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00:00:00 All we know about our vegetation is due to a Swiss botanist Joias Braun Blanquet. What he did was he made himself a meter-by-meter quadrat and just chucked it over his shoulder and went and analyzed groups of vegetation in that area and that’s why we have Calaminarian grasslands. He didn’t just count the numbers, he saw how they grew in clumps or singularly, and I think in his lifetime he did 35,000 of these. He was born in 1884 and died in 1980, he had an amazing life. So, if I look at this area here, this is called Mesotrophic pasture-land. Mesotrophic means moderately nutrient. If you look up there where the range falls down we have acid soil, all the nutrients have been taken out so it’s less lush, nutrient rich. The interesting thing about this walk is that you can see everything, really in a few meters, but you are a bit early actually, because the plants will be at there best in about a month’s time. 00:01:40 The classic plant here funnily enough is a grass Arrhenatherum Elatis | False Oat Grass. If you are so inclined by the end of the summer all of these plants will be covered in the fungus ergot, which the witches of Salem went wild on. That’s what got in their oats and caused the poor ladies of Salem to be burned. So what you could do with Braun Blanquet is you could sit him down here and he would have a quick look at the plants and he could tell you all the plants that would grow here because he has classified them and said what’s here. 00:02:42 The little boys call this knob head, because they put them into their catapults and fire them at the girls. They are really hard when they are new. Centaurea Nigra | Common Knapweed the name comes from the Centaur Chiron, who used the flowers as a poultice to cover a festering wound made by an arrow dipped in Hydra’s blood. The wound was cured. 00:03:06 Here we have a plant that would have been a very common sight during WW1 and WW11 bomb-sites. This is called the Fireweed because of its readiness to colonize sites that have been burnt out, but I think it grows anywhere really Chamerion Angustifolium | Rosebay Willow-herb. 00:04:06 You have missed the Primrose | Primula Vulgaris but it tells a tale you see even in its name the first rose of Spring. It has been the first flower and gone. 00:04:27 Today we will learn quite a bit, Ranna is the Latin word for a frog so Ranunculus
ACRIS | Meadow Buttercup was named after where frogs are found in damp meadows. 00:05:14 And growing amongst them is a plant that would have been around long before humans, long before the dinosaurs Equisetum Sylvaticum | Horse Tail. It would have been growing the size of trees in ancient times. And this is the worrying thing a lot of plants were named in the wrong locations. Sylvesters means of the woods, but there’s no woods around here, Equus is horse and Setum is tail. Let’s walk 0:06:20 This is an unusual plant because it has only just started on a bit. to grow here. We have lived here for over 30 years and we have not seen it before now so its just been recently introduced. Normally you would see it along damp hedge rows Geum Rivale | Water Avens. Most people know it as Billy’s buttons named after somebody’s tummy button, can you see? Some people say it was named after the button on a sailors jacket. 00:07:22 And you have come at the best time of the year for the Geraniums. Geranium Sylvaticum | Woodland Cranes-Bill. Not in seed yet. Geranius is the Greek word for a Crane. All Geraniums are Cranesbills. The seeds behave like spring catapults when its time to disperse them. 00:07:50 Bellas PereNNIS | Daisy. Bellis is beautiful, Perellus is pe00:08:15 This is one of my favorite rennial, hence the perennial beauty. plants Lotus Corniculatus | Bird’s-Foot Trefoil. It’s common name is Bacon and Eggs, because its red and yellow some times. 00:09:12 You must have seen the Mountain Pansy in flower since you were here? It’s scientific name is Viola lutae and lutae means yellow. It was first described when no one saw a purple plant it was all yellow. So your calling a purple plant Viola Lutae yellow - it is crazy. But, I love the story of the Viola, it is a Pansy really. The common name would be Pansy and Pansy comes from the French word Ponsea, which translates as a lovers thought and if you know your Shakespeare we know it was a Pansy squeezed into eye of Lysander. The first person he saw when he woke up was Helen who he fell madly in love with. 00:10:55 I don’t know if we will see much of this plant so we better look for it here Filipendula Ulmaria | Meadow Sweet. Filipendula means the plant with the hairy danglers. Kids love that name. Its flowers are really quite hairy and dangly. A fantastic
plant in the scent. Crushed and used to make mead. When dried, people also put it under their mattresses because it kept the bugs down. They also spread it over their floors dried so that when they walked on it they got this beautiful herbal scent coming out. 00:12:15 Gallium is an interesting word. Gala is the Latin word for milk. The first flowers were pure white, milk white so they were given the name Gallium. But some people say farmers called them Gallium because where ever you had these plants growing you were sure to have good milk. This was a much-revered plant because if you look, every leaf section and every flower is a cross, so people considered this a very holy plant. In flower, they were taken into houses as protection from evil spirits. Galium CruciatA | Crosswort. Cruciate means cross. 00:13:22 It is hard to believe that the Mimulus Guttatus | Monkey Plant has only being in this country since 1924, it has virtually taken over these waterways. When its beautiful yellow flowers open they are supposed to look like a monkeys mouth. 00:13:53 There are lots of Cuckoo flower’s, because when some one saw a flower and heard the cuckoo at the same time they said right this flower flowers when the cuckoo makes its noise so we will call it the Cuckoo flower. Also known as Lady’s Smock | Cardamine Pratensis and lady with a capital L because people regarded it so pretty that they thought it might be the same colour as the Virgin Mary’s smock. 00:14:59 Classic hay meadow plant Rhinanthus minor | Yellow Rattle. The seeds are not out yet but the flowers are, look. Rhino is the Greek word for a nose, anthus flower, the nose shaped flower. The seeds when ripe were used as a baby’s rattle be00:15:52 They are some flowers cause when gently shaken they rattled. left of the Marsh Marigold. Mari means Mary so it’s the Virgin Mary’s Gold Flower named after the Virgin Mary. Mari is always Mary, often called the King’s Cup | Caltha Palustris. Palustris is Latin for of the marsh and indicates the type of habitat as to where you might find this flower growing. 00:16:50 Valerian officinalis | Valerian. You can grind up its roots, which is then brewed as a tea, drink it and you can drift of into paradise. That would have been a really good cure-all in olden days.
comes into flower it goes through a magnificent purple and then through all shades of brown right through to the Autumn. Super thing to have in a bucket in a garden. The rabbits love it. 00:22:00 Do you see this yellow flower Potentilla Erecta | Tormentil. Potentilla means all powerful despite its small size and is a reference to the claimed medicinal value of this plant. Boil it in yews milk, why you have to use ewe’s milk, I don’t know, it relieves the torment of the stomach. 00:22:46 Nothing was wasted in older days so when your candle burned down you caught all of the wax from the candle and then you sent the children out to gather rushes and they would carefully (it’s too early to peel them now) but as you peel them inside you get a sponge and then you would soak those in the old candle wax and they would sit them in a pot on the mantle, put them in the fire and would burn beautiful and you would light your pipe with them. Rush lights. Juncus effusus | Soft Rush or Common Rush. 00:23:53 Plants around here often make hillocks to avoid the nasty acid situation. They will get the rain but not the nasty acid, but then they also do not absorb the nutrients so it is a constant struggle for them. Anthoxanthum Odoratum | Sweet Vernal Grass. This is a muchloved plant by farmers, it makes lovely hay. But now there is very little of this plant left in grazed meadows here as it is the first plant that the sheep will go at. 00:24:52 Up here the only plants that grow are plants that can manage on the minimum of nutrients and this is a famous one Nardus Stricta | Matt-Grass. I like it. When it flowers all of these will look like perfect hair cones. This common plant indicates poor soil in general. 00:25:53 Juncus Squarrosus | Heath Rush, never grows much bigger then that and also the perfect indicator of soil with low nutrients. Probably, very few people ever notice it. 00:26:22 The common grass of this area Deschampsia Flexuosa | Wavy Hair-Grass. If you were to drop Braun Blanquet and he saw this plant here he would be able to tell you every other plant that you would expect to find here growing alongside this plant because this is a fixed community. He could even probably tell what quantities or percentages that would grow. The plant community of Britain is very organized. 00:27:10 My wife found one of these the other day
and she dug it up and ate one and said it was one of the tastiest things she ate in a long time Conopodium Majus | Pignut. There is a round nut at the base of the stem. This would have been popular food fed to pigs. 00:28:06 Now I am trying to remember this one! It kills horses Senecio jacobaea | Ragwort. It’s scientific name means old man. Why it means old man I don’t really know? 00:28:56 Here’s a poisonous plant Atropa Bella-donna | Nightshade. I don’t know why it is there. Its been there for as long as I can remember. Their normal habitat would be almost confined to calcareous soils, waste places, quarries and near old ruins. 00:29:07 One of the prettiest flowers we have here, and you are about to see a lot more Pedicularis Sylvatica | Lousewort hated by farmers because they thought it gave the cows lice and they would clear it completely from the fields and other people thought it was used to cure lice but that’s not correct at all. 00:30:25 This would have been the size of a tree in ancient time Lycopodium annotinum | Clubmoss. This comes from the time beyond the dinosaurs, some of the first land plants. It is quite rare and you have just managed to see some new growth. At one time that would have been a plant that dominated earth growing many meters tall. 00:32:16 We are a bit early for orchids, but here we have LISTERA Ovate | Twayblade meaning two leaves. We might see more down here. It dose not have a flower. 00:32:49 Thymus Polytrichus | Wild Thyme a much used herb. 00:32:59 Here we are, this is what I have been searching for Pilosella officinarum | MouseEar Hawkweed. Everyone thinks it is a dandelion but it is not. It has the nicest colour of all the Hawkweeds - lemon yellow, these are quite rare to find. 00:33:22 There’s some Tussilago Farfara | Colts Foot left over. It’s not flowering now. It is called a Colts Foot because its leaves are like a horses foot. It was used to cure coughs and still is to this day and 00:34:44 The miners used this plant as an to make cough drops. eyewash that’s why it is called Euphrasia | Eyebright. The miners sight suffered badly when they were working down in the mines, so they would make a special decoction from this plant for their eyes. 00:35:16 I am so happy here it is Briza Media | Quaking Grass. Briza earns the name
Quaking grass because the flower and seed heads tremble on their stalks with the wind. 00:35:30 I have been looking out for this all along, but at last I have found one Carex dIGITATA | Fingered Sedge. It is not a grass. You can always tell a Carex because if you roll the stem in your fingers, feel, they have triangular stems. 00:37:10 Here, remember we were talking about this earlier Alchemilla Vulgaris | Lady’s Mantle. Now, here is a story. Obviously it’s called a Lady’s Mantle because its like what Queen Elizabeth would have worn around her neck – a mantle. The head would be there, you’ve seen pictures of Queen Elizabeth? Unfortunately, It’s been too dry but after damp nights you would find drops of liquid all around the edges. These are thought to be drops of dew, which the leaves exude. And of course in ancient times that was thought to have been very magical. All sorts of remedies and mixes were made from the drops of dew. But the most famous one of all was if a cow went sick the farmer would have been sure it would have been shot by a fairy’s arrow. How they knew that I don’t know, but what you would do is you would call an elf to come help although you couldn’t see the elf. You would get a bucket of water from three different streams and then you would put several drops of the collected dew into the buckets of water. Some copper coins, some silver coins and an arrowhead And then you would give the cow three sips. Only three sips mind. Why three sips, I don’t know. It would cure the cow. How about that for a complex story! 00:40:37 There is also a good story that goes with this plant Myosotis Arvensis | Field Forget-MeKnots. It got its name in Mediaeval times in France. A soldier had come home from the war to woo his loved one. He thought he should give her a flower. So he picked that lovely blue plant there and as he was picking it he fell into the river and as he had his armour on he sank really fast. He threw the blue flower at her and he shouted in French Myosotis, which means Forget-Me-Knot. She caught the flowers and since then they have carried 00:42:40 Lets go down here, there might be some minuartia this name. growing. There it is Minuartia Verna | Spring Sandwort. This one can especially tolerate heavy metals. Other plants of this type include the Mountain pansy, Thyme and Eyebright, which we have seen. They are
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Valerian in Latin Valere means to be in good health.
00:17:37 People don’t
like thistles. Here is one of my favorites, it is also an evil flower. Cirisum palustre | Thistle of the Marsh and it is hard to believe but this has all grown since April. It is a biannual so it only lives for two years. Can you see how it’s putting the leaves out to block all the light and kill everything around it and then next year it will flower. It is making the ground for next year’s growth. Just shows how clever plants really are. 00:18:30 These are Plantains Plantago lanceolata | Ribwort Plantain. Lanceolata because its lance shape but there are many other forms. Ground up into a paste they make a very good soothing ointment for curing sores used quite commonly around here. All of the plantains can be used this way. Farmers also fed this plant to their animals in particular sheep and the seeds were often used to lay down meadows. 00:19:05 Now here’s a well known and lovely plant Cochlearia dancia | Danish Scurvy Grass. It is very rich in vitamin C and used as its name suggest to treat scurvy. It could be found growing on the tops of cliffs, in sand dunes and on sea-walls, and between cracks in the pavements of coastal towns and sometimes found growing on the ballast of railway lines. Notice the shape of the leaves they really do look like small ears and waxy to the touch. 00:19:40 I hope you are in time for another plant usually it grows up here somewhere. Yes, here it is, just coming into leaf. Crush them and smell. It’s the stink bomb plant. Stachys Sylvatica | Hedge Wound-Wort. The smell you’ve got is a liquid alkaloid an incredible blood clotting staunch. This plant came to fame a long time ago when a field worker sliced his leg to the bone bleeding to death. But someone who knew this plant went and gathered lots and lots of it, stuffed it into his wound and wrapped a shirt around it. The wound healed within minutes and the man survived. I’m glad I know where it is, because if I cut myself I can save my life. I tell the children it is called the 00:20:18 This grass is Stink-bomb plant and they don’t forget it. Holcus Lanatus | Yorkshire Fog when it comes more into flower it looks like a mist all over the ground, you can begin to see it even now. People neglect grasses. You can see we are coming into a very different area now. All the nutrients have dissolved because of the acid soil. 00:21:20 Here we have Molinia CaeruleA | Purple Headed Moor Grass once it
known as metallophyte plants. The interesting thing about these plants is that they depend on nutrient poor conditions. Any change in terms of possible soil enrichment would result in their loss from the site. So they are very vulnerable to changing land conditions. Another reason why they grow in this area is down to lack of competition - if you can grow where others can’t you will survive [...]. Notes Edited transcription of a walk recorded with botanist Alan Donaldson in conversation with artist Christine Mackey, 22 of June 2016, Allenheads. Created during the ‘As Above So Below’ project, 2016 at ACA, Allenheads Contemporary Arts. Funded by Arts Council England, North Pennines AONB Partnership, Active Northumberland, Newcastle University and with additional support for the artist under The Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award. 1 Meter-square play’s upon the construction of alternative histories based on the often incidental and changing propagation of plants, land-use and human intervention. This work is devised in 3 parts:1). Unique foldout guide, which the public can circulate and retain; 2). Slide-projection of identified plants that were found by the botanist Alan Davidson with the artist on-site at Allendales. Some of these plants exist on Calamarian grasslands, a relatively recently formed habitat, found on old river gravel deposits that were once contaminated by waste from historic mining. Aware of the vulnerability of many of these and other plants, Mackey sourced scanned plant images from an on-line digitized herbarium, and 3). Text installation that lists the scientific and common names of the plants and their current ecological status in Britain. Between these three parts a correspondence is set up through the timed reference numbers in the text fold-out guide e.g. (00:23:53) etc., the plant images and the wall poster text. In Europe in the early 20th Century, most vegetation scientists were occupied by classification of vegetation. Most famous was Josias Bruan Blanquet (1884-1980). He developed methods of community sampling, data reduction, association nomenclature. Cooperated with Rübel in Switzerland to develop an approach to plant synecology (plant community classification) called the Zurich Montpellier. He founded a research station at Montpellier, France called the Station Internationale de Geobotanique Mediterrenne et Alpine (SIGMA). Alan Donaldson lives in Allenheads. He is an experienced teacher and botanists who graduated with a degree at Durham University where he was taught plant identification by Professor David Bellamy. Christine Mackey is based at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Ireland. She employs a diverse range of creative disciplines, subject matter and tactics to explore the interactive potential of art as a research and pedagogical tool that informs social and environmental change. Recent projects include: As Above So Below, ACA, Allenheads/MigAA, Berlin; Delfina Foundation, London; Agora Collective, Berlin; Utopiana Genève, Switzerland; AC Institute, New York and, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Ireland.
www.acart.org.uk www.christinemackey.com Artist edition: 100 ISBN: 978-0-9928880-2-2 Publisher: Drift-Editions 1meter-square © Christine Mackey 2016
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