Start the week with a wildflower No 34. Common knotgrass/prostrate knotweed Polygonum aviculare. Knotweed family

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This unobtrusive native plant deserves its moment in the limelight.  If you have been to Frank’s Wood you will have walked over it at the entrance. This tough little drought resistant plant grows on trampled areas, its wiry taproot well able to cope with compacted soil. Polygonum is Greek for  “many knees,” an apt description of the swollen nodes along the stem characteristic of this plant family. Its numerous local names, at least 25, are a sure sign of a long cultural history. Many give clues to its nature eg Sparrow Tongue, from the pointed leaves, Bird weed as the starch-rich seeds feed our birds (aviculare, means pertaining to birds), Armstrong, Irongrass and Wireweed from the difficulty pulling it up (good luck trying), Pigweed and Swine’s grass as useful food and medicine for pigs. 

Knotweed, related to Buckwheat is edible, but mainly a food of hard times. The plant is packed with biologically active chemicals which are being investigated for therapeutic potential. Our ancestors of course knew this long ago, using it especially for dysentery, worms, bleeding and chest complaints.  Medicinal uses

Although self fertile it is still a magnet for insects.  112 species are listed using this plant, 93 of them moths! Invertebrates using knotweed

According to folklore, knot-grass herbal tea would stunt your growth. A belief well known to Shakespeare and his audiences who knew their plants and their folklore

(in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (iii. 2):— “Get you gone, you dwarf,

You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made, You bead, you acorn"

Aficionados of Harry Potter will of course know it as an ingredient of  the complicated polyjuice potion that allowed the drinker to temporarily assume the physical form of someone else. Harry Potter and knotweed I’m sure you need to know that!  Ok, it can be be a pest,  but I reckon it deserves some respect