ALSO KNOWN AS: Erica tetralix (which is a perfect name), four-leaved winter heath, "freoagh Frangagh" (Manx for French heather), rose heather
Not common heather, with its softer branches, with its slight flowers that grow all down the stem.
Not blueberry with their larger rounded leaves and white flowers.
How to know:
No more than 1’ tall
All together, looking like a silver cloud in a clearing or meadow on account of the light hairs all over their bodies.
Bell flowers all clumped together at the top, bowing
Whorled leaves in a cross pattern all along the stem
Everything about this plant looks like a small warrior,
from its sharp tongue to its fur, prepared for cold: wax along its leaves, tight rounded heads looking down as if to pick the fallen light up off the ground, the reflection of it against the swirling acid of the fen where it grows.
Their stems climate as a multi headed dragon whose neck sags with heavy blooms and whose leaves coat it like scales, jutting out in four rays all around. They are cold weather plants, blooming through October in the northern hemisphere when the morning dew freezes to the plants like deathly lace. All of the ericaceae are in the northern hemispheres all over the world at about 4,000 species, but some span the southern hemisphere from South Africa to Australia. No matter where they are, each one has bell. Some species may be familiar: a rhododendron, a blueberry, lingonberry, manzanita…
Incidentally, I got to workshop the preliminary notes of this piece in a writing group where a native Londoner listened. She pulled me aside when the evening was over, concerned that what I showed the group might actually be a heather plant. She needed me to know, and she spoke this with the fluency of a local: heathlands are for livestock, they’re common land. Moors are in the north country, they’re vast and wild. “But they do things differently up north.” She added. “In the moors there is heath.” she said like a song.
And the concern with which she addressed me: that I not get it wrong, that I hold this information carefully, reminded me that while I am drawing as much from personal experience as I can, but there are people who know more about these plants than I do. In the same way I grew up smelling the root of a queen anne’s lace or feeling the chafe of swinging on a wild grape vine.
It turns out, heath is both the name of pastureland, common land, and a type of plant related to heather. Erica tetralix is indeed a heath.
Heaths and moors both, regardless of the history or proximity to cities, are a human artifact.
To varying degrees humans have been cultivating these landscapes since prehistoric times. Without our continuous management through livestock, burning, and cutting it would go back to a forest.
It was by the Pacific where I read in The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald that the forests of England were burned down to make room for pastures and agriculture. It is an ancient artifact that was started by prehistoric humans. Sebald goes on to describe what ships were built with what was left of the forests in the 17 and 1800’s. “Our spread over the earth was spread by reducing the higher species of vegetation to charcoal, by incessantly burning whatever will burn…Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artifact.” (170). That this land is a giant scar and the heath, heather, and braken coagulate to coat it with something, anything covering over a smoldering ember of past fires that were its creation.
In literature the moorland it is the unwanted land of the wanderer, of the broken, and the mysteries. It was Cathy in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte who moaned outside the window raging - or was it her scent? I’ve heard a ghost’s scent is that which one encounters first. Perhaps these plants are the memory of some sharp and grotesque love that won’t die and that batters and howls against the windows of the living.
For how fragrant this plant is, it often self pollinates before it fully blossoms, as pollinators do not rush to this plant, preferring the heathers (which sounds weirdly like an early aughts movie, or high school.) The bell-shaped flowers of the cross-leaved heath change color throughout the season, from a deeper pink and lighter as the season goes. The bell shapes are in fact, fused petals, meeting at a point. Bell flowers with tiny purple tongues - no. stigmas. Dead flowers rusted colored intersperse between the late bloomers in the crisped northern autumn. I think about how much it takes for a plant to bloom. And, here, in these cold conditions, the energy that it would need to bloom while protecting itself might be immense.
Evergreen from the arctic circle into the Iberian peninsula, this plant congregates in the north.Cross-leaved heath silvers the ground with its lushly coated body, in acidic bogs, fens, heath, and moorland. It also can grow in non-nutritious soil. They are calcifuges: plants that become iron deficient in chalky soils. They are literally ironclad and prepared for pollination by letting off a distinct and strong scent and being able to self pollinate through both male and female organs and call insects: bumblebees, hoverflies, and moths to them. Important food for deer, rabbit and other grazers. Charles Darwin speculated that these might be protocarnivorous plants. That once it was meat that gathered against their bodies. It’s because those hairs along their leaves, like scales, making it shine, closing in on their stems - those are sticky. I imagine it is not an accident that the patron saint of England, George, rode a white horse and killed the dragon, the one of the marshes, the fens, the one of the silver back, the one who creates a golden dye, like fire, and cannot stand chalky soil. The one who once might have eaten the meat of insects.
I keep finding dragons in marshland plants.
Tetra: four; lix: leaves, the four-leafed flower that crosses itself one hundred times before it blooms. These glandular leaves poke from its spiney stem no more than one foot from the ground. And its flowers always look down, pressed against the wind and cold. They will be green until the thaw.
Cross-leaved heath has been used for medicinal anti-inflammatory and is a source for antioxidants. These were a source for yellow dye in the hebrides in Scotland. Brooms can be made from its stems because they’re so strong. But they are also flexible.
Myth for cross-leaved heath
Before time the earth lived without rage, until a creature crashed to earth who took the form of what we now know as a comet. They were giant, scaled, and full of fire. They found home on this earth and they were in such a rage they could not be held by it. They destroyed all they saw.
Desperately the earth froze over in fear; in overwhelm. To save what little was left and freeze the beings.
She froze for lifetimes.
And when she felt ready to melt, when her fear subsided the earth slowly came back to life, though they looked quite different having hardened, having frozen. The beast’s left their eggs behind, and what broke from these rounded remnants were children of the comets, singers of the north. Their heads were shaped like bells to tell the stories of their parents. And their rage was cooled for their claws crept into the earth and washed the fires of their ancient anger.
You can still see the markings of it though. They have the strength of iron and when they are turned into dye you can see the fires from their fierce arrival from the heavens in the yellow gold of their essence.
Forager Friendly:
Yes! Be aware of how much you harvest, of course, but these are plants that have been used for yellow dyes, and medicines.
Sources
http://www.wildflowerweb.co.uk/plant/236/cross-leaved-heath
https://www.sussexflora.org.uk/2020/07/erica-tetralix-cross-leaved-heath/
https://www.heathsandheathers.com/cart7/cart7_Page2029.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrX9DFcFxeg
https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/erica/tetralix/
The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcifuge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NFiCHRfDBs
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/articles/dragons-and-their-origins/
https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1469-8137.1953.tb05199.x
Isle of Man and the Manx word, Scottish heath of hebrides: this is my kind of plant! Love the tale and love the little helmets -- a plant to meet face to face down close to the ground where she lives. Love this week's very special plant!