Paul's Back Garden Safari

The lawnmower broke down again recently, and while I was deciding whether to try and repair it yet again or to buy a new one the grass continue to grow. Now I don’t know what your lawns are like, but mine seems to have a lot more than just grass. As it has grown up over the last couple of weeks while I pondered which new lawn mower to buy, a couple of neat but small flowering plants have appeared. Now it is certainly not quite developing into a wildlife flower meadow there is something of interest here.

I first became aware of the Thyme Leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia) last year will I was gossiping about at the base of the hedge, and is very easy to miss. The flowers are tiny at about 4-5mm across and you really have to get low down to appreciate their delicate beauty. The flowers are whitish to pale blue with darker veins and grow from short stalks coming from the leaf axils. Look closely and you’ll see that their uppermost petal is usually veined with darker blue. Only a few flowers open at a time and their pale colour can make this plant hard to spot. It has a long flowering period, first appearing in March, and can be in flower right through to October. Like the flowers the leaves are small, no surprise there really. They are oval, usually untoothed, hairless, and can be either stalkless or with a very short stalk, though the ones I’ve looked at tend not to have stalks. The fruit is small and heart shaped.

Left alone it will form small patches, growing in lawns, meadows and pastures, but also in our case along the base of hedges. Almost anywhere in fact, and as I’ve become attuned to it, I’ve seen it almost everywhere. It can tolerate trampling, useful when you consider where it grows. And if it is not cut weekly with the grass it can grow taller than they do on the lawn.

Thyme-leaved Speedwell is one of a fairly large genus, with 28 species and another 4 hybrids listed by the BSBI occurring in the Britain. The most common species that many people will be familiar with is Germander Speedwell, Veronica chamaedrys,which can be difficult to miss in the hedgerows with it’s bright blue flowers.

I’ve not found much in the literature to suggest any associations with other wildlife, but I would assume that it is pollinated by small insects such as Syrphid flies and the smaller Halictid bees. The seeds not surprisingly are tiny, and can be spread by animal and even human movement by clinging to animal fur and shoes.

There is very little folk or traditional usage for Thyme-leaved Speedwell in the UK. Perhaps I should rephrase that, I could find nothing. And what I did find from elsewhere should perhaps be careful with more scepticism than usual, as I suspect that maybe the use may have been confused with other species of Speedwell, especially Heath Speedwell (Veronica officinalis). It has been reported that juice extracted from the plant was has been recorded as being used by Native Americans to help manage toothache; the leaves have also been used in a poultice to treat boils, and a tea made from Thyme-leaved Speedwell has been used for chills and coughs in the past.

The English name of Speedwell may be derived from the old and archaic phrase of ‘speed well’ or farewell, and may allude to the fact that the flowers wilt very soon after being picked. The formal binomial name is a little uncertain. One option is that Veronica is a combination of the Latin ‘vera’ & ‘nica’, meaning ‘true’ & ‘image’. This is derived from when St Veronica wiled Christ’s forehead during his journey to his crucifixion, when an image of his face was left on the cloth she had used. The species name Serpyllifolia is Latin for having leaves like Thymus serpyllum – Breckland Thyme. In Welsh it has two names recorded by the NBN, Rhwyddlwyn Gruwddail and Rhwyddlwyn Dail Teim. Both of which reflect the English common name.

References

Harrap, S. (2013) Harrap’s Wild Flowers. Bloomsbury: London.

Jarvis, P.J. (2020) The Pelagic Dictionary of Natural History of the British Isles. Pelagic Publishing.

Thyme-leaved speedwell – Veronica serpyllifolia. Plantlife. https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/thyme-leaved-speedwell accessed 25 July 2021.

Veronica serpyllifolia. NBN. https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000004112

Veronica serpyllifolia. B https://www.brc.ac.uk/plantatlas/plant/veronica-serpyllifolia Online Atlas of the British & Irish Flora.