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Updated: June 25, 2025
There in the morning light they saw the broken lock with a weir beside it, and over the weir a tumble of flashing water; an islet or two, red with stalks of loosestrife; a swan bathing in the channel between. And there, early as they came, Sam Bossom stood already on the lock-bank; but not awaiting them, and not alone.
Yellow loosestrife is rising, thick comfrey stands at the very edge; the sandpipers run where the shore is free from bushes. Back by the underwood the prickly and repellent brambles will presently present us with fruit. For the squirrels the nuts are forming, green beechmast is there green wedges under the spray; up in the oaks the small knots, like bark rolled up in a dot, will be acorns.
The banks were rich with loosestrife and meadowsweet, and as they walked on, the arching of hawthorn and willow made of the stream and the path beside it a little tunnel of shade and scent. The distant farmyard sounds which spoke of Ivychurch behind them gradually faded into a thick silence.
Little John was there, lying down, smiling and contented after a hard day's hunting, listening to young Robin, who was displaying the treasures he had brought in that day, and telling his great companion where he had found them. There were flowers for Maid Marian, because she was fond of the purple and yellow loosestrife, and long thick reeds in a bundle.
How many exiles and wanderers, both those who have no fortune and those who have failed to win it, dream of these cabin rows, these sweet-scented boreens with their 'banks of furze unprofitably gay, these leaking thatches with the purple loosestrife growing in their ragged seams, and, looking backward across the distance of time and space, give the humble spot a tender thought, because after all it was in their dear native isle!
A mile or two up the river the tansy is plentiful, bearing golden buttons, which, like every fragment of the feathery foliage, if pressed in the fingers, impart to them a peculiar scent. There, too, the yellow loosestrife pushes up its tall slender stalks to the top of the low willow-bushes, that the bright yellow flowers may emerge from the shadow.
Once it spread out into a lake, in which was a little island covered with tall bulrushes and purple loosestrife. But although there was so much pleasure for the eye, the afternoon was one of suffering. We were blistering from the heat of the sun, and our bottles being emptied, we were tormented with thirst.
LOOSESTRIFE. The juice of the whole herb is used to dye woollen yellow. MYRICA Gale. SWEET GALE. The whole shrub tinges woollen of a yellow colour. NYMPHAEA alba. WHITE WATER-LILY. The Highlanders make a dye with it of a dark chesnut colour. Light. Fl. Sc. ORIGANUM vulgare. WILD MARJORAM. The tops and flowers contain a purple colour, but it is not to be fixed. PHYTOLACCA decandra.
But no human folk frequented the banks of the canal, which wound its way past scented meadows edged with willow-herb, late meadow-sweet, yellow tansy and purple loosestrife, this last showing a blood-red stalk as its bloom died away.
On the other hand, some plants had the reputation of attracting serpents, one of these being the moneywort or creeping loosestrife, with which they were said to heal themselves when wounded. As far back as the time of Pliny serpents were supposed to be very fond of fennel, restoring to them their youth by enabling them to cast their old skins.
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