Go into a field that is prone to damp and flooding and you will see myriad spiky clumps of long, rounded leaves. These are rushes, members of the Juncus family. Growing where many grasses would give up, rushes are often overlooked. They aren’t pretty (their ‘flowers’ are boring, brown clusters), they are spiky on your bare legs and they trip you up! But rushes used to be much more highly valued – indeed, they were an essential resource. ‘Rushlights’, made from the inner pith of the leaf soaked in whatever fat or grease was available, were an alternative to expensive candles for generations. Rushes were also strewn on floors to provide a softer, sweeter surface, and woven to make baskets, chair-backs or children’s toys. They were even used to thatch roofs.
There are several species of rush growing in the UK; here are four of the most common.
Soft rush, Juncus effusus
The leaves of soft rush are a shiny green, and are easily compressed between the fingers. If you peel away the green outer layer, you reveal the white pith – a continuous, spongy mass, the basis of the rushlight. Having attempted to peel the rushes for photographs, I found this very fiddly. However Gilbert White, the famous naturalist and vicar of Selbourne, attested in 1775 that with practice, people got so good at it that he had seen an old blind woman peeling rushes ‘with great dispatch’. Its inflorescence, or flowerhead, is a tightly bunched bouquet of little brown florets.
Hard rush, Juncus inflexus
Hard rush, true to its name, has grey-green, ridged leaves which are highly resistant to squeezing. Its pith is ‘discontinuous’ – i.e. full of holes – so far less desirable as a rushlight. It has a looser inflorescence than soft rush, waving like a flag halfway up the stem.
Compact rush, Juncus conglomeratus
Compact rush is both compact in height, being shorter than its cousins, and in its distinctive dense inflorescence, like a brown pom-pom hugging the stem. Its leaves bear deep grooves, which can be easily felt between the fingers. Its pith is similar to soft rush.
Jointed rush, Juncus articulatus
Jointed rush has almost no pith but its leaves have regular internal partitions. You can feel these if you run your fingers up the stem – little bumps or ‘joints’ at regular intervals. It has an open, floppy inflorescence at the top of the stem.
Next time you take a walk through a rushy field, see if you can spot any of these – and be thankful for electricity!
References
Image of rush field -C Michael Hogan / Field with rushes south of the N67 road, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.
Juncus effusus pith – By Alfred [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0, from Wikimedia Commons
Account of preparation of rushlights; letter of 1 November 1775 from Gilbert White to Daines Barrington, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1408/pg1408-images.html
Juncus inflexus pith – By Kristian Peters — Fabelfroh 12:43, 9 July 2006 (UTC) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons
Juncus articulatus pith – By Stefan.lefnaer [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons
Bad Botanist 