Working in the garden on an unexpectedly sunny October weekend, I found myself surrounded by bees and butterflies, and perfectly delightful it was too. All of the photos in this post were taken this weekend. Last year my flower planting strategy had failed to produce a sufficiently colourful and insect-supporting display during autumn, so right at the beginning of spring, with a lot on my plate at the time, I used every small gap in my days to plant autumn-flowering species. The great dollops of colour and the endless flow of butterflies and bees, assisted by a mild October, feel like a very generous reward for lugging around bags of compost and for feeding them my dad’s “magic mix” of three parts bonemeal to one part Q4 mycorrhizal. Now, when the summer species and particularly the buddleias have gone over, there is plenty to keep the flying insects fully sustained.
The autumn-flowering aster (also known as Michaelmass) daisies and Purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) have been the real successes, growing fast and densely, bright domes of colour all over the garden, attracting huge numbers of bees and butterflies. The multi-coloured dahlias, yellow-petalled rudebeckias, purple-blue tradescantias and tall, elegant pink windflowers (Japanese anemones) are all still doing well. Ivy flowers, clusters of pale yellow pom-poms, are also popular with butterflies, bees and ladybirds. This cheerful floral mix is supplemented by lingering lupins, phlox and roses, which have done their fair share too. The succulent-leaved Hylotelephium, which we used to call ice plants when I was a child, are still in flower, but although they were smothered with butterflies and bees only a couple of weeks ago, they are now being ignored. —
Comma on Verbena bonariensis
I spotted two bright commas (Polygonia c-album), with their deeply indented lace-edged wings, a few fluttering large whites (Pieris brassicae, also known as cabbage whites), a small white (Pieris rapae) , and a luminous yellow brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni, which has been quite rare in the garden this year), and a single painted lady, but otherwise the butterfly scene was dominated by an astonishing number of red admirals (Vanessa atalanta) and small tortoisehells (Aglais urticae). Apart from the red admiral, the above-mentioned are native species. The red admirals were clustered mainly on the aster daisies, whilst the tortoiseshells were staying mainly on the Purpletop vervain (Verbena bonerensis).
Large white on Verbena bonariensis
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Brimstone, cunningly disguised as a yellow leaf, on a very late surviving phlox
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Red admiral on aster daisy
The red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) is one of a number of butterfly species that breed twice in a year. They are visitors to the British Isles, arriving in spring and throughout the summer. They breed here in the summer. They lay their eggs on young stinging nettles, the leaves of which provide sustenance for the caterpillar before it becomes a chrysalis and emerges, with damp wings that need spreading to dry, into a British summer. The caterpillar emerges from the egg on the upper side of the leaf, and binds its edges together with silk, consuming it from the inside out, before moving on to a fresh leaf. The butterfly can emerge at any time from May to October. I lost control of part of the garden earlier this year, under a bramley right at the back, and had a patch of stinging nettles that were taller than me, which is also shared with an unusual type of aster plant with stems that are also taller than me. I took up the nettles some weeks ago, but this is where the red admirals are clustering right now. Although I didn’t see any red admirals on fallen apples, these are usually very popular with the species, so it is a good idea to leave some if you have red admirals in your garden.
Small tortoiseshell on a barely visible Verbena bonariensis
The tortoiseshell is a native hibernating species that is also known from all over and further afield. Like the red admiral, the caterpillar is happy on stinging nettles, where the eggs are laid on the underside of leaves. They breed twice a year, emerging as early as March and again in August. They can usually be seen until October. This weekend Verbena bonarensis was the only plant in which they were showing any interest. It is not everyone’s idea of a good garden plant because a small purple head grows on a very tall stem, but I love it. It is easy to grow, and spreads itself like crazy, so you never really know where it is going to turn up next, although shaking a seed head in a general area usually works. Fortunately, they pull out very easily if they turn up where you don’t want them, and don’t mind being replanted elsewhere if you do it immediately and provide lots of water.
The bees, less discriminating than the butterflies, were taking advantage of any flower that showed its face, but were particularly in love with the aster daisies. I have never got to grips with the different types of bees, but there was an impressive mixture of the streamlined and the furry. The many hardy fuchsias, the Himalayan honeysuckle and the delicate salvia “hot-lips” are doing a great job providing colour and supporting the bees, but do not provide an accessible platform for the butterflies. Fuchsias, from south and central America were traditionally pollinated by hummingbirds, and we are a bit short of those around here, but the bees do a great job. There were a small handful of hover flies but the only wasp I saw was the submarine-sized monster trying to find somewhere to over-winter in my living room.
Bee upside down on Himalayan honeysuckle
Bumble bee on an aster daisy
As I was tidying up the patio plants, I noticed that there was an army of caterpillars eating their way through my nasturtium leaves (just a little annoying, because apart from ruining the aesthetics, I use the leaves in salad). They turn out to be from the Large White butterfly, and are apparently notorious for targetting nasturtium leaves, as well as cabbages. A tough time of year for them to be starting new lives. They spend the winter in chrysalis form, ready to emerge in the spring. Large whites are native, but their numbers can be supplemented by migrants from Europe.
October always has the feeling of impending doom about it, with the run-up to the clocks going back, the garden flowers dying off, and the arrival of dark mornings, dark evenings and cold, wet, windy winters with damp leaves rotting underfoot. I was truly not designed for a British winter. It has therefore been particularly uplifting to see the life still fizzing in the garden so late in the year, like a reprieve, with butterflies and bees adding movement and sound to complement the late season colour.
Red admiral on a tradescantia bloom
In this era of global warming, a British summer is a moveable feast and it will be interesting to see how butterfly species adapt either by tolerating new conditions or moving to new areas. The Butterfly Conservation organization has a number of programmes dedicated to the collection of such data from the general public in the hope of tracking some of these responses to environmental change. Red admirals, like other migrant species die in the winter. Traditionally Britain has simply been too cold for them to survive the winter frosts, but that may change, and we may see some news species heading northwards, but let’s hope that we don’t suffer too many losses.
For planting for flying insects, and extending seasons for their use at the beginning and end of the year, see Seabrook’s The Insect Garden (see Sources below for full details).
Red admiral, comma and ladybirds, all sharing the spoils of ivy flowers
Painted lady
Sources:
Books and papers
Carter, D. 1982. Butterflies and Moths in Britain and Europe. Pan Books in association with the British Museum
Holden, P. and Abbott, G. 2017 (2nd edition). RSPB Handbook of Garden Wildlife. Bloomsbury Publishing
Mansell, E. and Newman, L.H. 1968. The Complete British Butterflies in Colour. Ebury Press and Michael Joseph
Seabrook, M.J. 2020. The Insect Garden. The Best Plants for Bees and Bumblebees, Butterflies, Hoverflies and Other Insects. Northern Bee Books
A beautiful day all day yesterday, and it was lovely today too, right up until the skies opened. Fortunately, by that time the chilli con carne was in the slow cooker and the log fire was doing its stuff most effectively.
Just a few snaps from the garden, capturing some of that crisp contrast between the white lace of the frost, with all its snowflake complexity, and the autumnal shades and shapes, framed, captured and transformed.
As soon as the sun crept around the corner of the house, the frost started to melt, its drips capturing a myriad of colours. For the first time since I put them out a couple of weeks ago, the bird feeders were a hub of activity, a reflection of just how hard the ground is.
A large group of jackdaws is currently reigning supreme in my garden. They appeared about six weeks ago, and are here every late morning when they spread out across my lawn and forage in the grass and occasionally the flower beds, usually in harmony with one another, but occasionally with minor internal disputes. Their relationships with other wildlife in the garden is rather less amiable, but on the whole mutual caution seems to rule. The most I counted in one go was 16 jackdaws, but there are rarely less than 10. A group of this sort is known as a train or clattering. One or two individuals sometimes return in the afternoon, but the jackdaws only visit my lawn en masse in the late morning.
The jackdaw is, at first glance, a large, and undistinguished black bird much like a crow, but when observed more closely is a rather beautiful thing. It has remarkable silver eyes that stand out against the black pupils. The head and beak are black, but the hood, nape and neck are silvery-charcoal, like a mane, which becomes pure silver in bright sunlight. They have a self-important rocking-horse motion, but walk one leg at a time, rather than bouncing along on both legs like smaller birds. Their skinny-looking legs are well able to support their large bodies during periods of extensive walking over the expanse of the lawn. They use their wings to supplement their legs to pick up speed when seeing off transgressors or moving a safe distance away from their more aggressive family members. Young jackdaws have brown irises that only become silver grey as they become more mature.
Jackdaws (Corvus monedula) are part of the same 120-species corvid family as crows, ravens, rooks, magpies, and jays, and are the smallest member of that family in the UK, at about 34cm long. Carl Linnaeus provided the name “monedula,” deriving from the Latin word for money, and chosen for the brightness of the things that the jackdaw, like the magpie, is fond of collecting. Every creature on the planet owes its two-part Latin formal name to Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). Biologists have since elaborated this system, and now rely on DNA to establish relationships, but Linnaeus provided them with the basics of the taxonomy that we continue to use.
Sometimes all one can see is the bird’s rear end, because the head is so deeply and busily buried in the grass. Like other members of the corvid family, jackdaws are omnivores. Whatever they are plucking out of my lawn and flower beds is probably insect life, like leather jackets, worms, beetles, caterpillars and ants. They are also partial to slugs and small snails, and and supplement their diet with fruit and seeds. Jackdaws also steal the eggs and offspring of smaller birds and, like all corvids, will eat carrion when they find it. The diversity of their diet has helped their numbers to rise in Britain.
Many insect eaters can derive most of their water requirement from this food, and I have not yet seen them (or magpies) drink from any of the bird baths in the garden which the other bird species use frequently, even large ones like pigeons and doves. They may, of course, be sourcing their liquids from outside the garden.
They don’t sing; they squawk and chatter. It is often a rather disharmonious sound, unappealing to the human ear, nothing like the blissful melodies of the blackbird or thrush. You can hear a sample on the British Birdsong website here, or the RSPB website here.
Birds that form lifelong monogamous relationships often have the largest brains, relative to their body size, and they are certainly smart, regularly defeating my small-birds-only weight-detecting winter bird feeder, using every form of trickery at their disposal, including flapping wings madly to hold position whilst poking their heads through the hole to reach the bird seed. In the days when milkmen left bottles with foil caps by front doors, jackdaws were notorious for pecking through the foil to get to the creamy milk within, thereby rendering themselves seriously unpopular by contaminating and ruining the milk.
There is no externally visible difference between the male and female. Jackdaws breed between April and June, raising one brood each year. Their nests are untidy. They simply fill a hole or recess with sticks, and line it with wool, hair, string or grass and weeds. A 2021 research paper found that although a pair will behave similarly and generally cooperate to build their nests, their roles are not identical. Females contribute more to the build of the nest, and call more frequently, but the males are more assiduous guardians of the nest once it is built. The eggs are blue-grey with dark speckles. Once the eggs are laid in separate batches, usually up to a maximum of six or seven per nest, more usually four or five, they are incubated for up to 20 days. They hatch at different times, with the oldest having a much better chance of survival than the youngest. The female tends the nest whilst the male sources food and brings it to the female and the chicks. The chicks remain in the nest for up to five weeks, before leaving the nest and learning to fly and feed for themselves.
Jackdaws on chimneys in Cornwall. Source: Hudson 1908
In the title of the post I referred to my garden as the realm of this particular group of jackdaws, because as far as I can tell two generations of the family have been born in one of my chimney pots. One of the colloquial names for the jackdaw is the “chimney bird” due to their affinity for this particular type of home, which are becoming less available to them year by year, due to chimney caps and central heating. Fortunately, as well as chimneys and holes in roofs, they also like rock shelves, cliff faces, tree holes and the abandoned nests of bigger birds. Some will even nest in abandoned rabbit burrows.
The chimney at the front of my house, together with that section of the slate-tiled roof, formed the hub of their activities when the nest was still occupied, but they still use it as a home base, where they can sit and bicker and gather their energies for the next foray into my garden or, in the afternoons, into the field over the road. Right now, in mid June, the noise in the chimney is confined to mornings and early evenings, meaning that the youngsters are fully fledged and that the family are out all day.
Jackdaws move seasonally. Family units will focus on a breeding site in the spring and summer, often returning to it in subsequent years, but in the winter they will leave and join communities of several hundred other corvids, not just jackdaws but also rooks and carrion crows, roosting high in trees. These winter roosts are rarely too far from their breeding grounds. Communal roosting is both sociable and solitary. Although the birds gather together in the trees, they are well spaced from one another, not huddled together. Research into corvid intelligence and communication suggests that roosts provide a context for learning and for the exchange of information. What this means in bird terms is obviously very different from what it means to human groups, but there is little doubt that the calls made are a form of communication and signalling. Larger roosts attract predators, and although a few losses might be seen as a sacrifice worth making for the benefit of the group as a whole, it is an easy and vulnerable target for multiple predators. Still, those perched in the inner sections of the greater group are likely to be protected, and the better positions in the roost are, like other aspects of corvid life, dictated by hierarchy and status.
Research into jackdaw behaviour builds on the foundational 1930s work by Konrad Lorenz. The jackdaw population might have been flattered had it known that Lorenz, a renowned Austrian ornithologist, is also credited today with being the Nobel Prize-winning founder of modern ethology( the biological study of behaviour), and observed the jackdaw with a view to understanding innate behaviour in animal and human communities. Lorenz was the first to observe that jackdaw groups operated within a strict social hierarchy based on sex, breeding status and seniority.
All wild jackdaw couples are monogamous, paired for life. In a social order where the male choses the female, and where breeding pairs have a higher status than unpaired individuals, it is inevitable that a single female will be lower in status than a paired female or a single male. This means that females without partners are at the bottom of the social heap. This has consequences. If a female is unpaired, she is disadvantaged, particularly when times are hard. She is the last to eat, the first to be denied shelter in the nest at times of stress, will be pushed to the risky outside edges of a communal roost, and is not permitted to retaliate when picked on by other members of the community, who may peck at her to reinforce their own status. Matters change when a female is selected by a male as his mate for life. Her status is equal to that of her mate, and she then has the authority to treat junior members of the community in the same way that she was herself treated.
More complex relations occur amongst males, as a 2014 research project discovered, concluding that larger male jackdaws attained higher ranks and that social rank increased with age. It also suggested that high-ranked individuals had a shorter lifespan suggesting that maintaining or achieving high rank and associated benefits comes at a cost, and also that social rank declined substantially in the last year an individual was observed in the colony, because of deterioration in performance related to age, which acted against the benefits of seniority, knowledge and experience.
Jackdaws often come up in the context of “social behaviour” research. Instead of focusing on which bird is likely to be the most dominant in a particular hierarchy, the focus in this type of research is on how the entire group acts as a decision-making unit. For example, when big groups roost overnight in huge numbers and then split up into smaller groups during the day to feed in various locations, there is a question about how the decision is taken to take flight. Research in Cornwall, recording the sounds of bird calls before, during and after they have taken flight is key to understanding this process. The calls reach an intensity immediately before the birds take to the wing, as though they are declaring a level of confidence that reaches a peak, a threshold that indicates that the group is ready to take to the skies. A major evolutionary advantage would equate to herbivore herd behaviour, creating a block of fast and confusing movement to deter predators, which would otherwise pick off lone individuals with comparative ease.
At least some of this behaviour can be observed in the garden. There is plenty of antagonism when one jackdaw ranges too close to another, presumably a senior making it clear to a junior or unpaired female that there are boundaries to be observed. Sometimes a few of them will walk in line, like schoolchildren following a teacher. For the most part, they are evenly spread across the lawn and only occasionally do a small number bunch in close proximity.
They are perfectly happy to share my lawn with the robins and blackbirds that also forage in the lawn at the same time, as long as they don’t come too close. On the other hand, war breaks out when a squirrel emerges, quivering all over, its tail tightly curled, pausing to strategize before taking up the offensive and chasing off the jackdaws. When the magpies arrive, a wary stand-off is practised on both sides. When the magpies, singly or in a pair, stay at a safe distance all is well, but if the magpies infringe too far, hostilities are quick to erupt. The magpies will often dive-bomb the jackdaws at such times. Even though the jackdaws should be able to win the numbers game, they usually take to the wing, but so do the magpies. It’s a lose-lose scenario.
Transit and mobbing flock patterns. Source: Nature
Jackdaws, like starlings, occasionally form flocks. Recent research has shown that there are two different types of flocking behaviour: those flying to their winter roosts and those joining forces to scare off potential predators. In the first case, transit flocking, there is an element of predictability because the size of the winter roost flocks is fixed, and the jackdaws organize themselves in relation to one another in an orderly manner. In the second case, referred to as mobbing, the sudden gathering to scare off predators is a far more chaotic and unplanned event until the flock has achieved a certain number, when the jackdaws start to behave more like a roosting flock, with their motion through the sky co-ordinated and spatially organized. Jackdaws flocking before roosting offer some of the most spectacular aerial displays.
The jackdaw has only a faint footprint in myth and history suggesting that whilst an occasional nuisance it has not been sufficiently systematic as a pest to make its mark in folklore and superstition. Henry VIII, never one to pull his punches, added jackdaws, rooks and crows to the Vermin Act of 1532 in response to poor grain harvests that were blamed, in part, on foraging corvids. Elizabeth I echoed this in 1566 with another act intended to preserve the nation’s grain production against scavenging birds. Perhaps this reputation for pillaging grain accounts for why they were sometimes considered to be bad luck. Although a jackdaw on a roof might once have been taken to signify a new arrival, it might just as well have been an ill omen, sometimes a portent of death. Several decades later, in May 1604, Members of Parliament in the London Houses of Parliament were debating the third reading a bill when a young jackdaw flew into the chamber, upsetting a number of those present who interpreted it as a bad omen for the bill. Jackdaws had long been associated with ill fortune. Although there had ben confidence that the bill would pass, it went on to be defeated by 118 votes to 99. The clerk of the Commons was sufficiently impressed by the incident that he recorded it in the Commons Journal.
In the 19th Century, the jackdaws of Bodmin Jail on Bodmin Moor in southwest England were thought to be on the cusp of fulfilling a curse. A spinster living in woods on the edge of Bodmin, shunned as a witch, depended on jackdaws to bring her trinkets, and trained them to steal items of value, enabling her to survive. When she was found guilty of the jackdaw thefts, she was incarcerated in Bodmin Jail, where she died, cursing her jailers, the jail, and the town of Bodmin, whose inhabitants had rejected her so cruelly. The jackdaws, having followed her to the jail, remained, and the curse stated that “should the last Jackdaw be born at Bodmin Gaol, so the spirits of the condemned shall rise and bring misfortune and chaos to all that reside within.”
The Vain Jackdaw by Harrison Weir in 1881
In literature, a Greek and Roman adage that “the swans will speak when the Jackdaws are silent” (in Latin, tunc canent cygni, cum tacebunt graculi) advises that the wise should speak only when the foolish have finished their chatter. The jackdaw puts in an appearance in a version of Aesop’s Fables, representing unwise behaviour including vanity and greed. In The Bird with the Borrowed Feathers, the jackdaw borrows the peacock’s feathers to become one of this superior enclave, but on being recognized as a fraud has the borrowed feathers stripped from him and is so badly mauled that his own species do not recognize him, and reject him. It is a moral against social climbing.
In the 18th century, A poem by William Cowper (1731-1800) is dedicated to the jackdaw:
There is a bird who, by his coat
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow;
A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.
Above the steeple shines a plate,
That turns and turns, to indicate
From what point blows the weather.
Look up — your brains begin to swim,
‘Tis in the clouds — that pleases him,
He chooses it the rather.
Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight,
And thence securely sees
The bustle and the rareeshow,
That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.
You think, no doubt, he sits and muses
On future broken bones and bruises,
If he should chance to fall.
No; not a single thought like that
Employs his philosophic pate,
Or troubles it at all.
He sees that this great roundabout,
The world, with all its motley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,
Its customs and its businesses,
Is no concern at all of his,
And says — what says he? — Caw.
Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men;
And, sick of having seen ’em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine
And such a head between ’em.
Perhaps a better known poem about jackdaws is the 19th century The Jackdaw of Rheims by Richard Harris Barham (who used the pen-name Thomas Ingoldsby, 1788 – 1845). It’s a lengthy affair, so I haven’t reproduced it here, but you can find it on the All Poetry website here. It is another humourous poem that tells how a jackdaw stole the cardinal’s ring, but wound up being made a saint.
Because jackdaws often favour steeples and holes in roofs of church buildings, the Jackdaw can be valued as a holy bird, shunned by the Devil because of its pious choice of residence, a tradition that was particularly prevalent in Wales. I suspect that those responsible for the care of the churches concerned might have a less charitable view on the subject.
On the whole, history has judged the jackdaw without overt hostility, but it still comes under suspicion. They are are still legally classified as vermin in the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, and numerous pest control companies offer the removal of jackdaws as one of their services. This is partly because of the noise and disruption of their chimney, roof and church occupancies (and I can vouch for the fact that they are seriously noisy) but also because of their perceived threat to the conservation of smaller bird populations and the ongoing damage that they can inflict on cereals crops.
There are some 1,400,000 breeding pairs in Britain and in the region of 30 million across Europe. In 1984, they were first identified in north America. The Big Garden Birdwatch, organized annually by the RSPB, found that jackdaws were ranked 15th in birds observed in English gardens in 2022, and 11th in Welsh gardens. In both cases most of the birds higher up in the ranking were small varieties, but they also came in behind magpies and wood pigeons.
When I walk out of the back door the jackdaws take to the air without hesitation. Unlike the blackbirds and the robins that take a look at me, hop a short distance away and then ignore me, or the sparrows and tits that take instant flight, but only as far as the nearest tree from which they can monitor my activities, the jackdaws are gone. Although the jackdaws and I share the garden independently, there have been numerous examples of jackdaws having a close affinity with particular humans. Usually this is after the bird has been injured and cared for by the person with whom the relationship is formed (broken wings seem to be the most common example), but not always. There’s a great video of a man feeding a jackdaw with a grape at Rhuddlan Castle below, which shows that formidable beak in action (I would be seriously worried for my fingers, but the jackdaw never misses its target):
The tenure of the jackdaws in my chimney will have to end this year after they leave, when the chimney will be cleaned out and capped, but it has been fascinating to have this growing family at both roof and ground level for so long.
Sources:
Books
Bruun, B. 1970. The Hamlyn Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe. Hamlyn Publishing
Couzens, D.2004. The Secret Lives of Garden Birds. RSPB
Nathan J. Emery, Amanda M. Seed, Auguste M. P. von Bayern and Nicola S. Clayton, 2007. Cognitive adaptations of social bonding in birds. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2007) 362, 489–505
Ira G. Federspiel, M. Boeckle, A. M. P. von Bayern and N. J. Emery 2019. Exploring individual and social learning in jackdaws (Corvus monedula). Learning & Behavior volume 47, pages 258–270 https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13420-019-00383-8
Alison L. Greggor, Guillam E. McIvor, Nicola S. Clayton and Alex Thornton 2016. Contagious risk taking: social information and context influence wild jackdaws’ responses to novelty and risk.
Scientific Reports volume 6, Article number: 27764 (2016) https://www.nature.com/articles/srep27764
Hangjian Ling, Guillam E. Mclvor, Joseph Westley, Kasper van der Vaart, Richard T. Vaughan, Alex Thornton & Nicholas T. Ouellette 2019. Behavioural plasticity and the transition to order in jackdaw flocks. Nature Communications volume 10, Article number: 5174 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13281-4
Simon Verhulst, Moniek Geerdink, H. Martijn Salomons, and Jelle J. Boonekamp 2014 . Social life histories: jackdaw dominance increases with age, terminally declines and shortens lifespan. Proceedings of Biological Science, September 22nd 2014; 281(1791): 20141045. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4132676/
Lies Zandberg, Jolle W. Jolles, Neeltje J. Boogert, Alex Thornton 2014. Jackdaw nestlings can discriminate between conspecific calls but do not beg specifically to their parents. Behavioral Ecology, Volume 25, Issue 3, May-June 2014, pp.565–573 https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/25/3/565/513806
This satisfyingly chunky piece of glazed earthenware, featuring a roughly beaded rim, was once a fairly large, open vessel, probably a pot or a tall-sided bowl. Mocha ware, produced between the mid 1700s and the early 1900s, was relatively cheap and cheerful, pottery for using rather than admiring. Its defining features include its colouring, the linear decoration (usually combined with panels of colour or white background) and the “dendritic” design. “Dendritric” means “branching,” and in mochaware refers to a pattern consisting of a feathery fern-like tendrils, usually emanating from a main stem, typically coloured either black or blue. Vessels without the dendritic design are usually referred to simply as banded creamware or annular (ring-like) ware, in both cases due to the encircling bands of colour. It is only those vessels with the dendritic design that are supposed to be referred to as mochaware. We have found both in the garden, but the piece of mochaware is the most impressive, both in terms of solidity and distinctiveness.
The name mocha derives from an imported stone known as moss agate, which was also known as mocha stone due to its export from the port of Mocha (al Mukha) in Yemen, on the southwestern end of the Arabian peninsula. The stone is not actually found in that part of the world, and was imported from India and some parts of central Europe. Many of the first examples to find their way into western Europe were brought back by the East India Companies of Britain and the Netherlands. Although the appearance suggested to its European admirers that plant remains had been preserved in the stone, moss agate consists of quarts with mineral inclusions, usually manganese and iron oxides. It is not actually an agate at all.
In the 18th century the belief that the stone preserved plant remains indefinitely suggested that it had special health-preserving properties, providing good luck to the wearer. Many were accordingly turned into jewellery, particularly as polishing techniques improved, and they were often accompanied by gemstones in settings. The ability to cut the stone into thin sheets that could be polished encouraged its incorporation into various decorative objects. The Royal Collection Trust has in its collection a piece of sliced moss agate formed into the lid of a box, by Fabergé, which shows clearly how the pottery emulates the stone, and how it might be used in luxury goods. There are many similar examples.
The Greengates Works in Tunstall during the 1780s. Source: thepotteries.org
It is thought that the comparatively humble mochaware pottery was first made by William Adams of the Greengates factory, Tunstall, England (1745-1805). Production moved to the factory of his cousin, also William Adams, at Brickhouse, Burselm and later at Cobridge Hall in Cobridge. Many English factories were soon turning out large quantities of mocha, mainly in Staffordshire into the early years of the 20th Century. Other factories were set up in Bristol, Hull, Leeds, Glasgow, Swansea and Llanelly.
Annular and mochaware vessels usually combine a limited repertoire of colours. The concentric rings include yellow, yellow ochre, blue, black and and beige. More rarely some feature terracotta, orange and green bands. The background is usually cream or white, and the dendritic design is usually blue or black. In some cases the mochaware decoration remained purely abstract, but on some vessels the acidic solution is controlled to create images representing trees. Some examples of both abstract and more representational uses of the style are shown below.
Being so inexpensive, and at the same time so attractive, it became extremely widespread. It was often used to make pint mugs for pubs, marked with an imperial symbol confirming the correct volume, and ordinary domestic items like cups, mugs jugs, jars, lidded pots and mixing bowls, and even chamber pots. It was almost never used for flat items like dishes, plates or platters. Because the patterns made could be influenced but not precisely determined, each piece was unique. Mocha and banded creamware were exported in large amounts to the United States, which was soon manufacturing its own mochaware.
On the pottery, the tendril effect of the moss agate is achieved by dripping a dark acidic colouring (which could include urine, tobacco juice, lemon juice, ground iron scale, hops or vinegar) onto the alkaline slip (mixture of water and clay) of the pot, whilst still wet. The alkaline liquid splits, and the result was thought to resemble the moss agate. Here’s a description of the technique from the University of Toronto’s Physics department:
The original recipe involves a “tea” made by boiling tobacco, which is then colored with e.g. Iron oxide. The piece is first coated with a wet “slip” (very runny clay/water mixture). Then the tea mixture is touched onto the wet surface. The acidic tea reacts with the alkaline slip and the dendrites grow quickly from the point of contact. The dendritic pattern is clearly the result of a dynamic process in which the contact line between the two liquids, tea and slip, becomes unstable. The surface tension of the tea is less than that of the slip. The instability is probably driven by a combination of capillary and Marangoni (surface tension gradient) stresses, coupled somehow to the acid/base chemical reaction. Similar looking instabilities are known in surfactant driven flows.
A decisive contributor to the production of both mochaware and annular ware was the rose-and-crown engine-turning lathe, developed by Josiah Wedgwood. There was a hefty up-front cost, but it allowed a mechanized approach to the otherwise hand-applied concentric rings of coloured slip.
Experiments described by The Ceramic Arts Network website, explain how the techniques have been used to make modern mochaware in modern experiments:
Pint tankard with an imperial stamp. Source: 1stDibs
The mixture that is used to form the patterns is called “mocha tea.” It was originally made by boiling tobacco leaves and forming a thick sludge that was then thinned with water and mixed with colorant. However, nicotine solutions are only one form of mild acid; many others will work, such as citric acid, lemon juice, urine, coffee or vinegar, particularly natural apple-cider vinegar. One of these would be mixed with colorant. Most colorants work quite well, although carbonates and stains are usually better than oxides, since they are typically a physically lighter precipitate than oxides. Heavy materials such as black copper oxide, black cobalt oxide and black iron oxide do not work well, because the acid can’t adequately hold them in suspension. A ratio of about one heaping teaspoon of colorant to a quarter cup of mild acid is usually a good starting point. However, a good deal of individual testing has to be done to get the two liquids to work together to create significant dendritic formations or diffusions.
The Copeland (formerly Spode) pottery works in 1834. Source: Spode Museum Trust
The Colonial Sense website tells how Charles Dickens visited the Copeland Pottery Works at Stoke on Trent in the Potteries:
I am well persuaded that you bear in mind how those particular jugs and mugs were once set upon a lathe and put in motion, and how a man blew the brown color (having a strong natural affinity with the material in that condition) on them from a blow pipe as they twirled; and how his daughter, with a common brush, dropped blotches of blue upon them in the right places; tilting the blotches upside down, she made them run into rude images of trees.
Mochaware sherd from the garden
The sherd from my garden shows a band of yellow ochre on and beneath the rim with a beaded or rouletted design impressed into the surface below the rim, produced by using an embossed rouletting wheel. The beading was achieved by a simple cylinder attached to a handle and rolled onto the surface of the ceramic. It took a very steady hand. Some rouletting is very subtle and complex, but this is clearly not. Still, it is another decorative aspect to the vessel. A segment of black dendritic patterning is visible on a cream background, separated from the wide band of yellow ochre by a thin band of blue. It is a solid, utilitarian piece of earthenware, almost 1cm (a third of an inch) thick at the rim, narrowing into the body of the vessel. The vessel originally had a diameter of 25.5cm (10 ins), which makes it a fairly substantial object. Its walls show very little vertical curvature, unlike most mixing bowls, so it may have been a large pot of some description.
Yellow ochre reverse side (interior) and section of the sherd showing the fabric and glaze
Today,whole and undamaged items of mochaware attracts collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. My sherd, though part of a fascinating story, is of course worthless. As usual, apart from trying to find out information about the odds and ends in the garden, together these objects are combining to form a sense of who lived here before and what sort of livings they may have had.
There’s a truly illuminating video of dendritic mochaware being produced by a modern artisan on YouTube, showing how the acid reacts when it meets the alkaline, as follows:
For anyone new to this occasional series on objects extracted from my garden during everyday gardening activities, see the History in Garden Finds page. These are not objects used in the garden, but objects, usually fragments, lost or disposed of in the garden and found during digging, troweling and planting.
Sources:
Books and papers
Wright, K.F. 2021. Artifacts. In Loske, A. (ed.) A Cultural History of Color in the Age of Industry. Bloomsbury Academic.
Lovely to see spring all around us at the moment, transitioning from late-flowering daffodils, bleeding hearts, camellia, snake’s head fritillary and tulips to bluebells, blossom, dark red beech leaves and the first summer buds. Everything in the garden looks stunning in the sun.
I only started doing the Big Garden Birdwatch when I moved out of London, but it has become a real pleasure since then. This is my fourth go at it, but my first in Churton, done on 30th January. At this time of year with the unpredictable weather, it can be a bit hit or miss, particularly as we now experience so many more storms. Luckily, in spite of Storm Malik, in which one of my bird feeders vanished completely in spite of my efforts to locate it, there have been long dry periods and the birds have been out and about, stocking up with calories whilst the going is good. Because it has been so dry, I had to refill the bird bath, and they were soon drinking from it.
Of the birds that paraded themselves for one hour this year, there was nothing rare, but that’s not what it’s all about. Any and all Birdwatch observations contribute importantly to the statistics that have been collected by the RSPB for over 40 years and help to chart trends in bird populations. In 2021 over a million people took part.
Just a selection of my visitors on the day. My kitchen windows seriously need cleaning 🙂
I was in the kitchen, looking out of the window due to the cold, so I was mainly watching the bird feeders on the Japanese maple about 10ft away. The robin that fights for the patio territory with ferocity was there, scooping everything that the almost ubiquitous blue tits and great tits drop so untidily on the floor. Male and female house sparrows have mastered the bird feeders, some even performing the rudimentary forms of gymnastics that the tits perform so sublimely. Male and female blackbirds bounced around the ground, scattering the smaller birds. I was so pleased to have three chaffinches, a male and two females, for the first time ever, and they arrived very handily in the hour that I was doing my official watch. They scurried around underneath the bird feeders in the shade of the shrubs, and I couldn’t capture them with the camera. Another time. Missing from the usual suspects were the collared doves and the sole dunnock that often visits.
My garden is quite long so I could not see what else was dashing around in the trees and shrubs in the rest of the garden, but splendid magpies, raucous crows and enormous waddling pigeons were all visible in a patch of fugitive sunshine at the end of the garden, as were two squirrels competing for territory in the beech tree.
One of my recent visitors
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had some more unusual visitors recently. A week ago I saw a spotted woodpecker who was sitting in the big Japanese maple on my patio, trying to work out whether or not the bird feeders were at all feasible (not). On the same day I walked downstairs to find a pheasant standing at my back door looking in. I assume that someone else is feeding him from their back door, because he looked so expectant. In my last house, in Aberdovey (west Wales) I had a community of pheasants daily in my garden during the winter, which I used to feed on peanuts, but although pheasants roam the fields around here, I’ve never before seen one in the garden. Once in a while I hear and then see a thrush, but so far none have established a territory here. I have been trying to encourage goldfinches into the garden with nyjer seeds, because I had a community of them at my last house and they are enchanting, but so far they are resistant to all my efforts, although I saw some splashing in a pool of water in Pump Lane last year. ——
I defy any gardener, even in a modern home, to do any digging without finding a few pieces of willow pattern china. It is so common that one barely notices it, whether it is found as garden fragments, encountered in antique shops or viewed as eBay listings. It comes in all forms – plates, jugs, bowls, cups, saucers, tureens in all sorts of shapes and sizes, varying in quality from fine early examples to increasingly poor imitations as well as a few modern reinventions on fine china. Early examples were hand-painted on porcelain, but as it became popular, transfers (described below) were used to cheaply replicate their finer predecessors.
Pieces of willow pattern found in a garden in Darland
The examples shown in the photo at above left were all found in my garden, and could date to any time between the 19th Century to relatively recent times. None of them are fine porcelain, all stoneware, which means that they were built to be durable. This does not mean that they were any less valued by their owners than finer bone china pieces, which are almost translucent, but either that their purchasers were unable to afford finer pieces, or that these were intended for everyday use. In either case the sheer volume of china that we have dug out of the garden argues that if finer pieces were purchased, they were kept safely on display or only used for special occasions, because so far we have only found two finer pieces of translucent china. It is a similar story with china dug out of a Darland garden by my parents (shown right). In that early Georgian garden, belonging to a large house built by a prosperous land-owner, the pottery was all fairly coarse, although there is no reason to suppose that the owners did not purchase finer wares that were better cared for.
1930s willow pattern in red on white
In America, willow pattern is known as “blue willow,” but although the vast majority produced was in cobalt blue on white, there are also examples of red or brown, and even green on white, and there are some much later examples that were painted with multiple colours (and look both exceedingly odd and rather unpleasant). Today willow pattern has fallen out of fashion, presumably because it is so formulaic and so commonplace, in spite of attempts by some modern producers to reinvent it, but the history of willow pattern is an interesting one, even if the design itself has become rather tedious to the modern eye.
There are two strands to the invention of willow pattern, three stories to tell. The first is how and when willow pattern developed, what influenced it, and why it became so ubiquitous. The second story concerns the tale told by the pattern itself, which narrates a forbidden romance, a dictatorial father and an unwanted, ultimately vengeful suitor.
At the end I have a look at why the tale embedded into the willow pattern is fundamentally in opposition to Chinese morality, using two examples from Chinese literature.
I have already used the terms “china” and “porcelain,” and will go on to mention stoneware, so here are some quick and dirty definitions:
Ceramics: all items made by clay and hardened by heat. A generic term used interchangeably with pottery.
China: another generic term, referring to ceramics that have a pure white fabric, of the sort first seen in Europe on items imported from China
Porcelain: from the Italian “porcellana.” Porcelain is made of fine-grained clay which is then fired at very high temperatures that causes a transformation of the material called vitrification. It is very thin, and semi-translucent.
Pottery: objects made of fired clay
Stoneware: fired at much lower temperatures than porcelain using inferior clays, and made into much thicker fabrics without any translucence. Similar to earthenware, which is also made with coarse clays but fired at a higher temperature than earthenware and is superior in quality.
Transfers (discussed in more detail below): Replacing hand-painting to speed up the process of pottery manufacture, transfers produce a cheaper, less refined method of decorating ceramics. A copperplate engraved with the required design is inked and pressed on to paper that, while still wet, is in turn pressed on to a ceramic surface. The design left on the piece of pottery is the transfer.
The development and spread of the willow pattern design
This or a similar type of Nanking ware scene could have been the prototype for English willow pattern. Source: The Culture Concept Circle
I had always assumed that the willow pattern design was invented in China for the European export market in the late 18th Century, but this is not true. It is certainly true that decorated china had been finding its way into Europe and America for two centuries before willow pattern was invented. The East India Company began to purchase Chinese blue and white ceramics for the British market in the 16th Century when it was a luxury item. It swiftly became very popular and continued to be in high demand even after the East India Company was deprived of its right to trade in 1833. Private ships that began to import Chinese tea, still a high value import during the 19th Century, also brought back ceramics that were increasingly standardized and mass-produced for the European market. Chinese producers had swiftly developed a sense of what themes, colours and designs Europeans and Americans liked, and they began to make them in great quantities. Willow pattern was inspired by a type of blue and white porcelain called Nanking or Nankin Pattern. It was made at Ching-te-chen / Jingdezhen and then sailed down the river Yangtze to the coastal port of Nanking from where it was shipped to Canton. Canton was the main port at which foreign ships were allowed to trade, (the sole trading port until 1842) and here it was loaded on to European and American ships for the export market.
An early design similar to the willow pattern on a creamware teapot. Attributed to John Warburton, Staffordshire, England, c. 1800. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Although influenced by Nanking, willow pattern was not imported from China; it was an English invention based on Chinese patterns. The first version appears to have been produced in 1779 for Thomas Turner and his Caughley works in Shropshire, originally for a teapot, and then in the late 1780s on other objects, probably by apprentice Thomas Minton.
Robert Copeland, in Spode’s Willow Pattern, acknowledges Caughley but points out that this was not the standard willow pattern, which he argues persuasively was developed by Josiah Spode, and initially called the Mandarin pattern. It is not known if Turner, Minton or Spode had a particular story in mind when they began to produce their versions of the formulaic pattern, but a story soon emerged, and probably helped sales, raising the decoration from the level of a mere pattern to the encapsulation of an exotic legend (albeit one thought up in an English porcelain factory). It would otherwise be difficult to account for how popular the design became. Other manufacturers also went on to make willow pattern.
The main features of the willow pattern design
The plates shown above exemplify the most common arrangement of the motifs that make up the willow pattern design, although there are sometimes minor variations.
A 19th century anonymouspoem, of which there are numerous versions, summarizes the main themes as follows:
Two birds flying high,
A Chinese vessel, sailing by.
A bridge with three men, sometimes four,
A willow tree, hanging o’er.
A Chinese temple, there it stands,
Built upon the river sands.
An apple tree, with apples on,
A crooked fence to end my song.
The story behind the features on the plate can be fairly short or tediously long, but the essentials of the story can be summarized quite briefly. Let’s have a closer look first at the main motifs that provide the cues for narrating the story.
The main anchoring feature of the composition is a two- or occasionally three-storey pagoda, usually just right-of-centre, approached by a path and a short flight of steps. To the left of it is a smaller pagoda on the edge of the river. A fence zig-zags across the front of the scene, blocking access to the approach path to the pagoda in its garden.
Behind the pagodas is a tree with big round discs that look like enormous pizzas. Susan Ferguson has researched these and concludes that although they are usually referred to as apples (heaven help you if an apple of that size landed on you), and sometimes oranges, they are probably abstractions of circular spans of a Chinese conifer (needle clusters), a design that over the centuries has become so simplified that on the willow pattern the species of tree is completely unidentifiable. In the absence of any other explanation that makes sense, I’m convinced. A lush arboretum surrounds the pagoda.
A huge willow tree leans over the bridge, to the left of the pagoda, which gives the design its name, and usually has some sort of rosette- or round-shaped growths on the trunk. Its long branches appear to blow lightly in the breeze.
The bridge crosses a narrow strait of water, met by a small building on the other side. The bridge is being crossed by a woman at the front, a man in the middle holding a long thin box, and another man raising a stick at the rear.
Above left of the willow is a large expanse of water crossed by a man navigating a boat, heading towards the pagoda. One or more cabins on the boat suggests that another person is inside.
In the distance at top left is an island with another pagoda, again surrounded by lush vegetation.
Overhead in the sky are a pair of birds facing each other, their wings spread to catch the breeze.
If the composition graces a plate, a tureen or a lid, the whole thing is usually circled with a loosely Chinese-themed geometric pattern, sometimes elaborated with leaves and flowers. On teapots, cups and jugs only favoured portions of the entire composition may be shown.
The story of a forbidden romance and how to read a plate
The story is an invention, and English interpretation of scenes on Chinese export ceramics that had no such narrative. It is probable that the story gained momentum as the willow pattern became more popular, becoming more elaborate over time. The basics are these, although there are multiple alternatives:
The pagoda, right-of-centre, the garden, and the weeping willow: Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl named Koong-see who lived in a palace in China, a delightful sprawling pagoda in lovely ornamental gardens, with cherry blossom, apple trees, willows, streams, wildlife and birdsong. Hidden within the pagoda, she is in love with a lowly office clerk named Chang, who serves her father, a mandarin (senior official), and is far beneath her social standing. They meet every night beneath the willow. Forbidden to marry by the Mandarin, she and Chang are in despair. Both console themselves by caring for the birds in the garden, to which they are devoted and which are, in turn, devoted to them
The mandarin’s daughter is promised to a warrior duke against her wishes: The Mandarin has arranged for Koong-see to be married to the warrior Duke (a Ta-jin), who is even now approaching. Much older than Koong-see, he brings a treasure chest as a gift for his future bride. Deaf to Koong-see’s pleas, her father insists on the marriage, erects a huge fence around the house and garden and imprisons her in a small pagoda overlooking the lake. When the cherry blossom eventually blooms on the tree in the garden, the marriage will take place.
Three individuals are seen crossing the bridge. When the Duke arrives, he, the Mandarin and guests celebrate with an excess of food and alcohol. Chang enters the compound and seeing that the inebriated gathering has fallen asleep, he goes to Koong-see and they flee, taking with them the duke’s treasure, crossing the bridge over the river. Koong-see is at the front, carrying a staff, the emblem of virtue. Chang follows her, carrying the stolen treasure in a rectangular box. They are pursued by the mandarin, brandishing a whip. Sometimes a a fourth figure is shown, and this is the duke seeking to retrieve both his bride and, probably more importantly, his treasure.
The pagoda in a distant land, top left. Chang steals a small boat, and they couple sail to the north. Having made good their escape, the couple sell the duke’s treasure and buy a pagoda in a distant place. Having failed to find his daughter in spite of employing spies to track her down, the mandarin has the brilliant idea of releasing the birds that were so loved by Koong-see and Chang. The birds fly straight to the couple, with the mandarin’s warriors following close behind. When the warriors discover the hideaway they set it alight.
The turtle doves in the sky. Koong-see and Chang die in the flames, but unspecified gods looking down on the scene take pity on the devoted couple and transform them into birds so that they can remain together for eternity.
The boat shown crossing the sea is alternatively interpreted as the approach of the duke, steered by a boatman, or as the departure of the lovers, steered by Chang.
An extended version, tears-and-all version of the tale, was published in The Family Friend, volume I, in 1849, and is extremely long-winded and tedious (as well as slightly sickly), but obviously pushed some of the right buttons in the 19th Century. As well as the anonymous poem quoted above, there were a number of others as well, some of which are posted on the Potterieswebsite here and the Willow Collectorswebsite here.
Chinese morality versus English romanticism
The willow pattern design that grew out of these imports was not merely an English invention, but the romantic tale of runaway lovers that was developed to sell the design would almost certainly have offended Chinese morality. The story was born of an unmistakeably western tradition, recognizable in the narrative concerns of star-crossed lovers, persecution by unwanted suitors and unreasonable parents, all of which are solidly familiar from the Classical Greek tale of Hero and Leander, the 16th Century Os Lusíadas by Luís de Camões, Shakespeare’s 1597 Romeo and Juliet, and many, many more.
There are some tales from Chinese literature that are superficially somewhat similar, but a closer look at them reveals culturally significant differences. Two good examples are “The Butterfly Lovers” and “Han Ping and His Wife.”
The story of the butterfly lovers concerns a rather complicated story about a woman disguised as a man, Zhu Yingtai, and her unsuspecting friend Liang Shanbo who eventually fall in love with one another. Although women were usually prevented from becoming scholars, Zhu was allowed to study in the guise of a young man. She meets a fellow scholar, and they become close friends, studying together for the following three years. Liang remains none the wiser, but Zhu begins to fall in love with him. Although tolerant enough to allow his daughter to study as a man, Zhu’s father expects her to return when he writes to tell her that he is ill. She departs, and Liang accompanies his dear friend for part of the route. Although she drops hints about her true sex, Zhu is unable to reveal her secret to Liang directly and intend invents a sister to whom she proposes that Liang should become betrothed. She offers to set up a meeting. Liang eventually visits Zhu, and finds that there is no sister and that Zhu is a woman. Liang realizes he loves Zhu and they are both overjoyed for a brief period, but Zhu now reveals that her father’s illness was a ruse and he has betrothed her to a wealthy merchant. Liang leaves, heartbroken, and although he tries to lead a normal life, soon dies. Zhu, meanwhile, is prepared for her wedding. The wedding procession forms, its route due to pass Liang’s grave. As they reach the grave, a great wind blows up, stopping the marriage party in its tracks. Taking the opportunity to pay her final respects to Liang at his grave, she begs for the grave to swallow her too, and in response to her pleas, it opens up and takes her in. Zhu and Liang rise as butterflies, and fly away together for eternity.
A second tragic romance, from a collection of early legends (The Man Who Sold A Ghost), is the tale of Han Ping and his wife also concerns lovers who were transformed into birds following the successful completion of their suicide pact. Han Ping and his wife were deeply in love. Han Ping worked for Prince Xang as steward. His wife was very beautiful and the king, inevitably attracted, took her for himself. Han Ping’s anguished protests were answered with imprisonment and hard labour. Eventually his wife managed to send Han Ping a letter, a cryptic message written using allusions to lay out her plan for suicide, which each carried out. In a separate letter to the king, she requested burial alongside her husband, but this was denied her. They were buried in the same cemetery but far apart. All was not lost. Two trees sprung up overnight and within only days were tall and strong, leaning towards each other, their branches intertwining. Two inseparable lovebirds nested in the branches of the entwined trees, the spirits of the wronged Han Ping and his wife.
A silk bed covering from Canton, showing the type of artistic device used to represent clusters of fir spines. This might be the source of the enormous disks in the trees behind the pagoda in the willow pattern design Source: Ferguson 2017
Although Chinese literature has stories of star-crossed lovers, acting on a forbidden love was counter to Chinese ideas of obedience and arranged marriage and would never be celebrated. In the first case, even though Zhu is in love with someone else, she obediently, albeit unhappily, accepts marriage. The gods intervene to allow the couple to live together as butterflies, but only after Zhu has behaved with honour according to her father’s wishes. Although the couple were not married, they came to represent fidelity in marriage. In the story of Han Ping and his wife, the two are already married and it is only when the wife is dishonoured by the prince that they are reunited as birds, again demonstrating the power of marital fidelity.
All of this is far more subtle than the rather simplistic willow pattern narrative, which celebrates love conquering all, but ignores the Chinese morality that would have seen the willow pattern story and its outcome as abhorrent. Daughterly disobedience and unmarried, prohibited love would have been a serious breach of decency and integrity. Fleeing paternal control would have been unthinkable, particularly as it left behind and honourable and broken-hearted father. The theft of the Duke’s treasure would have appalled most Chinese people; the Duke, after all, was not the bad guy in the scenario, because arranged marriages were perfectly normal and his gift to his prospective bride was a gesture of great generosity. A happy-ever-after outcome for the disobedient and ungrateful runaways, even in the form of turtle doves, would not have been sanctioned by Chinese moralists or the authors of Chinese literature.
Stoneware and transfers
Mid 19th Century transferware willow pattern trivet. Source: Inessa-Stewart’s
All of the willow pattern from my garden is robust transferware. We have found porcelain pieces in other designs, some of them very fine, but the vast majority of it, including all of the willow pattern, is transfers applied to stoneware and earthenware. Porcelain, almost translucent, was time-consuming to produce, often shattered during production, was usually hand-decorated and was therefore expensive to buy. Stoneware an earthenware were much easier to manufacture, fired at lower temperatures and not hand-painted. These solid wares were far more robust and suitable for everyday domestic use.
It is often possible to find the edge of the transfer on bigger pieces of transferware, as on this corner of a large 1930s red-on-white Royal Venton plate.
Replacing hand-painting to speed up the process of pottery manufacture in the second half of the 18th Century, transfers produce a cheaper, less refined method of decorating ceramics that could be produced by relatively unskilled workers rather than craft specialists. Chinese-influenced ceramics, like many product that were once luxury products due to their exotic source and/or their expensive manufacturing process, began to be produced in inferior fabrics, became more affordable, and were therefore in more demand, both in Britain and America. Once an appropriate fabric was developed, a quicker way of decorating the ceramics was required, and transfers were developed to meet this need. A copperplate engraved with the required design is inked and pressed on to paper that, while still wet, is in turn pressed on to a ceramic surface. The design left on the piece of pottery is the transfer. The meeting of the demand for transfer wares was helped by the roll-out of the canal network and the improvement of trade networks that accompanied the Industrial Revolution.
Final Comments
A more recent interpretation of willow pattern (microwave safe, dishwasher proof). Although it is a nice, clean design, there is a gap in the fence in front of the path to the pagoda, which rather defeats the object (and is more evocative of an English country cottage than a defensive barrier to prevent a daughter escaping).
The history of the willow pattern design is far more interesting than the design itself and its narrative. Some of the earliest patterns, evoking original Chinese designs, had considerable charm, but very soon a fairly rigid formula was developed that was repeated over and over again, with only a little occasional variation from one piece to the next. As such it is more than a little tiresome.
It is anything but tiresome when the story emerges piece by piece from one’s garden, all of them minute fragments contributing to the house’s own narrative. Over time, the people who lived here broke an awful lot of pottery! The house, originally two neighbouring cottages, was probably occupied by families working for the local farms in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with a sign of increased prosperity when the two cottages were linked up to become a single building. The earliest finds from the garden belong to the later 19th Century, well into the period when most willow pattern was stoneware. Not the sort of thing that a farm labourer’s family would be able to indulge in, but probably affordable as Sunday Best for a slightly more affluent rural family. I need to find out a lot more about who lived in the house before speculating further.
Pealrich clock in the form of a willow pattern plate. Source: Amazon UK
It is interesting that willow pattern continues to be made and purchased. The above picture shows a simplified version of the traditional formulaic design, much less elaborate than earlier versions, much cleaner but also more sterilized. I would not have thought that it is the sort of story that would carry much appeal today, but the design itself obviously continues to be attractive to a modern audience. A quick search on Amazon produced willow pattern oven gloves, a willow pattern mug that could be personalized, an embroidery kit, a large tea set, a “collectible” thimble, a cushion cover and even a clock in the form of a willow pattern plate (shown left). A company called PRSC specializes in “deconstructed” willow pattern products, which take the motifs and arrange them in aesthetically pleasing combinations that abandon the narrative completely.
In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, willow pattern obviously spoke to something in people’s imaginations. Perhaps the very standardization and mass-production of the design enabled the more exotic to become both familiar and comprehensible, even offering some level of reassurance by its very familiarity. By developing new and improved ways of manufacturing pottery and decorating it, and taking advantage of new modes of transport and communication, potteries making ceramics in the English Midlands were able to spread willow pattern throughout the UK and into America. A decorative phenomenon, it is difficult to account for its success, but a success it certainly was. It has left a legacy that continues to attract collectors and re-interpreters alike.
For anyone new to this occasional series on objects extracted from my garden
during everyday gardening activities, see the History in Garden Finds page.
These are not objects used in the garden, but objects, usually fragments,
lost or disposed of in the garden and found during digging, troweling and planting.
Sources:
Books and papers
Copeland, R. 1999 (3rd edition). Spode’s Willow Pattern And Other Designs After the Chinese. Studio Vista
O’Hara. P. “The Willow Pattern That We Knew”: The Victorian Literature of Blue Willow. Victorian Studies. Vol. 36, No. 4 (Summer, 1993), pp. 421-442
Available online with the academic site JSTOR digital library if you register (free): https://www.jstor.org/stable/3828644?seq=1
Both of these butter- and egg-based sauces, hollandaise and béarnaise, only take about five minutes to make, but an awful lot longer to prepare. You will see many alternative recipes in books, but Mum’s was based on Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, and that’s where I went when I had to start from scratch. Hollandaise and béarnaise are based on a mix of base ingredients, but add different flavourings. The basics usually include the following: egg yolks, white wine vinegar, butter, peppercorns, and bay leaves. The differences are described below.
Hollandaise is usually served used with fish and/or vegetables, and is traditionally made with egg yolks, butter and lemon juice. It is a rich, buttery sauce that gives the kiss of heavenly life to poached salmon and asparagus.
Béarnaise accompanies steak and is defined mainly by armfuls of tarragon. Another traditional differentiator is that it is usually made with white wine and vinegar instead of lemon juice.
Breaking with tradition, my hollandaise and béarnaise both have the same base by using a same reduction as the base for both sauces. I combine all three liquids, the lemon juice, wine vinegar and white wine and mix them together as a base for the reduction in both hollandaise and béarnaise. The only differentiator in my version is that lots of tarragon is added to make béarnaise. My reason for this blending of the two recipes stems from a comment of Elizabeth David’s that an hollandaise based on just butter, egg yoks and lemon juice is “apt to be insipid” and consequently she recommends the addition of a reduction of white wine or vinegar (as in béarnaise). It works splendidly for me, but I would suggest that you experiment. The only time I feel like doing an hollandaise the original way is with poached salmon, where the simplicity of the lemon, egg and butter mix is perfect.
Cover of the hardback version of Elizabeth David’s “French Provincial Cooking,” Grub Street, 1960, 2007
On this occasion I was cooking a béarnaise sauce, so I used a huge handful of tarragon from my garden. A couple of nights ago I found a ribeye steak from Bellis (farm shop and butcher in Holt) in the freezer. The Bellis ribeye is wonderful, although I have no idea where they source it from. It deserved special treatment, and as I have three big pots of French tarragon in the garden, and had a box of Churton eggs at the ready, here’s how I did it, resulting in a happily successful outcome.
A couple of weeks ago I was very gung-ho about how easy it is to make mayonnaise in my post on the subject, which I think is fair enough because it is so easy when you know the two basic rules about how to handle it. However, I am never gung-ho about Hollandaise or béarnaise, because they can go seriously wrong. I’ve only screwed it up a couple of times, and I have now learned some excellent risk-avoidance techniques and one or two rescue solutions. Preparation minimizes the risks, but things can still go wrong, especially when you are starting out. On the other hand. WOW is it wonderful, so the best thing to do is to prepare well and experiment on someone who won’t mind being a guinea pig. Once you have the knack, and you will have it for life.
Important Preparation
There are a couple of technical points to take into consideration, other than briefly editing out the conversation of your friends. Hollandaise and béarnaise are all about preparation, and that’s not just about lining up your ingredients and equipment, but understanding how it’s all going to work, and how you may attempt to to recover it when/if it goes wrong.
First, both sauces have a terrible reputation for splitting, which means that after being heated, the oil in the butter separates from the other ingredients and you end up with a big oily mess on your hands. Eggs should be at a nice cool room temperature before you start. This is only a small part of the prep work, but it is an essential one.
Two, I have experimented and found that clarifying the butter makes life a lot easier. I have no idea what the proper way of doing it may be, but I simply heated butter in a saucepan and poured it into a small jug. White bits (solids) drop to the bottom of the jug leaving a translucent, bright yellow liquid on top. The yellow bit is the clarified butter and the white bits need to be left in the bottom of the jug. It means that you use a lot less butter, because it emulsifies much more efficiently, which is much better for the health. That in turn means that it forms more quickly. As a technique, it is also easier to prevent separation of the oil from the egg because you can easily control the addition of the butter, in drops and a slow trickle, to the egg and vinegar mix. So I now always start off by separating my egg/s. Keep the clarified butter somewhere warm so that it does not solidify.
Three, make sure you have some ice cubes in the freezer. If everything starts to overheat you will end up with scrambled egg. A bit of cold water helps, but if it is going too far too fast, lob in an ice cube, stir it rapidly until the sauce starts to go slightly lighter in colour and then haul it out. That usually does the trick.
My impromptu bain marie, at the back, consisting of a glass bowl over a small saucepan of simmering water that heats the sauce, reducing the chance of splitting. The asparagus is steamed, but here it is waiting in cold water prior to cooking, after having its ends trimmed. Don’t worry – not all of this went on to my plate! Some of it made a leek and asparagus soup.
Four, if you don’t have a bain marie (I don’t) you need to sort out a glass bowl (not metal) that will sit over one of your small saucepans. Anyone who has worked with chocolate will be familiar with this. The water in the pan must not come into contact with the glass bowl, and should simmer, not boil. You are cooking your eggs with indirect heat, not direct heat, a bit like steaming. However, no lid is required. A wooden spoon must be to hand for almost constant stirring, so that the sauce is moved constantly into and away from the heat.
Five, and assuming that you are making a béarnaise for steak (which means a lot of tarragon), take hold of your tarragon and divide it in half, finely chopping all of the leaves. Do not throw away the stalks, but snap them into short sections. Keep half of the leaves on one side and put the other half of the leaves and all the stalks into a bowl of white wine vinegar, shallot, bay and white wine. Leave it to infuse flavour into the vinegar for an hour or so.
Six, Whatever gas you are cooking on, what you want for the sauce is a light simmer, absolutely not a boil. If the water is boiling, you run the risk of creating scrambled eggs, not a sauce. I am cooking on Calor gas, not mains gas. Calor and Butane burn hotter and make it difficult to maintain a low temperature. I have a set of round, diffusing metal plates with handles that sit over the top of my hob and diffuse the heat, allowing the water to become hot but preventing it from boiling.
Seven, if you are intending to serve this in a jug rather than just plonking it onto plates alongside whatever else you are eating, remember that the jug (as well as the plates) needs to be warmed through. If you pour warm hollandaise/béarnaise into a cold jug you will instantly lose the heat and end up with a cold sauce and, more importantly, you will raise the chances of it separating before it reaches the table.
Eight, there are conflicting views in the literature on whether you should use salted or unsalted butter. I use salted. Salt helps the emulsification (thickening) process but you can also add salt to a sauce made with unsalted butter to taste. Just be sure to add it early on in the sauce-making process so that it helps to emulsify the sauce. I’ve tried it and it works, but unsalted butter with no additional salt is risky.
Nine, keep some cold water in a jug at the side so that if your sauce starts to over-thicken you can loosen it up. Add a teaspoon at a time until you have the right consistency. Cold water also helps to prevent the sauce over-heating and separating.
Ten, the vinegar mixture must go into the egg and butter hot. Do not let it cool down.
Finally, bear in mind that the whole process is only going to take a few minutes once you have added the hot vinegar mix to the egg yolk and started adding the butter, no more than five minutes, possibly less. Most of the time is taken up with preparation. Whatever you are intending to serve it with, you either need to be good at delivering multiple time-sensitive dishes in one go, or alternatively persuade someone to look after the rest of the meal while you concentrate on the Hollandaise or béarnaise, because the latter can turn against you in just a few seconds.
If this is your first attempt, I would suggest that you keep an emergency back-up sauce or herb butter on one side. For the latter, finely chopped herbs added into soft butter, and rolled in clingfilm to form a cylindrical tube of butter, and placed in the freezer for half an hour to solidify before putting it in the fridge works well. Before serving you can chop it into disks that sit on top of your steak or fish and melt beautifully to form a gentle butter sauce. If I was planning to do a béarnaise, as in this case, the herbs chopped into the butter would be tarragon. If the béarnaise works, you can keep the herb butter in the freezer for a quick way to liven up a piece of steak or fish, or use it to make unusual, flavourful sandwiches.
Getting on with it
Everything else is fairly straight-forward, but there are a number of steps that cannot be avoided. I usually avoid writing down step-by-step instructions because whatever the recipe, the outcomes depend so much on the ingredients used and the equipment employed, but there are some things that really must be taken into account.
I recommend clarifying the butter. Like mayonnaise, the key trick here is to add the butter so slowly that you begin to seize up. Mum used to add small lumps one by one and not add another until fully incorporated, the system that I used until just recently when I read that if you clarify the butter, it reduces the risk of separation and stabilizes it at the end. That end moment, where the sauce is ready but you may be waiting for vegetables, fish or steak to cook, is a terrible waiting game when you hope that the sauce stays in one piece, but worry that it might split. Clarifying the butter reduces the risk and the stress at one and the same time. Keep it warm until you need it so that it doesn’t solidify.
Remember that if you are using a jug, this needs to be nice and warm to receive the sauce, as do the serving plates.
When you are ready to cook, first you need to heat up your vinegar mix until it just threatens to boil. Turn down the heat until it is just simmering and keep a careful eye on it. You are aiming to reduce it in order to intensify the flavour. If you’re cooking for two, you’ll need about a tablespoon and a half of clear liquid, but a dessert spoon for one.
When it has reduced, strain out the flavourings and retain the flavoured vinegar. The vinegar needs to be hot (very warm rather than boiling hot) when you add it to the egg yolk.
Make sure that the water in the pan of your assembled bain marie arrangement is hot and place your glass dish over the top. By sealing the water pan with the bowl you will cause the water temperature to rise, so keep an eye on it to stop it boiling.
Separate your eggs and put your egg yolks (one per person) into your glass dish. Add your vinegar (still warm) and mix it very rapidly into the yolks. You now have a beautiful yellow fluid that will start to heat in the bowl over the water.
Add the remaining fine-chopped tarragon and give it a good stir
The sauce heating in a glass bowl set over a pan of simmering water, a quickly assembled bain marie
Now your clarified butter (or small dice-sized chunks of butter) needs to be added, but oh-so slowly. If your butter is clarified add it first in drips and then in a very slow and fine stream, stirring gently all the time and breaking now and again to ensure that it is fully incorporated. If you are using chunks, make sure that each is melted before adding the next. I cannot repeat enough that you should go slowly.
Pause occasionally to ensure that the butter is being incorporated into the egg and vinegar mix. Adding the butter is very much suck-it-and-see, but if you go slowly enough and keep stirring you should be safe. There’s no clear guideline, because different butters emulsify the yolks at different rates, and egg yolks are different sizes.
If it doesn’t emulsify properly, add another egg yolk and keep adding the butter. That might produce rather more sauce that you were aiming for, but hey – it’s lovely stuff!
Continually make sure that the water is simmering, to heat the eggs, but not so hot that you end up with scrambled eggs. If it begins to cook rather than heat, add either a little cold water or an ice cube to the egg mix. Don’t forget to retrieve the ice cube before it melts. You want to cool it down, not liquefy it.
Rescue
I’ve modified Elizabeth David’s recipes, as did Mum, but here are her originals on pages 118-9. Click to expand.
Don’t forget that if the water in the pan is too hot and the sauce starts to scramble, you can take it off the heat for a moment, and use ice cubes or cold water to help cool it down, stirring, and ensuring that the water in the pan has calmed down before placing the bowl back over the pan. If the sauce is thickening too much, cold water is again a good solution, added gradually.
I have never successfully recovered an Hollandaise or béarnaise that has split completely (where the butter abandons the sauce and forms rivers of oil over a lumpy egg mixture). I only ever twice split it in my early days of making this sauce. Even following all the advice about rescuing a split Hollandaise, it was a matter of chucking it away and starting again or providing an alternative sauce. But if you have used a rescue method that works, please do let me know.
The Final Product
Not an elegant presentation, but it tasted heavenly. As I said, I was doing mine with rib-eye steak (with loads of black pepper ground over it), tender stem broccoli, asparagus and baby new potatoes (which, apparently unusually, I peel). I like my steak cooked on an iron griddle pan, super-heated very quickly on the outside, which chars it but leaves it pink and moist in the middle. The spuds were boiled, the vegetables steamed and the plate heated beforehand. Terrible presentation, but in spite of that, it was a really luxurious treat.
A classic vegetarian option that I have often served as a starter just because it’s so good, is asparagus Hollandaise (no tarragon). Most fish works for a pescatarian option with Hollandaise, but salmon and swordfish are particularly good. Strongly flavoured fish like tuna and mackerel won’t work.
Health and Safety
Your egg yolks will be cooked through when it comes to serving them, so don’t worry about serving raw egg. You won’t.
Fat and cholesterol: When I was editing this, I had also been editing images of gravestones in Aldford and Farndon churchyards to go with a post on 19th Century Churton directory listings. It reminded me that both hollandaise and béarnaise are exclusively for special occasions 🙂 All that egg yolk and butter! To be handled with care, and reserved for special occasions, and avoid completely if you are trying to shed a few kilos. But one of the most delicious things ever. And don’t forget that if you clarify your butter you will use less than if you add it in chunks.
You can see my previous Churton egg adventures by clicking here.
Whenever I see Ann Davidson, who runs the free magazine My Village News, we discuss gardens and she nearly always brings me cuttings and little plants grown from seed, of which a yellow dahlia is a particular favourite. I haven’t seen her for a couple of months, but she remembered that I had said I would like to grow vines in the future, partly for the grapes but also for the vine leaves, which can be stuffed. Yesterday I heard the doorbell go when I was in the shower, and by the time I emerged, no-one was there of course, but there was a bag in my parcel box with lots of vine leaves and several bunches of tiny red grapes. The excitement!
Ann grows the vines herself in Bulkeley (probably best known as the home of The Bickerton Poacher, but perhaps that’s just me). The vine is a variety called Black Hamburg (Vitis vinifera Schiava Grossa) that Ann found at Wroxeter Roman Vineyard (which lies partly over the Roman site of Viroconium Cornoviorum). Wasting no time, I tried some of the grapes, which are tiny little explosions of massive flavour, utterly delectable, and I started looking at recipes for stuffed vine leaves (Greek dolmades).
I have had a love of Greek cooking for decades, due to the emphasis on quality ingredients and simple but big and well-matched flavours that taste, above all, fresh. Dolmades were a feature of rural cooking, usually vegetarian, quick, easy and inexpensive to prepare, but full of taste. In the vegetarian version the flavour comes from the onion, garlic, fresh herbs (including a selection from dill, mint, parsley, thyme, coriander, bay and oregano) and the stock in which the rice is cooked (which can be herb or vegetable stock). In a meat-based version, the flavour comes mainly from the meat and a less lavish combination of herbs, but may have more spices (such as cumin, paprika, fennel seed, nutmeg and cinnamon) and a vegetable-, herb- or meat-based stock. The meat used is usually minced lamb or goat. Coastal Greece and its islands have a shrubby, Mediterranean landscape that favours livestock that will browse on low quality vegetation.
Vine leaves are available in tins or vacuum-packed online and in some supermarkets, although I’ve never tried them. Those need no preparation. Ann’s, being fresh, needed to be softened a little, and the conventional wisdom of various recipes suggested that placing them in just-boiled water, taken off the heat, to poach for 5 minutes should do the trick, and it worked perfectly. The green of the leaf becomes a little yellower in the hot water, in spite of lemon juice being added, but this is normal.
I didn’t have any lamb or goat mince, and at this time of year there are not enough herbs in the garden for a fully flavoured vegetarian version, but I did have some beef mince, so went with that. I kept the spices and herbs simple: ground cumin, dried oregano, plus fresh marjoram and a bay leaf from the garden and a heaped teaspoon of sun-dried tomato paste.
Onion and garlic are fried with raw long-grained rice, and when the rice begins to go golden, the mince is added. Once the mince is browned, enough water is added to reach just below the top of the mince mix, and this is simmered off, so that a stodgy mix is left, and the rice has taken in some of the water to plump up a little. At this stage I stirred in some chilli flakes, some cassia bark (a bit like cinnamon) and some paprika, just to give it a bit more pizazz.
You will need an oven-proof dish with a lid. Place unused vine leaves on the base (the tatty ones or the ones that are too deeply lobed to hold the stuffing), and place tomato slices over the top. The vine leaves and tomato slices act as a lining and trivet to prevent the dolmades from burning and impart flavour into the water or stock that you pour over before putting it into the oven. I also added lemon slices to mine.
The rice mix is then added to the surface of the softened leaves. The leaf is laid out with the untidy side facing upwards so that when stuffed it is the smooth side that shows. Leave enough room for rice to continue expanding as it cooks. The vine leaf is like a sycamore leaf, an upside-down heart. I did mine by bringing together the two lobes of the heart across the mix, bringing in the two sides to cover it, and then pulling the pointed end over the top. Place seam-side down on the tomato layer, and when all the dolmades are in, preferably tightly fitting. I had a vine leaf left over, so aid it over the top, just for decorative effect.
Next add a good glug of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon, then place an oven-proof plate or equivalent on top to prevent them unravelling when you add the water. I used an all-metal pan lid. Then pour over hot water or stock. This should reach the top of the dolmades.
Some people do theirs on the hob, some in the oven. I did mine in a pre-heated oven at 190ºC (conventional oven). Recipes vary on how you should proceed from here but I simply let mine cook for 40 minutes, checking every 10 minutes to make sure that the dolmades didn’t dry out. There was still some liquid left at the end of the process, which will make an excellent stock, having incorporated not only the dolmades stuffing flavours, but the tomato and lemon from the base too.
Vegetarian dolmades are usually served slightly warm, at room temperature, or cold whereas meat ones are often served hot, but may also be warm or cold. I had mine straight out of the oven, but I cooked double what I needed to ensure that I would have half left over to try cold, and will be trying it tomorrow. The photo at the bottom of the page shows a tidy display, but that was before I drizzled the stock over the top of the dolmades, just to add some more flavour and interest. The tzatziki, recommended by every recipe I read, worked superbly.
Traditionally dolmades are served with lemon slices and tzatziki (mint in yogurt), and I served mine with both, as well as olives and a mixed herb salad with feta. It was not, however, a Greek salad, but a very English garden salad with mint, buckler-leaf sorrel, little gem, sweet cicely, marjoram and a lot of lovage, with some cucumber. I drizzled the whole lot with chilli oil and lemon juice, with lots of black pepper.
It was all a bit cobbled together but it was nevertheless a resounding success. I would like to do it with lamb and a different combination of accompanying herbs, and I must have a go at a vegetarian version, but the beef version was really excellent and will remain in my repertoire. Of course, I have now added a Black Hamburg vine to my must-have plant list! A visit to the Wroxeter Roman Vineyard might not be a bad idea either 🙂
The vine leaves before being drizzled with the Chilli oil and lemon juice.
For no better reason than I am so chuffed that I actually grew vegetables, lettuces and cucumbers in this, the first summer after moving in. Showing off, in other words, although none of them are ever going to win any prizes. I don’t actually have a vegetable plot, because I have turned everything over to flowers, shrubs and a small orchard, so these were grown in pots on a small south-facing side-patio.
The marrow speaks for itself (my fourth so far). At the back, the little yellow globes are cucumbers (I promise you). At the front is one of many golden beetroot, which have the lovely earthy taste of purple beetroot, perhaps a little more subtle, but don’t leak colour into everything you eat. I like them steamed or roasted. Once steamed, they are great cold too, with vinaigrette.
The salad and vegetable plants, except for the globe cucumbers, were all bought as tiny plugs from Bellis in Holt, but my goodness they grew! The cucumbers were bought from the Grosvenor garden centre. All were planted in general purpose compost, with mycorrhizal and bonemeal (in a ratio of 1:3 handfuls) placed in the hole in the compost before the plant was added. Then slow-release plant food was scattered over the top.
I have grown herbs outside in pots for years, as well as nasturtiums. The ones above are lollo rosso and little gem. Oregano, marjoram, mint, thyme and particularly lovage and the fluffy bits of fennel foliage make for a really special salad. The round nasturtium leaves and flowers are excellent in salads, and their seeds are a little like capers. I have also grown lettuces in the past, but not on such a grand scale.
The autumn-flowering aster (also known as Michaelmass) daisies and Purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) have been the real successes, growing fast and densely, bright domes of colour all over the garden, attracting huge numbers of bees and butterflies. The multi-coloured dahlias, yellow-petalled rudebeckias, purple-blue tradescantias and tall, elegant pink windflowers (Japanese anemones) are all still doing well. Ivy flowers, clusters of pale yellow pom-poms, are also popular with butterflies, bees and ladybirds. This cheerful floral mix is supplemented by lingering lupins, phlox and roses, which have done their fair share too. The succulent-leaved Hylotelephium, which we used to call ice plants when I was a child, are still in flower, but although they were smothered with butterflies and bees only a couple of weeks ago, they are now being ignored.
The bees, less discriminating than the butterflies, were taking advantage of any flower that showed its face, but were particularly in love with the aster daisies. I have never got to grips with the different types of bees, but there was an impressive mixture of the streamlined and the furry. The many hardy fuchsias, the Himalayan honeysuckle and the delicate salvia “hot-lips” are doing a great job providing colour and supporting the bees, but do not provide an accessible platform for the butterflies. Fuchsias, from south and central America were traditionally pollinated by hummingbirds, and we are a bit short of those around here, but the bees do a great job. There were a small handful of hover flies but the only wasp I saw was the submarine-sized monster trying to find somewhere to over-winter in my living room.
As I was tidying up the patio plants, I noticed that there was an army of caterpillars eating their way through my nasturtium leaves (just a little annoying, because apart from ruining the aesthetics, I use the leaves in salad). They turn out to be from the Large White butterfly, and are apparently notorious for targetting nasturtium leaves, as well as cabbages. A tough time of year for them to be starting new lives. They spend the winter in chrysalis form, ready to emerge in the spring. Large whites are native, but their numbers can be supplemented by migrants from Europe.
Carter, D. 1982. Butterflies and Moths in Britain and Europe. Pan Books in association with the British Museum
Based in Churton 
