The Butterfly effect, Gardener’s Revenge and the Peas that Changed the World

Sea Holly- A Gardener’s Revenge

There was a famous plantswoman of the early 20^th century who was supposed to be as great as Gertrude Jekyll, the queen of the English herbaceous border…..

Unfortunately, Miss Wilmott was a  headstrong lesbian in unsympathetic times, who snubbed the RHS and squandered a fortune. But she does have a well- known perennial of the herbaceous border named after her called Eryngium ‘Miss Wilmott’s Ghost’.

It was claimed, perhaps tongue in cheek, that it was named after her because she used to sprinkle it in her rivals’ garden designs to ruin them.

But surely the real way of destroying a rival’s design is the methodical shredding of bindweed roots with a Magimix and then spreading  them out in their garden with a sprinkling of soil to bed them down. As you can see I have thought this through- a gardener’s revenge tastes sweeter than the first crop of peas….

This is because every tiny piece of bindweed root will form a new plant. So I’m sure she would have been quietly chuckling as the tendrils choked the plants and maybe even climbed up to the bedroom window to finish the job on the unfortunate owners of the garden.

The Butterfly effect

Last summer, in August 2023, I was at Oxford station waiting to change trains for Worcester and both on the way there and coming back there was a red admiral butterfly resting on the platform. Perhaps she (something so beautiful can only be a she?) enjoyed pirouetting in the slipstream of the train like the fluffy seeds of Oxford Ragwort, the famous annual weed which found a similar habitat on the railway lines of Britain to its native habitat of Mount Etna in Sicily.

I reached out to touch it but it fluttered away before I could fulfil my fantasy of re-enacting the scene in Lord of The Rings when the Elvish king whispers something in the ear of a butterfly on his hand so as to send a message to the other side of the kingdom. The true butterfly effect……

Ofcourse, it may be the sheer proliferation of Buddleia davidii along the limey banks of the railway line that had caused the red admiral to rest at the station. This is in tune with Richard Mabey’s book about plants colonizing urban areas called The Unofficial countryside. I believe he borrowed the phrase from another hero of mine, George Orwell. In August they would have all been in flower with their purple wands contrasting well with the bright yellow of Oxford ragwort making the journey from London that tiny bit less Russian constructivist.

Buddleia is a common plant in the UK now, even a weed because of it pernicious habit of self seeding along railway lines and into mortar of walls. But it is relatively well-behaved garden plant which can be managed by even the roughest gardener doing the hardest of cut backs because it is so vigorous.

But to me is will also be emblematic of the summer holidays in Norfolk because our family home had two large bushes outside that were always covered with purple inflorescences covered with the aformentioned red admirals during the summer break.

Seemingly, other butterflies and moths don’t get a look in. It could be that red admirals are one of the few pollinators attracted to the Buddleia or in the unlikely event that they are very territorial like our favourite British garden bird, the robin; whose beautiful love songs in the bleak midwinter are in fact a warning to other birds to keep their distance.

The Geneticists supper

Gregor Mendel, A Moravian monk is the father of modern genetics. Although he was little known in his time in the 19^th century; his paper on the subject was rediscovered, fought over and eventually accepted as correct about 50 years later in England.

His system of catergorizing seeds according to their genotype and phenotype using a system of capital and lowercase letters such as AA Aa and aa has allowed the development of deliberate cross pollination by man to produce hybrid seeds with extra vigour. This effectively means that his discovery has pioneered the era of modern farming and therefore population growth because hybrid seeds and the ability to identify and breed them has resulted in much bigger yields.

Mendel became a monk in Moravia principly to escape poverty and it gave him the freedom to conduct the research of his choice.

Eventually he chose to conduct experiments on the genetics of peas which was either lucky or clever because the genetic attributes of peas can be mapped if traced over a number of generations.

As a by product therefore, there was a huge surplus of fresh peas for the monastery’s kitchen. Indeed when teaching his pupils , in his other role at the monastery, Mendel would often throw a handful of peas at a student that was day dreaming.

Anyway, the chef at the monastery was one of the most able in Moravia (modern day Czechia) and many young girls wishing to go into service trained with her. A particular speciality was rose hip sauce for meat dishes but the peas would have been well used too in pea soup, pork and potatoes with steamed peas and then perhaps some apple strudel with whipped cream( no peas, however sweet in that, I hope) .

Perhaps all this did offset the problematic issue of celibacy but not only were they eating delicious food and frankly fresh food does not get much sweeter than fresh peas but these peas were the by product of some extremely important scientific experiments that were to change the course of farming and history.

Like so many things it often strikes me how people don’t realize how important an event is at the time even. Never have the peas pushed round the plate by a fussy, pimply youth been of such significance!