Orange flowers are not always welcome Country Notebook

waste ground and churchyards, where it flowers from mid-summer into the autumn.

Another of its common names is orange hawkweed. If you want to research it you may need to know botanically it is pilosella aurantiaca or – if you have an older reference book – hieracium aurantiacum.

Though found throughout Britain, perhaps surprisingly the plant is not a native.

It is an alpine plant from Southern Europe and was introduced into our gardens before the end of the 16th century. For this is when it was first written about, by Gerard who tells of “the women who keepe it in gardens for novelties sake”. The first reference to it growing wild comes from the 1790s.

Gerard knew the plant by the name ‘Grim the collier’.

For people had noticed the black hairs it has, particularly on the buds, like a sooty beard. They named it after a despised character in folklore who cheated people when supplying fuel. In our first book on ornamental gardening John Parkinson (1629) felt the name “Grim the collier by which it is called by many, is both idle and foolish”. He thought its image could be improved by calling it something more attractive.

It is one of the Royal Horticultural Society’s 400 “perfect for pollinators” but do you want to grow it in the garden?

Some find it so cute and cheery they will put up with its bad habits.

For be warned, yet another of its

TOM O’REILLY

common names is The Devils paintbrush, perhaps referring to its invasiveness. If introduced to a garden it can spread all over, in a lawn its flat rosette of leaves escaping the mower. It spreads by runners as well as by seed while its creeping underground stolons make it difficult to remove from rockeries and walls once it is established. In some countries it has become such a nuisance distribution is banned.

Writer about wildflowers Richard Mabey described the situation well. He said some plants are like certain relations: pleasant to see but you don’t necessarily want them living very near you.