Broom

Black Medick Seed Pods

The family includes many attractive plants with a wide range of growth habits. Think of Gorse, Broom, Laburnums, Wistaria, Lupins, Sweet Peas, Runner Beans and Clover: all members of this family. Let’s imagine the flower of a Sweet Pea, which above all tells you exactly why they used to be called butterfly flowers.

From in front you can see that the flower is not the same from all directions, like a Daisy or a Rose, but has a distinct top and bottom. There are two big petals at the sides called wings, a vertical one at the top called a standard, and at the bottom a curious beak-like structure, actually made of two fused petals, and called the keel. It’s so constructed that it covers the working parts of the flower (stamens and stigma), until an insect lands on it, when it drops under the weight to let the internal parts brush the insect’s body for pollination.

Gorse

Tall Melilot Common Vetch

Few pea flowers are as obviously butterfly-like as a sweet pea, but all the natives to Europe have the structure of wings, standard and keel. They may be big, or small; solitary, or in tall spikes, long hanging bunches or compact rounded heads. They often have leaves grouped in threes, or in long rows down each side of a central stem. The plants may be trees, bushes, climbers, or tiny low-growing soft plants, but the flowers always give them away. In some parts of the world other leguminous plants such as Acacias produce flowers that are just pom-poms of stamens, but they still produce their seeds in typical pods.

Red Clover White Clover Black Medick Hop Trefoil

In the meadow, most of the peas are on the small side and have clustered flowers. There are the familiar White and Red (actually pink) Clovers; two rather similar plants, Hop Trefoil and Black Medick, which are like tiny yellow clovers; there’s a clump of Tall Melilot, with long spikes of little yellow flowers; there’s an inconspicuous little pale blue flower, called Hairy Tare and there’s a pretty Common Vetch, with striking pink and purple flowers.

Kidney Vetch Two important plants in the meadow are interesting because their colour varies between red, orange and yellow, though mainly the last. Kidney vetch, one of the classic plants of chalk downland, is like a large clover flower, but with a strange white fluffy mass at the base of the cluster of flowers. Bird’s Foot Trefoil Bird’s Foot Trefoil Pods And one of the commonest plants of all, with an extremely long flowering season, is the slightly odd-looking Bird’s-foot Trefoil. Its old country name is “bacon and eggs”, from the mixed red and yellow of its colouring. The individual flowers are carried in loose heads of three to eight. When they fade the reason for the standard name is obvious, as they leave behind a cluster of slender, blackish, straight pods, looking remarkably like the toes of a small bird, even down to sharp claw.

Common Blue on Trefoil

Many leguminous plants have nodules on their roots which are full of a type of bacteria with the unusual ability to extract nitrogen from the air and fix it in the form of nitrates, natural fertilisers. The ability of peas and beans to do this was at the heart of the old system of crop rotation. A crop of bean plants, after harvest, could be ploughed in to provide a rich soil for a different crop, say barley or carrots, next year. And some of these plants are butterfly flowers in more than one sense. Most of the family provide nectar, much loved by all insects. They are also the food plant of choice for the caterpillars of those most characteristic of chalkland butterflies, the blues.

Featured Flower – Common Broomrape (Orobanche minor)

The Broomrape family are perennial parasites, found in grassy places, which attach themselves to the roots of other plants. They have no leaves, but large, fleshy scales up their stems and they contain no chlorophyll. The flowers are two-lipped, in spikes and are usually the same colour as the rest of the plant. Greater Broomrape (Orobanche rapa-genistae) is a parasite of plants such as Gorse and Broom and is the origin of the common name. Rapa is the Latin for “turnip” and refers to the swollen base of the Greater Broomrape stem. Genista is the old name for Broom. The generic name Orobanche comes from the Greek orobos meaning “vetch” and ancho meaning “I strangle”.

Common Broomrape

Ivy Broomrape

In Reg’s Meadow we have only identified Common Broomrape up till now, which is a parasite of the leguminosae, the pea family which we are featuring this month. We might possibly expect to find others such as Knapweed, Yarrow or Thistle Broomrapes in the meadow, so we will examine future specimens carefully to see if we have any of those. The different species are quite difficult to tell apart but the differences in overall colour and the colour of the stamens, among other things, can help in identification. For example, Common Broomrape usually has purple stamens, while Ivy Broomrape, shown in a photograph taken on the Dorset Coast, has yellowish stamens. One clue is to see what plants the Broomrape is growing amongst, but as they can appear quite some distance from the host plant that is not a foolproof method of identification.