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Plant with Purpose - The Butcher’s Broom
TURNING UP in florist’s windows around Christmas time as an unlikely pot plant, with cherry-sized, very seasonal, red berries against intensely prickly, evergreen foliage, Ruscus aculeatus must be about the weirdest useful plant in the country.
A very hardy, evergreen shrub, native to woodlands in southern England and Wales, it is most reminiscent of holly (“knee holly” is one of its charming country names), yet it is absolutely no relation. In fact, it belongs in the lily family, and is closest to another member of that group, asparagus. The young shoots of Ruscus look very similar to asparagus spears and can be eaten in the same way – but for heaven’s sake, catch them young! In no time, what look like spiny leaves (they are technically modified stems, called cladodes) open and harden. Believe me, they would be excruciating to eat!
In the centre of these cladodes, small whitish flowers appear on the female plants in spring. By Christmas, these have become big bright berries and make a superb table decoration. |
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The formidable prickliness and resilience of the mature stems led to their being used in bygone days as besoms or brooms – especially well suited to scrubbing down the butcher’s blocks after a day’s work (presumably attached to a long handle!). This use gave us its common name of Butchers Broom.
When I was dividing up my Butchers Broom in the spring, I couldn’t immediately decide what to do with the spent stems. So, being short of pea-sticks as usual, I stuck them in the ground around my pea seedlings, like a miniature hedge. I had some vague notion of punishing any slugs, but it was much later that I found that the twigs were also used in this way to deter mice from raiding old meat larders. Right enough, all my peas came up and no mouse damage, for once, was suffered! But the dried up twigs were just as painful to dispose of in September.
The root of Butchers Broom has medicinal properties, most verifiably in the treatment of jaundice, bladder and kidney stones, and weakness of the veins – though Culpepper, in the seventeenth century, staunchly promoted its use for mending broken and dislocated bones as well!
However, given the ferocious nature of this spiny herb, the throwaway line in Mrs. Grieve’s Herbal that “the boughs have been employed for flogging chilblains” makes me wince. Even worse, the RHS Dictionary of Herbs recommends its use “externally for haemorrhoids”. The mind boggles!
I think I’ll stick to the Butcher’s Broom as a seasonal mouse deterrent and a really unique, faintly mysterious, decoration for Yuletide.
© Margaret Lear
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