It is that time of year when walking through my local Barna Woods with the dogs most often means a meandering journey home through a botanical lexicon; plain plants, native and escaped clothed in common yet exotic names: selfheal, pink sorrel, scarlet and yellow pimpernel, cranesbill, pennywort, hedge woundwort, milkwort and nipplewort, rose campion, stonecrop, redshank, loosestrife, bindweed, spotted-orchid, thale cress, hogweeds, crane’s-bill, meadowsweet, tutsan, and valerian envelop you. The list goes on and yet, for me at least, the Nightshades signpost the late June odyssey. From the shade-loving, weed-like and almost apologetic Enchanter’s to the hesitant but confident, white-flowered Black and the more assertive and proud purple and yellow-flowered Woody or Bittersweet, the Nightshades real and imagined, cast the greatest spells.
Enchanter’s Nightshade or Circaea lutetiana (in Irish Fuinseagach, linking it to the ash or Fuinseog in Irish because of the similarity of the leaves) flowers between May and August and is a native plant belonging to the evening primrose family. Leafless, erect but delicate hairy stems up to 30cms bearing small white and occasionally pink-tinged flowers arise from heavily veined heart-shaped leaves supported by a creeping rootstock.
The plant derives its Enchanter’s name from the supposed witches-brew the goddess Circe gave to Odysseus’ men to turn them into pigs. Joyce in Ulyssess’ Circe chapter has Stephen Deadulus and Leopold Bloom visit the brothel of the “Circe” and “massive whoremistress” Bella Cohen. In the chapter both experience hallucinations unlocking their sub-consciousness and where multiple characters in the book are “transformed”. In Homer’s Ulysses when Circe eventually releases Odysseus’ men from their pigsty they are transformed back into younger-looking and taller men.
Carl Linnaeus named the plant such in 1753 and linked the witches brew element to Lutetia, the ancient name for Paris, a city infamous in Europe for its late 17thCentury “Affair of the Poisons” where “enchantresses” like La Voisin and Maire Bosse manipulated (and murdered) upper class members of society with occult and black-magic practices. Enchanter’s Nightshade is not poisonous and is not linked botanically to the sometimes very poisonous Atropa Nightshade genus. I like to think of its pretence, is suggestibility; a single word rather than a potion unlocking the sub-conscious.
On either side of the tarmacadamed sinusoidal path that bisects the woods can be found flowering two different species of real Nightshade.
The European Black Nightshade or Solanum nigrum is a member of the Solanaceae family which also includes tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant. It has a small five-petalled white flower surrounding bright yellow anthers. Its berries turn black and form in a cluster unlike its cousin, the toxic deadly nightshade Atropa belladonna, where the similar black berries grow individually. Atropa’s flowers are purple and the plant contains multiple tropane alkaloids including atropine and scopolamine which are highly poisonous and hallucinogenic. The toxicity of the s.nigrum plant, which sometimes can be fatal to animals and occasionally children, lies in the Solanine glycoalkaloid toxin found in all parts of the plant but in greatest concentration in immature green berries. Levels vary between different strains (red-berried strains are edible) and growing conditions and therefore difficult to predict.
I find this part of the walk a trip down memory lane. I was going to say nostalgic but nostalgia is a compound word derived from the Greek for homecoming nostos and pain, álgos and these memories were pleasureable.
In 1980, the summer after the fall of Kampala in the Uganda-Tanzanian War that forced Idi Amin into exile, I worked in a mission hospital in Dareda near Manyara in north-western Tanzania. Of the staff working there with the Medical Missionaries of Mary was a very formidable and very capable nurse-anaesthetist who was a member of the local Cushitic-speaking people, the Iraqw. The rumour, probably circulated to ensure that none of us “temporary” medical blow-ins annoyed her, was that she had done-away with her first husband. I once asked Fr Louie the local priest about this when we were driving back the rutted roads up the escarpment from a soccer-match against our bitter rivals in Babati. Louis from further south in Tanzania had been trained into the priesthood in Thurles, Co. Tipperary by the Pallottines and still spoke English (one of his seven languages) with a thick North Riding accent. He laughed and said that the reason for the local mythology was probably more prosaic than that. He then explained that the Iraqw people used an edible species of Nightshade (mnafu in Kiswahili) as a green vegetable and served it with a type of corn porridge called ugali. Given that its cousin the Atropa belladonna Nightshade provided many of the drugs our nurse-anaesthetist used in her work people probably elaborated the story. I never did find out from Louis how her first husband had died but in the area south of us at Singida there was still rumours of a “Lion Man” being used to settle scores. (See an earlier 2011 blog: https://deworde.blogspot.com/2011/03/rihla-journey-18-mt-hanang-tanzania.html)
The other Nightshade plant across the other side of the path in the woods is far more showy. With its exuberant drooping indigo and yellow flowers, it flowers from June to September and berries start appearing in August. This is the Bittersweet or Woody Nightshade classified as Solanum dulcamera. There are as many as 22 common alternative English-usage names for the plant of which 6 allude to the plant’s potentially poisonous nature. It is a climbing vine-like plant that produces bright red berries that are highly poisonous.
Of interest to the witch-potions associated with Enchanter’s Nightshade in the Middle Ages the Bittersweet Nightshade plant was thought to ward off witches and evil spirits when hung as a garland around the neck. However it had to be, like its cousin Atropa handled carefully. Early writers such as Aldhelm of Malmesbury (c. 660 CE) describe the plant causing bouts of insanity or hallucinations. The fruit is said to have a sweet aftertaste hence the name Bittersweet to combine its sweet and bitter toxic properties. Dulcamera is a combination of the Latin dulcis or sweet and amarus meaning bitter. The genus name is Solanum derives from solamen which means soothing or comforting.
Onward to Ithaca and home, sweet memories.
Derham-2026-IJMS - GREAT GALWAY X RAYS TRIAL.pdf