Leeks, continued

MY column on vegetables, starring leeks [4x18], drew copious comment, including replies to the invitation to complete my Ode to Leeks.

Readers were asked to complete

my opening quatrain: O greygreen marvel, O most valued veg,/ Surpassing beets, sprouts, kales and all the rest/ By far, by far, for ’tis thou art our pledge,/ Of health and wellness, winner of my quest . . .

Ripe verses

Reader One didn’t get beyond a first line; but what a first line! ‘‘Into the ODT wrote the six hundred’’ — The Charge of the Leek Brigade.

The task

Reader Two, Brenda Taylor from Hawea, replied: ‘‘I have not been able to pick up the traditional metre of a sonnet, but

here is my contribution . . . No soup shall sing without your pleasant tone,/ No casserole complete upon the tongue./ In curry, fricassee and stew, how you have shone/. To leeks I raise my ladle, star of Wales,/ And treasure you above a thousand kales. I was glad someone else was itching to bring Wales in, and rhyming it with kales was inspired.

Sonnet

I didn’t stipulate a sonnet, but Reader

Three went the whole

hog: O greygreen Marvel! And so on /When did you take root in the Occident?/ Were you already here, before the Gaels/ Brought us as a gift, or by accident?/ O ancient emblem of the land of Wales!/ Your juice, ’tis said, keeps French women slender./Did you flavour a Neanderthal feast,/ Steeped in pale wine and simmered ’til tender?/ Did you come here from the fabulous East?/ Planted in key patterns by ancient Greeks,/ O most noble Alliums, O venerable leeks! Thank you, Merome Sabonadiere, and all who have burst into verse.

Leek lore

So there’s more to leeks than meets the eye. Two prizes (of guess what) go to Brenda and Merome.

Back to cleavers

Not that I had ignored other vegs, nor that I eat only leeks (what would that do to you at my age?). Back to Reader One and sober prose, who knew about

cleavers: ‘‘As a botanist and gardener I know cleavers (Galium

aparine) as a common weed that has leaves in whorls of four, bearing hooked hairs that allow it to scramble up among other vegetation. The dry twoseeded fruits are small burrs that stick to clothing, each fruit shaped like a pair of bobbles with a constriction between — a cleft, which might relate to the origin of the term

cleavers. And perhaps the weedy cleavers, soft and herbaceous, once had a use as a standby vegetable’’.

Tolkieniana

Lastly, if you’ve heard enough about vegs but are still reading,

Reader One added this anecdote: ‘‘Mark Forsyth, in The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the

Perfect English Phrase (2013), describes how J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his first story, at the age of 7, about a ‘‘green great dragon’’. His mother said it had to be a

great green one. The reason Tolkien’s description was a mistake is that adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinionsizeageshapecolouroriginmaterialpurposenoun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And as size comes before colour, green great dragons can’t exist’’. Only great green ones.