Railway revolution for flower that signals slide to autumn

AT THIS time of year, the course of the old Leeds and Thirsk Railway line sprouts intermittent pink rashes of rosebay willowherb.

It is one of the flowers associated with late summer and can still be seen flowering well into October.

But for me, seeing it always carries a tinge of sadness since it means that mid-summer has passed and we are already on the downward slide to autumn.

Along the line’s former trackbed at Bilton on the outskirts of Harrogate, magentatipped spikes of the plant were showing profusely during a weekend walk, as they will have been at just about every other disused or still-used railway line in the country.

This is because rosebay willowherb (Chamerion or Epilobium angustifolium) owes its wide distribution to the railway revolution which gathered pace from 1840s, with many thousands of miles of line reaching most corners of the UK by the end of the 19th century.

It is hard to believe now, but before then botanists considered the plant to be rare.

Its spread along the corridors forged by the great railway companies, blasted out with gunpowder and later dynamite, was due to the huge numbers of gossamer-soft seeds produced by the plant, which is among the most opportunistic in our flora and can easily propagate in even the poorest soil.

So, rosebay willowherb is among the first flowers to show along the grass verges of new roads, or on any wasteland left by the clearance of housing or industry.

This ability to establish itself almost anywhere has inspired quite a few alternative names.

In the United States and Canada it is widely known as fireweed because it is one of the first plants to appear after forest fires, even managing to sprout from badly scorched earth.

In Britain it has several different vernacular names. A century ago, rosebay willowherb was called pit daises in Yorkshire and North Derbyshire because it was often found growing around open cast coal mines.

And since the Second World War, a more widespread name for the plant is bombweed in view of its ability to quickly colonise land that was cleared after the blitz. In bomb-hit areas of the capital, it provided such vibrant sheets of pink in what were otherwise scenes of devastation that it was given the affectionate name of London’s pride.

One country superstition about rosebay willowherb in Yorkshire comes from Skipton, where it seems that if you pick them a thundery downpour will follow soon afterwards, and for this reason it became known locally as the thunder flower.

This isn’t as daft as it sounds, since sultry days in late summer – when the flower is widespread – are when thunderstorms are most likely to occur.

Another name once common across Yorkshire and Lancashire refers to a belief the airborne white seeds actually eat sugar. The evidence for this appears to be that the seeds were often found in sugar bowls. As a result, children referred to the seeds as sugar stealers or sugar flies.