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Take a Closer Look

by Roger Stephens

Lesser celandine and coltsfoot can both be found in flower in the valley during the early spring. Both are among the earliest spring flowers and both are yellow but there the resemblance ends. Both of these plants deserve a closer look; let's start with the celandine.

If you were to dig one up (please don't!) you would find little brown globules, like miniature bulbs, connected by stringy roots. These are tubers - the plant's cellar, where it stores nourishment to keep it going after the flowering season. Come back here in June and you will find no sign of either flowers or leaves. It is not until the following December or January that the leaves venture out again. The tubers also help the plant to form such dense colonies by spreading underground. They look, apparently, rather like piles which, according to old medical lore, means that they must be the cure for the complaint. So, if you have haemorrhoids, dear reader, the solution lies at your feet.

What botanical family do you think the lesser celandine belongs to? The clue is in the shiny yellow of the petals which children use to decide if a friend likes butter. Its a woodland cousin of the buttercups, but whereas a true buttercup always has five petals here we find at least eight and perhaps as many as twelve. Now look more closely at the flower. It has three sepals (the green coverings which protect the flower when in bud) and, within them, an outer whorl of three petals. Within that is an inner whorl of five or more. A peculiarity of these petals (again, unlike the true buttercups) is that they close up when the weather turns overcast, a fact the Wordsworth mentioned in his famous poem on this, his favourite wild flower. As spring gives way to summer, they bleach white and die off as the whole plant shrinks into the ground like a snail into its shell.

Now, let's look at the coltsfoot. It will be found in the open, away from the trees. This time, the family is more obvious: only a relative of the daisy would have such a brush of yellow flowers. Look carefully at the central disc of tiny yellow knobs: each is an individual flower with its own sexual parts - as many, perhaps, as we would find in a whole bank of celandines. The outer fringe of the petals is mainly for show, helping flies and bees to find them. After flowering, the head droops sadly until the seeds are mature and then straightens itself out again to produce a fluffy clock like that of the dandelion.

In early spring there are no leaves to be seen, for the coltsfoot has a very different strategy from that of the celandine. As soon as the flowers have been pollinated, the leathery, hoary leaves (shaped, supposedly, like a colt's foot) arise from the ground and grow bigger throughtout the summer, gathering the nutrients for next year's flowers. These leaves, though they seem coarse and unappetising, are one of the main ingredients for herbal tobacco. They were widely smoked during both World Wars and are considered a remedy for coughs. The coltsfoot's method of spreading is different too. Feel at the base of the stem and you should find scaly, whitish branches which will take root to produce new plants.

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