to be grown in Surrey, Britain as a source of medicine.
Grow opium poppies
Opium poppies grow well in the British climate - why not try it? Most seed companies in Britain stock opium poppy seed, and the poppies should even grow from poppy seeds sold for cooking, though they may not have such attractive coloured flowers.
Legal cultivation
India is the only country that alows the legal production of raw opium on a large scale for export. Cultivation in India is confined to a few regions. Opium is harvested by making a cut in fruit capsules and collecting the milky sap that oozes from it.
Over-the-counter medicine
The pain-relief medicinecodeine is derived from opium poppies.
Anyway, here is my photo of the poppies.