Will no one rid me of this turbulent weed?

Praised in poetry, cultivated by Duchesses and an important life force for insects, could it be that ragwort is unfairly maligned, asks Bethany Stone

- Bethany Stone

STROLL down any country lane and England’s green and pleasant land is alive with colour. So observed poet and patron of all things bucolic John Clare, who revelled in the weeds and wildflowers British meadows have to offer. Indeed, he devoted a sonnet to one. Senecio jacobaea might be a ‘humble flower with tattered leaves’, but, for Clare, its bright-yellow buds ‘litter gold’ over fields and verges with a potency that turns sunshine to ‘paleness’, as he proclaims in The Ragwort of 1832. The genus Senecio, derived from the Latin for ‘old man’, implies a kindly, whiskered plant bending in the breeze—and whiskered it is. The white, downy pappus is the key to its dispersal on the wind of anywhere from a few hundred to many thousands of seeds per plant.

Clare commends ragwort’s appearance, but naturalists have further cause to celebrate. Simon Hiscock, director of the Oxford Botanic Garden, estimates that some 30 insects and other invertebrates feast solely on ragwort. ‘They are totally dependent on it for food,’ he explains. ‘It’s considered the seventh most important nectar plant in the UK.’ One such creature is the cinnabar-moth caterpillar, decked in yellow and black as a larva and donning a smart black-and-crimson livery upon achieving adulthood. So inextricably linked are ragwort and this caterpillar, Tyria jacobaeae, that they partly share a name. Why, then, is this life-giving plant an outlaw? Legislated against under the Ragwort Control Act 2003 to curb its spread, the ‘old man’ can be a cantankerous devil. Imbued with unpalatable pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs), ragwort is grim for grazing stock and danger awaits those who dare to taste it. True, the juvenile cinnabar munch merrily away and, untouched by ragwort’s toxins, are left alone by predators. Cattle and horses, however, have no such luck—vertebrates process the PAs into toxic byproducts and can suffer liver failure if enough is ingested.