Tag: Baltimore

Walls and Flowers; conception to fruition

Well it all started in Baltimore which is a village at the very southern most tip of Ireland. Next stop USA. I was on holiday with my wife and some good friends Carol and David and we developed the idea.

There are two strands to the conception. One is that both David and I have gardens surrounded by and containing old walls, however the walls round my garden are blessed with numerous plants growing from the cracks and crevices. David’s walls are however fairly bare or at least they were at that stage and we were discussing the walls in Baltimore which have a good mix of various ferns and wild flowers sprouting from them. The conversation ranged through the reasons why David’s walls were less populated than mine, how he might improve that situation, what type of plants favour walls and why and how to introduce plants to walls.

The second strand to the conception regarded publication of books and David was enquiring how my book on Woodland Wildflowers was doing and he also knew I was writing a second one about Coastal Wildflowers and wanted to know where that one was. Well that one is a bit stalled as the publishers were unsure as to whether Coastal Wildflowers was a cohesive grouping and if it were then how interested folks might be and they had asked me to wait some time to see how book one gets on and so I was somewhat in limbo. David said what about Wall flowers? a quirky sort of subject can capture peoples imagination, the classic example is the book about Log piles by the Norwegian writer Lars Mytting, which has to date sold 175,000 copies!

So it was chewed over and various plants and of course some ferns came to mind, several species actually have ‘wall’ in their name and one that was the growing in the Baltimore area was Pellitory of the Wall. I guessed that there were a good 50 or so plants which are often found in close association with walls. Then another idea developed, David is a great ideas man. I am not sure if this second idea was his or mine it just developed and it was that an element of the book should be about the walls. Each plant should be photographed growing from a wall which would then be described and form part of each chapter of the book, so it would be 50 plants and 50 walls. Famous walls could be visited photographed and written about. Very soon a list of walls was developing some sensible and some more fanciful. Obvious contenders were Hadrian’s Wall, The Tower of London, famous churches, bridges, gardens etc, more fanciful were Wall Street and the Great Wall of China. No it had to be British and Irish walls and the plants growing out of them.

This was all back in May and the first photos were of the Pellitory of the Wall growing out of the harbour walls round Baltimore. Subsequently I have developed this blog and visited various locations around the country, like Hadrian’s Wall, Verulamium, Tintern Abbey and a place called Wall which is in Staffordshire along with quite a few others. I have decided on which plants need to be included and it is actually about 60 different species, I have also written a few background articles such as one about the Wall environment another about wall animals and there are a few others lined up.

Progress has stalled a bit now as it is Autumn and most wall plants are Spring and Summer flowers. I have though contacted the publishers, Merlin Unwin, to see what they think of the idea. I sent them some sample pages, about 25, the same as they required when I first contacted them about my book Woodland Wildflowers. I sent this submission off on 9th September so now its wait a see time. There is a lot of wait and see in the publishing game I have discovered !

As for the fruition well however it turns out I will complete the exercise, publishing is just the icing on the cake, What I enjoy is the searching out the flowers, the photography and in this case researching the walls, their history, construction and everything about them. I want a good range of walls not all ruins and churches, so its some new and some old, some famous and some just odd. I want to find a wall with an old Walls Ice Cream advert on it and then an interesting plant next to it. Should keep me busy.

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.