Smokin'

Common Fumitory (Fumaria officinalis)

Along one edge of our property, we have the remnants of a huge pile of woodchips left after a long row of Leylandii cypress trees were felled some years ago (before we lived here). When we rented the place, back before we stumped up the cash to buy it, our landlord repeatedly promised to remove said chips, but he never quite got around to it. As a result, this has remained one of the wilder corners of the garden, covered with a burgeoning jungle of thistles, nettles, dock plants, and a few scattered flowering gems. Among the latter is a sizeable colony of Common Fumitory (Fumaria officinalis), which is slowly expanding along a bank of nettle. It's a common annual weed of disturbed and cultivated ground across Britain, flowering from April to October. In fact, it's the most common fumitory in all of central and western Europe! It has also naturalised itself across parts of North America, escaping from garden plantings. Perhaps surprisingly, it's not a true British native; it's thought to have been brought to the islands by Neolithic settlers. It has been used as a medicinal plant since antiquity, used to treat everything from digestive issues and conjunctivitis to arthritis and skin blemishes. It's actually a member of the poppy family, despite its very different appearance. The name fumitory refers to the supposedly "smoky" appearance of either the flowers or the foliage, depending on which source you believe. Neither looks particularly smoky to me, but other species have greyer foliage and much paler flowers, so perhaps the group is named for them instead.