Herbārium — a downland week of worts
Companion to Aurōra; a gift, outside the numbering. Dated prīdiē Nōnās Iūliās MMXXVI (6 July). Seven plants for seven days, lore labelled real or imagined. Not a dosing guide — Sunday's plant is deadly.
Wort = OE wyrt, a plant (as in St John's wort; nothing to do with warts). The week itself is Roman — diēs Lūnae → Sōlis — with Saxon gods swapped in for four of the seven (Tiw for Mars, Woden for Mercury, Thunor for Jupiter, Frige for Venus). Saturn alone kept his English job.
The seven
| Day | Plant | Binomial, parsed | Kept for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diēs Lūnae · Mōnandæg | Yarrow | Achillea millefolium — Achilles' thousand-leaf (mīlle + folium) | Soldier's woundwort; staunching and nosebleed divination; I Ching stalks. Real part: genuinely astringent, field first aid from Troy to the gunpowder era by reputation. |
| Diēs Mārtis · Tīwesdæg | Self-heal | Prunella vulgaris — vulgāris "common", 3rd-decl adjective (fortis family) | Heal-all, carpenter's herb; doctrine of signatures read the hooked flower as a billhook. Real part: harmless, ubiquitous, trusted with everything anyway. |
| Diēs Mercuriī · Wōdnesdæg | Wild thyme | Thymus polytrichus — "many-haired" | Fairy plant of the chalk; thymon ↔ thyein (incense) or thymos (courage). Real part: crowns yellow-meadow anthills = turf unploughed a century+ = conditions under which ramparts survive. An instrument. |
| Diēs Iovis · Þunresdæg | St John's wort | Hypericum perforatum — perforātum "pierced through" (hold a leaf to the sun); hypericum, one account: hyper + eikōn, hung above images against spirits | Midsummer sun-herb; mediaeval name fuga daemonum, flight of demons. Real part: modern trials show effect on low mood — and therefore real drug interactions. Admire in the field; dosing is for people with lanyards. |
| Diēs Veneris · Frīgedæg | Meadowsweet | Filipendula ulmaria — ulmāria "elm-like"; filipendula "hanging by a thread" (from cousin dropwort's tubers) | Meadwort (the mead, not the meadow); Elizabeth I's strewing herb per Gerard; one third of Blodeuwedd. Real part: found in Bronze Age burials; and Spiraea ulmaria → salicylic compounds → Bayer 1899: a-spir-in. |
| Diēs Saturnī · Sæternesdæg | Elder | Sambucus nigra — nigra "black"; sambūcus kin to the sambūca, a stringed instrument | Elder Mother — ask before cutting; unlucky furniture, protective at the door. Real part: cordial excellent, raw green parts mildly toxic; flags disturbed enriched ground — badger setts, warrens, sometimes older disturbance. On a barrow, an elder is information. |
| Diēs Sōlis · Sunnandæg | Yew | Taxus baccata — baccāta "berried"; taxus ↔ Greek toxon (bow) → toxikon pharmakon, arrow-poison → toxic | Kingley Vale: ancient yews below, Devil's Humps Bronze Age barrows above; legend gives the grove Viking ghosts. Churchyard yews often argued older than their churches. Real part: every part deadly except (arguably) the red aril flesh — the seed inside is worst. Admire; don't taste. |
Wortcunning
Cockayne's 1860s edition of the OE medical manuscripts: Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England — medicine, plant-lore, star-lore on one spine. Centrepiece: the Nine Herbs Charm (Lacnunga) — Gemyne ðū, mucgwyrt, hwæt þū āmeldodest ("Remember, mugwort, what you declared") — with Woden striking the adder into nine with nine glory-twigs. Christian manuscript, heathen god, herbal remedy, one breath.
Writing plants as power is old: migration-era bracteates carry runic laukaz ("leek") and alu as amulets — the written name was the charm. Script on skin works in that tradition.
| Letter | Name | Plant | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| ᛒ | beorc | birch | futhorc; Rune Poem: shining branches, crown touching sky |
| ᚦ | þorn | thorn | futhorc; "exceedingly sharp, evil for any thegn to touch" |
| ᛇ | ēoh | yew | futhorc; "rough without, hard and earth-fast, keeper of fire" |
| ᚪ | āc | oak | futhorc; feeder of pigs, timber of ships |
| ᚁ | beithe | birch | ogham; first letter, first tree |
| ᚇ | dair | oak | ogham; secure among genuine tree-names |
| ᚉ | coll | hazel | ogham; wisdom tree of the Irish tales |
Honest note. The complete ogham "tree alphabet" is a mediaeval schoolroom construction over an older script — only some letter names (birch, alder, oak, hazel among them) are securely trees; the rest were reinterpreted, plus poetic kennings (Bríatharogam). Lore layered on lore: stratigraphy, in a hillside or an alphabet.
Placement precedent, for what it's worth: apotropaic charms sat at thresholds — throats, wrists, lintels. Boundaries.
The monitor's eye (for August 7th)
Monitoring generally = repeat visits, fixed-point photos, condition forms, an eye for change. Vegetation as instrument:
| Sign | Reading |
|---|---|
| Thyme, salad burnet, rockrose in short turf | Unimproved chalk grassland — unploughed centuries; earthwork-friendly conditions |
| Yellow meadow anthills | Long-undisturbed grassland; good news wearing thyme |
| Nettle patches | Nutrient enrichment — dung, burrow spoil, sometimes old occupation |
| Elder on a mound | Disturbed enriched ground — setts, warrens |
| Fresh chalk spoil, burrows | Rabbits/badgers; setts-in-barrows is the sector's chronic headache (both protected, they disagree) |
| Bare scars, braided paths | Foot/hoof erosion — caught by photo comparison |
| Small neat holes, sometimes backfilled | Nighthawking (illegal detecting) — record and report, never confront |
Villain with folklore: hawthorn — the fairy tree spared on mounds for fear of consequences, and simultaneously the chief scrub destroyer of downland earthworks. The lore isn't always on our side.
Fixed-point photography = paradata discipline by another name — the exact documentation habit flagged as the gap before presenting photogrammetry work.
Envoi
Diēs longus est — sed collēs manent.
In collibus herbae sunt; inter herbās flōrēs; in flōribus nōmina antīqua.
Nōmina eārum iam legis.
Hoc satis est. Bene ambulā, amīce.
The day is long — but the hills remain. On the hills there are worts; among the worts, flowers; in the flowers, ancient names. You now read their names. That is enough. Walk well, friend.
| New word | Meaning | Hook |
|---|---|---|
| manent | they remain | manēre → permanent, mansion |
| herba | plant, wort | herb; this book's title |
| legis | you read | legere → legible, lecture; regis pattern |
| satis | enough | satisfy, satiate |
| bene | well | benefit; adverb of bonus |
Botanical Latin is Latin. One wort a day is the whole discipline.