runcible gardening

For no known reason, on Friday I was thinking about runcible spoons, as I pottered in the garden. I thought I remembered that the word runcible was a nonsense invention by Edward Lear. I had been on a 'weed walk' led by Adam Grubb, and had bought a copy of his  book The Weed Forager's Handbook, but I don't see why that should have got me musing about runcible spoons.

Anyway...today I was browsing Adam's book and came to the page about Sow Thistles. We have lots of this weed in our garden, so I thought I'd also read about the plant in a book I bought decades ago, Weeds of Forests, Roadsides and Gardens. I love comparing information, because it seems to help knowledge 'stick' in my head.

Since I don't have a background education in botany, I find the text in this latter book hard to understand. But when I read that the leaves of Sonchus oleraceus (sow thistle) are thin and runcinate, my attention sharpened.

So what, I asked myself, does runcinate mean? The Free Dictionary defines it as:

a leaf having incised margins with the lobes or teeth curved toward the base; as a dandelion leaf.

Now I wondered whether Lear's made-up word might have had some connection, even if subconscious on his part, with this botanical term. Was Lear a botanist? No. But he did illustrate natural history books, so it's possible he was familiar with the term runcinate.

The Guardian has a collection of suggested origins for the word that are much more likely than mine, but why shouldn't I, too, have fun imagining the mind of Edward Lear?

I've written about weeds previously. To me there's no such thing as a weed. They're just plants. Oh, maybe I'd make an exception for moth plants. I really don't like them. No, I shouldn't do that. They're just trying to make a living, like everything else in my garden.

One woman's weed is another woman's herb

Oxalis pes caprae. A weed. So hard to get rid of. One of my problems with it is that it comes up through other plants. The other problem, of course, is that it has little bulbils on the underground tuber and if I pull it out, these grow into new plants.

But what if I try the technique I wrote about once before, renaming it so I can see it in a different light? After all, words have the power to change our thinking.

I decided to think of the oxalis plants as mulch, food for the soil. I pulled them out and simply threw them down. (Yes, I know I may find I have multiplied the problem for next year, but let's worry about that in  2013.)

After all, what's a weed, anyway? I'm sure somewhere in the world, the big-leaved plant we value as Warrigal greens is settling in nicely as a weed in a place where it's not wanted. (Yes, they don't like it in California.)

Here's a book I bought in Greece, many years ago:

I'm sure Greeks like their 'Aghriospanakia herb (Chenopodium Album L) - the book says it can be eaten boiled and seasoned with salt and butter. 

But if you look in an Australian book, it's a weed.

And now, of course, I just can't resist ending with a quote from Shakespeare:

Juliet:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)