Wall species – Page 2 – Walls and Flowers

Buddleia and Chepstow Castle

I was unsure whether to include Buddleia as a wall flower partly because it is a shrub and partly because I was uncertain as to how often it grows out of walls. However as I have visited more and more walls I became satisfied that it qualifies as it is quite commonly found in walls. As for it being a shrub, I have noted that in many walls it is quite small and struggling and rarely reaches the size that it can do when growing directly from the ground. This may be because whoever is looking after the wall perceives that it could be causing substantial damage and removes it so that it never gets that big whereas a little bit of Rockcress or Ivy-leaved Toadflax just goes unnoticed. Consequently although it is a shrub plants such as Valerian are the same size or even bigger than the Buddleia. I have also chosen to include Ivy and Wall Cotoneaster and they too are classified as shrubs.

Network Rail says buddleia has a habit of growing in walls where it can interfere with overhead power lines and obscure signals. Whilst it does not cause “serious” problems such as blocking train lines, it does have a habit of popping up in “annoying places” where removing it takes up valuable time and resource.

The company cuts down large buddleia before removing or killing the stumps, sprays small buddleia with herbicide, and uses weed-killing trains to keep the network clear, while staff use portable sprayers at stations.

One would think that the potential for nuisance might be outweighed by the benefits to wildlife, such as butterflies.

Buddleia was imported from China in the 1890s. There are over a hundred and forty different species of Buddleia in the world. Its scientific name is Buddleja davidii which is a nod to Pere Armand David a Catholic missionary who worked in China. He is more famous for the Pere David Deer which he rescued from the brink of extinction by bringing some back to Britain where their numbers increased and then some were successfully reintroduced back into China. He also is responsible for introducing over 50 different Rhododendron species into Britain which as it turns out was not such a good thing.

Buddleia is the common name and Buddleja is the scientific name because Linnaeus, who was responsible for naming many species ,wrote his ‘i’ with rather a long down stroke so that it looked like a ‘j’ which caused confusion. It could have been called Buddleja davjdjj!

Buddliea is now considered an invasive plant although I would not put it in the same category as Japanese Knotweed or Himalayan Balsam. It gets about by virtue of its winged seeds so it spreads along railway lines quite well. It is recommended that one removes the dead flower heads before the seeds form thus encouraging it to produce more flowers but preventing the spread of the seeds. This is the strategy I adopt with the few bushes that grow in my wood. The flowers are out from June to October, It can grow into quite a large bush maybe 5metres high but in walls it is normally limited. Certainly at Chepstow Castle it was not very large.

The castle though is quite impressive and has a good range of flowers in the walls as the maintenance is not over harsh. It is managed by Cadw. This is a Welsh word meaning ‘to keep’ or ‘to protect’ and that’s exactly what the organization does, working for an accessible and well-protected historic environment for Wales, so obviously the integrity of the walls is a priority but equally they are not over zealous in removing every fern and flower.

It did not take long after 1066 before the Normans set to work securing their new kingdom. Construction of Chepstow Castle was was started in 1067 by Earl William Fitz Osbern, close friend of William the Conqueror, making it one of the first Norman strongholds in Wales.

Later it was occupied and improved on by William Marshal (Earl of Pembroke). He was a very interesting character. He was originally just a small time knight but due to his jousting prowess he impressed Elanor of Aquitaine and subsequently her eldest son Henry II. As a consequence he acquired a French wife and the castle. On his deathbed Henry II asked William Marshal to take his cloak to Jerusalem, just a small trip but I suppose you did not argue with the monarch back then. On his return he was rewarded by Eleanor’s second son, Richard the Lionheart, who allowed him to marry the rich de Clare heiress Isabel. It was her family who had held Chepstow and other vast estates for most of the twelfth century. However the castle was in a bit of a state and so he set about doing it up and making it nice, a couple of extensions and maybe a lick of paint. Actually I find the the most impressive legacy of his works to be the double doors at the entrance. These have been dated using dendrochronology and found to have been constructed sometime before the 1190’s although the doors were once thought to date from the thirteenth century. This new information has established that they are the oldest castle doors in Europe. The doors which can be seen as one enters the castle are not the original doors. They are modern replicas but the originals are on view preserved from the elements inside the castle.

Richard, who, incidentally acquired the tag ‘Lionheart’ some years after his demise, famously spent very little time in England and it was William Marshall who ran the country for him in his absence. Other notables of influence who owned the castle over the years included Roger Bigod (Earl of Norfolk) and Charles Somerset (Earl of Worcester). They all made their mark before the castle declined after the Civil War. Roger Bigod was also responsible for the construction of Tintern Abbey, just up the road.

Maidenhair Spleenwort and Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire.

On a recent visit to Tintern Abbey there were not that many wall flowers to be seen. Careful maintenance is obviously required, plants growing from crevices in the stone work can add to the look of the walls but can also hasten their disintegration. In fact the interior region of the Abbey was largely a restricted area when I visited, due to a combination of the possibility of falling masonry and maintenance work to rectify the problem. It was obvious that herbicide had been applied round the bases of the walls. All that survived in these regions was a liverwort called Marchantia.

There are a few flowering plants and ferns growing in the walls but not many considering the age of the buildings. The majority of plants are growing from the top of the walls where their removal would prove more difficult. There was some Red Valerian, though most of it was the pink form, also some yellow flowers which were some species of Hawkbit ( this group is notoriously difficult to identify) There was quite a lot of Ivy-leaved Toadflax, as always, and a few small patches of White Stonecrop. The commonest plants by far were the ferns which were mostly Maidenhair Spleenwort but also some Wall Rue.

Spleenworts are one of the commonest ferns, there are several species but Maidenhair Spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes) is by far the most prevalent, infact its distribution is world wide, I suppose ferns have had longer to spread than flowering plants! If we want to get scientific then Maidenhair Spleenwort is a polyploid complex meaning it can have different numbers of chromosomes and this influences the way the plants look so that it has been split into three subgroups and these have different geographical locations and slightly different morphologies. Hey ho, don’t look too closely and they all look the same.

Despite being a ruin this is still the most amazing place, it is set in the Wye valley and so it does benefit from the surrounding scenery. How it would have looked like prior to Henry’s activities one can only imagine but it must have been even more magnificent. It would have been wonderful to see the windows with glass in, no doubt stained glass depicting all sorts of religious scenes, probably also Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. The abbey church was rebuilt under his patronage, he was Lord of nearby Chepstow Castle, in the late 13th century. The reconstruction maintained the original design of the monastery..

Henry VIII dissolved the abbey in 1536 along with most abbeys throughout Britain through his Dissolution of the Monasteries. On 3 September 1536, Abbot Wyche, 12 monks, and 35 monastic servants surrendered the Abbey to the king’s visitors. The king granted the abbey to the then Lord of Chepstow who sold the lead from the roof. From that point, the abbey lay forgotten, falling into ruin for the next couple of centuries.

After the dissolution and the removal of the roof for the lead the abbey was largely ignored for the next 200 years, some stone was removed for the construction of local buildings but mostly it was colonised by Ivy. It was later that it became a tourist destination with famous artists, poets and writers visiting. Turner visited the abbey in 1792 when he was only 17 years old and painted it, on canvass that is, not with a pot of paint and a ladder. You can see plenty of plants indeed bushes growing from the walls in his depiction. Also Wordsworth was another famous visitor some time later.

Incidentally there are several different species of Spleenwort, the commonest is Maidenhair Spleenwort but you could come across Green Spleenwort where the central midrib of each leaf is green not brown. There is also Black Spleenwort which has leaflets that are complex not simple and the central midrib has a double groove along it. I describe that fern when visiting a Roman village now called Wall which is in Staffordshire. And finally there is Sea Spleenwort which has a coastal distribution, largely western and it has bright green fleshy leaves. So there is more to Spleenwort than you might have thought.

Dark Mullein (Verbascum nigrum) and the Theatre at Verulamium St Albans.

I always thought it was an amphitheatre, but it is not, it is a theatre. The difference is that a theatre has an arena and a stage whereas the amphitheatre just has an arena and so this makes the St Albans site unique in Britain. (‘quite unique’? is that allowed?)

The Roman Theatre of Verulamium was built around 140AD it is the only example of its kind in Britain. Initially, the arena would have been used for anything from religious processions and dancing, to wrestling, armed combat and wild beast shows ( mainly bulls and bears). From about 180AD the stage came into greater use and the auditorium was extended. By about 300AD, after some redevelopment work, the Theatre could seat 2000 spectators.

Actually only five such structures are known in Britain and only one was a theatre, so it seems drama and music were not that popular with the Britons. The Celts seemed to prefer the more brutal entertainment of the amphitheatre, with its wild beast fights and gladiator shows. In fact, some of these theatres seemed connected to temples, and so it may have been more religious Celtic ceremonies that took place in these theatres.

St Albans is the most famous site and was known as Verulamium in Roman times, this is because it was constructed on the site of Verlamion, which was the capital of the iron age tribe known as the Catevellauni. In AD 61 Verulamium was largely destroyed by Boudica and then reconstruction began. The theatre came somewhat later, and there was a temple right next to the theatre.

There were quite a few plants growing from the stonework when I visited at the end of June, lots of Forget-me-not which was reaching the end of its flowering season. There was as always a lot of Ivy leaved toadflax and several ferns, but most impressive were the Dark Mullein which were in full bloom. They are biennials and produce a rosette of leaves in their first year rather like Foxgloves and then the flower spike develops in the second year, this is usually unbranched unlike several other species of Mullein. The flowers are yellow with five petals fused into a tube from which the anthers project, these have large purple hairs on them making the centre of the flower look purple. This species is quite common in the south of England particularly in a diagonal SW to NE band roughly following the Cotswolds and Chilterns. Suffice it to say this species is a calcicole and prefers a chalk or limestone substrate. Walls made from such materials will obviously suit it well, it also likes a sunny position so again banks and walls be to its liking.

Yellow Whitlowgrass ( Draba azoides) and Pennard Castle, Gower.

This is a plant surviving from the times prior to our last ice age, but only just.

It is limited to a small section of limestone cliffs on the south of the Gower peninsula from Pwlldu to Tears point, which has Oxwich bay in the centre so it only adds up to about 17Km or 10 miles of cliff. It is estimated that there are no more than about a thousand specimens in this area. Pennard castle which was constructed from the local limestone also supports a small population. Two things point to this plant being a survivor from before the last Ice Age. In the vicinity a 33,000 year old skeleton was found, it was named the Red Lady of Paviland because the bones were died red but it was subsequently determined that it was a man not a woman. Now the significance of this find is that it points to the fact that despite the cold it was possible to inhabit this region at what would have been the height of the last Ice age, so if humans could survive there then plants and other animals would presumably also be able to cope. These regions where life was able to carry on during the last ice age are known as ice-age refugiums. The ice cap only came down (roughly) as far as a line from Humber to the Severn so whilst conditions south of this would have been harsh these regions possibly because of the local topography were able to support life.

The yellow dots on the walls to the left of the window are patches of Yellow Whitlowgrass in flower.

Further evidence comes from DNA analysis which shows that the individuals growing in south wales are quite distinct from those on the continent suggesting that this is a continuous line of colonisation and not a reintroduction after the ice age as is the case with most of our flowering plants.

In Continental Europe it has a mainly alpine distribution, occurring between 900 and 3,400 m in the Alps and extending eastwards from the Pyrenees to the Carpathians, and westwards from the Alps to the Jura. A small isolated population in the Ardennes appears to be a pioneer one, not a relict. It is decreasing in places mainly owing to habitat destruction caused by road widening, afforestation or tourist pressures.

Pennard Castle was first built in 1107 by Henry de Beaumont, Earl of Warwick after he had been granted Lordship of Gower by Henry 1 and is believed to be one of at least 7 built by him on the Gower. The reason was because local Welsh tribes were not so happy with the Norman take over. The initial castle was a timber ringwork – common following the Norman invasion and consisting of a defensive ditch, ramparts and a timber hall. later the limestone structure replaced the timber. The castle was only occupied until the 1600’s and has gradually declined ever since helped by the wind blown sand etching away at it. Restoration work has been carried out in recent years. On my visit a local who knew all about the importance of the site and the presence of the extremely rare plant told us that a misguided but well intentioned local had carried out some repointing on his own initiative and this had resulted in a big decline in the Yellow Whitlowgrass population. Careful management is needed to preserve this species which so far has survived for maybe 100,000 years.

Wallflower and Tantallon Castle Scotland

The Wallflower is one of the plant species with which most people are familiar. It is often to be found growing out of walls which, given its name, is just as well but it is also a garden flower. It is not originally from Britain but from southern European and is found right across the Mediterranean and Aegean areas. It has been used throughout time for various medicinal purposes and the list is quite long. It was used by Roman soldiers to treat wounds, a tincture was used to reduce tooth ache, it has been used to treat rheumatism and gout, to bring on menstruation when periods were late and so it goes on. It does contain a substance called cheiranthin which is similar to digitalis derived from Foxgloves which affects the heart rate.

An early reference to the plant appears in a work by Pliny the Elder writing in the first century AD. Some suggest that it was introduced into Britain following the Norman invasion but I see no reason why it could not have arrived much earlier, possibly with the Romans. Either way it has been here a long time. The first record of it growing wild appears in 1548, and there is one in 1777 when Edward Jacob, a local naturalist, records it as Wild Chier growing ‘on old walls and being very uncommon.’ It is now quite common but is recorded less further north and is still uncommon in Scotland, no doubt reflecting its southern European origin. Despite this I found it growing from some of the walls surrounding Tantallon Castle in East Lothian.

It was originally classified as Cherianthus cheiri by Linnaeus but it is now called Erysimum cheiri. The cheiri derives from the Greek word for hand as it was often used in small bouquets held in the hand. It is in the Cruciferae family along with cabbages, brussel sprouts and turnips and as such it has a simple flower structure composed of four petals in a cross. Like most of the family the wild form has yellow petals, but over the years a range of different garden varieties have been bred so that colours ranging from Red to yellow, purple and brown are all available. Personally I prefer the brown or yellow types . It is often grown by gardeners as a biennial. Bundles of bare rooted young plants can be purchased in the autumn and planted out to flower the following year. However if they are left in place and they will go on to flower for several more years. They flower in the Spring and have a wonderful scent. The petals have a velvety texture and they are much appreciated by bees and other insects.

Not all Wallflowers grow on castle walls.

Tantallon Castle is a ruined mid fourteenth century fortress, located three miles east of North Berwick, in East Lothian, Scotland. It sits atop a promontory opposite the Bass Rock, looking out onto the Firth of Forth. The last medieval curtain wall castle to be constructed in Scotland, Tantallon comprises a single wall blocking off the headland, with the other three sides naturally protected by sea cliffs. It was the home of the Douglas clan.

In 1354, William Douglas was given the estates of his father, Sir Archibald Douglas and his uncle, the ‘Good Sir James Douglas’ who was a close friend of Robert the Bruce. These estates included the barony of North Berwick.

William was made Earl of Douglas in 1358 , by which time masons may already have begun to build Tantallon.

The house of Douglas split into two branches in the 1380s: the ‘Black’ and the ‘Red’. Tantallon passed to the junior line, the Earls of Angus known as the ‘Red Douglases’. They owned the castle for the next three hundren years, often clashing with the Crown.

It is possible to see Gannets from the castle. They make Bass Rock look almost white which is no doubt the result of the combined effect of their plumage and the guano. Eider ducks can also be seen,often close to the shore line.

The demise of the castle came during the Civil War when Cromwell sent two to three thousand troops led by General Monck along with much of the artillery located in Scotland, to lay siege to Tantallon. After twelve days of bombardment with cannon a breach was made in the Douglas Tower. The defenders were compelled to surrender. After the siege Tantallon was left in ruins and it was never repaired or inhabited thereafter.

Climbing Corydalis and The Watch Tower Ninewells Wood

Climbing Corydalis is a delicate little plant it is sort of an annual but it can live longer than a year and often germinates in late Autumn and I have seen it flowering during the winter so it is a bit ‘all over the place’ which also describes its way of growing. It spreads and can climb but it needs help, by the watch tower it is sort of extending up the sides but it is not an out and out climber. It has compound leaves which do have little tendrils on the ends but they are not that strong. The flowers are small and creamy white, it is related closely to the fumitories and has a similar almost pea shaped flower. It grows in shaded woodland and is often found on walls that are shady and surrounding woodland, There is a lot of it in places along the tops of the walls at Ninewells wood but it also grows on the woodland floor especially if there is no competing taller vegetation like Bracken. There is more about Climbing Corydalis in my book Woodland Wild Flowers.

Surrounding parts of Ninewells wood in Monmouthshire there is a substantial wall and located at the top corner looking out towards the Bristol Channel and the Severn Bridges there is a small circular tower.

Now some say these walls and the tower were constructed by Napoleonic prisoners of war and others say it was Italian PoW’s from the second world war. However, I have not been able to find any hard evidence for either possibility. What I have found is that there were Napoleonic PoW’s in Abergavenny and that is the nearest place to Ninewells wood that I have found. Abergavenny is some distance away and given that transport was not very speedy back then, it makes me think that the Napoleonic connection is somewhat tenuous. On the other hand there were a lot of second world war PoW camps in the area. There was one at Chepstow at a camp called the Mount and that had 197 occupants. Also there were 3 camps in Abergavenny, Claremont housing 29, Mardy housing 118 and Llanover Park Camp housing 200 and of course transporting men from further afield was more possible in the 1940’s. I do not know if the PoW’s were Italian or maybe German.

The story is that the tower was constructed so that an overseer could keep watch on the prisoners as they constructed the other walls which mark out the fields to the south and west of Ninewells wood. The walls are certainly well constructed and quite thick, they do have some trees growing out of them

Paul Chamberlain, author of ‘Hell Upon Water: Prisoners of War in Britain 1793-1815’ said: “The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars represented something of a watershed for European combat, as they were the first major conflicts during which large numbers of surrendering troops were taken prisoner rather than slaughtered.

“From 1793 until 1814, over 200,000 French and French allies were held as PoWs, and whilst it’s impossible to put a definite figure on it, several thousand of them would have been held in Wales.

“But the story that they built some of the walls in the area is a local myth, as PoWs were not used on construction projects as it took work away from the civilian workforce.”

There is a good web site about The walls of the Wye Valley and in this it is suggested that the walls near Ninewells wood may be the work of Monks from Tintern Abbey. The stones used in the construction of the walls and tower are all faced and the ones in the tower have a curved exterior which would have taken some time and skill to produce. The question is why was the tower constructed if it was not a watch tower to oversee prisoners? Could it have been used as a beacon for a fire to light up and transmit a messages regarding an invasion? It is located in a position where it could be seen from a long way off..

There are quite a few references to walls being constructed by prisoners of war but it is all conjecture based on earlier references and I have not found any firm evidence. What I can say is that the walls and the tower are very well constructed and apart from some damage to the tower, the walls are in good condition suggesting either a high degree of maintenance or that they are not that old. Also there are some trees growing close to or out of the wall however none look to be more than 50 years old. Also the number of species growing on the walls and tower are not that extensive. There are a few grasses and Polypody Fern, some Sorrel and Climbing Corydalis.

Pellitory of the Wall and Baltimore bay.

Pellitory of the Wall is an odd sort of name but it does indicate that this plant is almost always associated with walls. The pellitory part comes from peletre which is Old French or piretre, also from Latin pyrethrum, from Greek purethron, and from pur fire, due to hot pungent taste of the root

This one was growing out of a harbour wall in Baltimore southern Ireland however it is not found just by the coast but often inland.. I have seen it growing out of old castle walls, I have seen it in southern France and in some Roman ruins in Spain . It also grows close to my home, out of the walls of Tintern Abbey.

Its scientific name is Parietaria judaica, and it has a couple of common names, spreading pellitory or pellitory of the wall. This is a herbaceous perennial and is in the nettle family Urticacae, its flowers are quite similar to those of the Stinging nettle though they are red in colour.. The plant’s pollen is highly allergenic and can cause asthma, in fact in Australia its common name is Asthma weed.

Baltimore is at the very tip of Ireland , next stop the Fastnet Lighthouse and then America; the Titanic sailed past this last point of land on the south coast of Ireland on 11th April 1912. Some of the passengers would no doubt have been on deck looking out as Ireland disappeared into the distance, and for many it was the last sight of land they would ever see. It had set sail from Queenstown which is just outside Cork at around 1.30pm on 11th April. I say around 1.30 because some accounts say 1.30pm, others say 1.40pm and some even 1.55pm. Given that this crossing was also going to be an attempt to break the record for a transatlantic journey I would have thought and accurate record of the exact start time was a prerequisite. It made a brief stop at the Daunt Lightship so that the local pilot could disembark and then it was full steam ahead. It would have probably passed Baltimore just about one hour later.

(Baltimore is on the coast due south of Bantry)

Had you been stood by this wall that is just a short distance along from the harbour at Baltimore you probably would not have seen the Titanic, your view would have been blocked but had you walked on a short distance up to the beacon then you almost certainly would have seen her out in the distance, on route for the Fastnet Light house and then the broad Atlantic ocean.

However a lot would have depended on the visibility, on the day I went up to the beacon you would not have spotted a rowing boat one hundred yards off shore, though I suspect most rowing boats would have not ventured out in that weather.

Red Valerian and the Mushet Iron Foundry

The plant growing out of the side of the furnace is a pink version of Red Valerian which may also be white. It is often found near the coast and it is not uncommon to see it growing out of sea cliffs. Although regularly to be found in walls this is not exclusively the case. It is a perennial and some of the leaves usually remain throughout the winter. In spring it returns to grow up into its branching form, reaching a height of about seventy-five centimetres. Flowering starts from early May and continues right through to October. The flowers are quite striking, especially the dark magenta ones. They have five petals which then fuse into a tube and extend back into a long spur. This suggests that pollination is carried out by insects with long tongues. I have seen the hummingbird hawk moth, Macroglossum stellatarum visiting these flowers. They are quite fragrant which will also help to attract the moths.

David Mushet( 1772 – 1845) was an expert in iron and steel. He was born in Scotland but moved down to Gloucestershire and the Forest of Dean after a stint at Alfreton in Derbyshire. He was brought in by one Thomas Halford who had built two coke fired furnaces at Whitecliff. These early furnaces which pre dated the famous Bessemer converters involved feeding iron ore and coke in at the top. Gradually the material worked its way down getting hotter and hotter until molten iron and slag came out at the bottom. The iron went into sand moulds and formed what were known as pigs of cast iron. Originally iron had been made with charcoal in the Forest of Dean but this later process used the local coal. However the Forest of Dean coal did not produce good coke and the production at Whitecliff was never profitable. Eighty tons of iron ore and a hundred and twenty tons of coke only produced twenty tons of pig iron. Mushet could see that the process was not economically viable and his partnership with Halford was terminated but he went on to develop the nearby Dark Hill Iron Works which was where a lot of research was carried out. He was succeeded by his youngest son Robert who had success in improving the Bessemer process and developing the worlds first highspeed special steels incorporating Tungsten. The Bessemer Process produced poor quality steel, his improvement involved burning off impurities and introducing carbon and manganese. This had the effect of improving the quality of the finished product, increasing its malleability and its ability to withstand rolling and forging at high temperatures. However it was Bessemer who took the credit and indeed a knighthood and Mushet just got a pension from Bessemer, basically to buy him off.