Toothwort

Toothwort growing in Mr & Mrs Knottman's Arnside garden. I'm seriously envious that they have this amongst other woodland and grassland flowers. Mr K thinks it's a relic of ancient woodland which pre-dates the building of their house.

Toothwort is a root parasite, devoid of chlorophyll, and deriving its sustenance from, in this case, hazel. In case of confusion, the green leaves here belong to ground elder. Toothwort is not a rare plant, but then it is not common either - and given its liking for the roots of common trees and shrubs, one might expect it to be more abundant than it is.

Geoffrey Grigson's "The Englishman's Flora" gives a somewhat gruesome local name for it from Yorkshire - Corpse-flower.  He says "in a naked wood, in April, before the bluebells, Toothwort might have grown out of a buried corpse, instead of being a parasite on the roots of hazel, elder or elm". That seems a bit fanciful to me, unlikely if not impossible botanically.  A bit of poetic licence from Grigson perhaps, who was after all a poet as well as a naturalist. Or was he just offering a possible origin of the name?

The toothwort name refers to the scales on the underground rhizome, and possibly the ivory-white shiny capsules that develop from the pollinated flowers which Grigson describes as like small fangs. Keeping the dental references going, Richard Mabey likens the flowers to "dirty, mauve molars".

Anyway, I wasn't poking around inside Knottman's garden unsupervised, I was being given a guided tour by the man himself. Gus and I (and later Wifie) were there by invitation for tea and cakes with Hilary and her husband David who dropped in before heading back to the north-east. It may be later this evening, but expect to see a Gus blip later from Hilary (though there is a rival blip dog vying for her attention).

An enjoyable afternoon, topped off by an exclusive preview of Knottman's forthcoming exhibition which should be one of the highlights of the Arnside & Silverdale Arts Trail in June.