Rosebay Willowherb - the Fireweed

The fields and meadows near where I live are looking pretty sorry for themselves at the moment. An extended period of dry weather and a mini-heatwave have leached all of the green from the grasses and everything is brown and tinderbox dry. Which makes finding the occasional cigarette butt all the more concerning. 

Do these people have no concept of risk? It's stupidity at worst and unthinking and reckless at best. One little ember and a bit of a breeze and these fields could easily be ablaze. 

This isn't scaremongering - this year alone England and Wales have suffered 442 wildfires, compared to 247 last year. Surely smokers can wait until they're away from the fields before they light up? And what's the point of going for a lovely walk in the countryside if you surround yourself with smoke? Isn't part of the pleasure the sights, sounds and smell of the great outdoors?

Anyway, rant over. 

And, as it happens, the subject of fires allows me a nice segue into today's featured wild plant - Fireweed, also known as Rosebay Willowherb (Chamerion angustifolium). 

You'll know it even if you didn't know what it was called. It's that striking pink flower that grows in clusters on top of a tall stem and rises up above the dry straw-coloured grasses. You sometimes get a mass of them growing altogether in a stand and it's quite beautiful. The bees and butterflies certainly think so and the flowerheads are usually covered with nectar-loving insects.

But the plant isn't just a pretty face - it has a number of uses. 

Firstly, you can eat it. 

The young shoots that pop up in the Spring are a pleasant wild vegetable that tastes a bit like asparagus. However, the harvesting period is only a matter of weeks - the stems quickly get tough and stringy if you wait too long to pick them. But, once the stems have lengthened and toughened, they become the source of a second edible - the pith. You slit the stem length-wise and scrape it out with a knife. It's sweet and tastes of cucumber and makes a great addition to soups, stews and smoothies. Or you can just eat it raw. 

The leaves, meanwhile, make a nice tea. Collect a good pile of them - especially when they are mature and just starting to turn from green to ruddy yellow or brown. Then bruise them and lightly ferment them by leaving them in a carrier bag in a warm place for a few days. Then dry them gently in a greenhouse or in an oven on the lowest heat. The resulting caffeine-free tea is delicious, with the smell of green tea, and much of the richness of traditional black teas. They drink a lot of it in Russia so it's often known as 'Russian tea' or 'Ivan's tea'. 

Finally we have the flowers. These can be used to make jams, jellies and syrups - in parts of Canada and Alaska, Fireweed Syrup is quite popular and there's a flourishing cottage industry making it. 

If you fancy making jam, you start by steeping the flower heads in a little boiling water until the colour leaves the petals and goes into the liquid. The more flower heads you use the stronger the flavour and colour. I made some a couple of years ago and was disappointed by the colour. I then learned from a foraging website that it's a good idea to add a little lemon juice during the steeping process and the results were much improved. Last year the colour was beautiful. The flowers don't have a terribly strong flavour but there is a hint of rose.

In late Summer the flowers start to wilt and die and long thin seed pods appear on the tall stems. Once they have reached a sufficient size they pop open along their length releasing clouds of candy floss like seeds to be dispersed by the wind. One plant can produce over 80,000 seeds. Outdoorsmen and women know the value of these fluffy seeds. They make fantastic tinder when you are trying to make a fire from scratch. 

As the plant reaches the end of its life, the leaves become a beautiful blaze of yellow, orange and red. It's quite a stunning sight. Here's a free photo I found on Pixabay by Natalia Kollegova of a field of late Summer Fireweed in Alaska. Just wonderful.

And a photo by me.

The reason it's known as fireweed isn't to do with its colour or its seeds. It's because of the plant's ability to colonise land after a catastrophic fire. In 1980 it was one of the first plants to appear after the eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington State, USA. And, in the UK during WWII, it was one of the first plants to grow on bombsites after the Blitz, which gave it another of its common names - Bombweed. In fact, it was the two World Wars that provided just the right conditions for it to expand its range. The clearing of huge areas of forest and the many fires that resulted from bombing raids in both town and countryside turned it from a scarce woodland plant into a wildflower that we now see pretty much everywhere. 

But at least that means that, if some lazy smoker does set the local fields alight, we know they will be a riot of pink again the following Spring.

Important Note: There is a related species called Hairy Willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) which looks fairly similar but should not be eaten because there have been rare instances of people having seizures. However, as the name suggests, the stems and leaves of Hairy Willowherb are covered in downy hair whereas Rosebay Willowherb has no hairs at all. It is, therefore, very easy to tell them apart. 

As always with foraging - if you have any doubts at all, don't take the risk.