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Arum maculatum



28th April 2006


The native Lords and Ladies, or Cuckoo Pint is a charming and irredeemably weedly little thing, of little value in the garden, but lovely to come across in a hedgerow.

John Gerard wrote:

"Beares after they have lien in their dens forty daies without any manner of sustenance, but what they get with licking and sucking their owne feet, doe as soon as they come forth eat the herbe Cuckow-pint, through the windie nature thereof the hungry gut is opened and made fit againe to receive sustenance ... "

To paraphrase, after a long winter sucking its own feet, the hungry bear likes nothing more than a good fart! A piece of information that is of little value now, and was probably of little value then. (It should on no account be tried, Arum maculatum is rather toxic!)

21st April 2016