What peculiar weather we seem to have had this year? And hasn't it produced some peculiar results? Autumn flowering plants showing their glory in April and May, and now flowers that bloom in the spring (tra la) deciding to have another go. If only we could predict what weather we are likely to have - in our own garden, that is, and not what might happen generally in half of Hampshire. People in the past have had a go, and produced some wonderful folklore sayings. Like 'Oak before ash, in for a splash. Ash before oak, in for a soak'. This old rural weather forecast predicts that if oak trees come into leaf before ash then the spring will be showery and the farming year will be a successful one. If on the other hand the ash trees are the first to come into leaf then a wet summer will result and the harvest will be a poor one. Unfortunately, the statistics of the Meteorological Office do not support the prophecy.
There are plenty of other old sayings which refer to the plant world. Like 'Ne'er cast a clout till May is out'. The idea that we should not remove winter clothing until the month of June does seem to suggest that our ancestors were a lot of old wimps. However, the May referred to is not the month but the flowers of the may, or, if you prefer it, the hawthorn. Legend has it that the hawthorn will not blossom until all danger of frost is past. Unfortunately, the hawthorn is as good at weather forecasting as the oak and the ash. But talking of may or May, children have sung a nursery rhyme about 'gathering nuts in May' for generations. Have you ever wondered what nuts? What tree would produce its flowers at the onset of winter so that its fruit is ready before the next year is half over? Actually, none. The nuts referred to are not nuts but knots, as the children used to gather bunches, or 'knots', of flowers in readiness for the May Day festivities. Another saying which came about by the corruption of words is 'apple-pie order'. This has nothing to do with apples or pies. It is a corruption of the French phrase 'nappes pliées', which means 'folded tablecloths'. And 'not worth a fig' refers not to the fruit of the ficus but to the 'fico', an expression used during Tudor times for a gesture of contempt made by pushing the thumb in between the first two fingers.
'Here we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush,
the mulberry bush.
Here we go round the mulberry bush,
On a cold and frosty morning.'
Once upon a time it was 'At five o'clock in the morning', and was a song, not of the school yard, but of the prison yard. Way back in the 17th. century James I and VI encouraged the cultivation of the mulberry in an attempt to help the English silk industry. Unfortunately this was not very successful, but many mulberry trees were planted in prison yards, round which the inmates had to take their early morning exercise. 'Ring-a-ring-o' roses' is another nursery rhyme with a sinister meaning, and dates back to the time of the plague. A ring of red marks (ring of roses) was a symptom of the plague, and people used to carry a posy of flowers to ward off the 'evil airs'. Sufferers of the plague would sneeze (atishoo, atishoo) quite a lot, and in the end they would 'all fall down'.
A woman, a dog and a walnut tree,
The more you beat them
the better they be.
Now I am not going to discuss the virtues or even the wisdom of wife- or dog-beating, but there is some factual basis for the third part of this old saying, the beating of a nut tree to increase its crop bearing capabilities. The thrashing was usually carried out using elder twigs, and elder was reputed to be a witch repellent, which of course meant that the beating could do nothing but good. But the fact that a sound thrashing of an over-vigorous tree does it good has nothing to do with witchcraft. Over-vigorous growth has been clearly demonstrated to be one of the reasons for poor bud-production and hence poor fruiting. One way to overcome the problem is to restrict growth potential by root pruning. Another way is to reduce the flow of food from the leaves to the roots, and this is usually done by bark-ringing. Grazing animals can have the same effect, and so can damaging the phloem vessels, which lie just under the bark and which carry the food downward to the roots, by giving the tree a good beating.
You must have heard of someone doing something 'by hook or by crook', that is, to finish a job by any means available. This is another saying which goes back many years to the time when farm workers had the right to gather firewood from trees growing on the land owned by the lord of the manor. They could take any branches which they could cut off with a sickle, or hook, or dead branches which they could pull down with their shepherd's crook. So the tenant got his firewood by hook or by crook.
Popeye the Sailor
Do buttercups make butter yellow? Does spinach make you strong? Does eating carrots help you to see in the dark? The answers are quite simple. No. No. No. The first of these was a common belief in medieval times when people saw cows eating the bright yellow buttercups in the fields, and this is how the ranunculus got its common name. The botanical name comes from the Latin for 'little frog', probably a reference to the damp, frog-ridden habitat which the buttercup prefers. The second is a belief popularised by Popeye, who ate it straight out of the can. Many books have stated that spinach is body-building because it contains a lot of iron - which it doesn't. This error arose over a hundred years ago when a scientist, writing a report on the minerals contained in vegetables, put a decimal point in the wrong place and suggested that spinach has ten times more iron than it actually has. The third saying I find more interesting because it was first generated in my life time, and is merely a piece of war-time propaganda. At one point in the war, British night-fighters started to shoot down more German bombers over England than they had ever done before. This was declared to be due to our pilots eating lots of carrots which improved their night vision. Actually it was because radar, having just been invented, was being fitted into our aircraft, enabling the pilots to locate the German aircraft without actually seeing them and to close in on them until they could.
So there you are. A number of old (and not so old) sayings and how they came about. I hope you find them interesting. After all it is just another facet of that enjoyable pastime we call gardening.
Happy Gardening,
written by Bill Hutchings
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