Jupiter's Beard

What’s blooming in the area: Moss, apricot, forsythia, daffodils, tansy and purple mustards, dandelion.

What’s coming out: Globe and weeping willows, chamisa, goats beard, strap leaf and purple asters.

What’s leafing in my yard: Hybrid roses, raspberry, spirea, coral bell, Saint John’s wort, myrtle.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, bougainvillea.

Animal sightings: Small red ants are back.

Weather: Below freezing Tuesday morning, 70 when I get home; cold front and winds came through for the Good Friday pilgrimage; yesterday, near 20 in the morning, mid-60's in the afternoon; last rain 03/23/09; 12:42 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: This time of year I feel like Ariadne Oliver, the Agatha Christie character, who’s always losing things. When she looks for something, she tips or drops so many other objects, she ends up finding what she wants and misplacing more.

For me, it’s plants I can’t find, especially perennials that have only been in a year or two. They’re so new, I haven’t yet learned what they look like when they emerge.

The only reason I know Jupiter’s Beard is up is that I left dead stalks last fall. The leaves have long turned into undifferentiated brown masses, but the remaining height of the hollow stems acts as a reminder.

When they appeared last week directly from the ground, they were darker than I remembered with light veins, rather like the leaves of vinca. Since then, more pairs have emerged from the center, pushing the older leaves outward into reflexed crosses that are growing between the old stems.

One reason I forget how leaves look is that, except when I’m weeding, I look down on plants. By the time Jupiter’s Beard is blooming in mid-May, the flowering stems are rising bare above narrow, toothed pairs of leaves that clasp the stem. I have only a vague impression of grey beneath, when, in fact, the lower leaves are larger, with smooth edges, attach to the plant with short stems, and remain the entire summer.

Any fleshy leaf that emerges this early is going to be tested for edibility and, if it’s not poisonous or too bitter, is going to be eaten. William Thompson, the founder of Thompson and Morgan seeds, heard they were used raw in salads in southern Italy in the 1860's. More recent ethnobotanists have verified the use of young leaves in Sicily and the Chiavari hills near Genoa in eastern Liguria, where older leaves are also used in preboggion, a soup made from whatever greens are available.

In 1993, French chemists tested the leaves of a number of Mediterranean plants for the existence of alpha-tocopherol, better known as vitamin E, and found Jupiter’s Beard contained the antioxidant.

Centrantus ruber is a member of the valerian family, better known for the sedative properties of the valepotriates in its roots. The family arose in alpine areas of the Himalayas in the Miocene, but the nine Centranthus species adapted to the rocky shores of the Mediterranean from Turkey and the Ukraine to north Africa and out into the Azores and Madeiras. Jupiter’s Beard often grows with snapdragons on the Teno massif on Tenerife in the Canary islands, in Lombardy’s alpine Riserva Naturale Valle del Freddo, on rocky screes of Provençal and the calcareous cliffs of Greece.

They’ve naturalized elsewhere, but usually where there’s a Mediterranean climate, like our west coast, or on old walls, rail beds and other piles of lime stone or granite. John Gerard was growing them in London in the late 1500's. It’s assumed the seed’s feathery tails helps them escape their gardens and dig in.

So far, the rounded heads of red, five-petaled flowers have not produced any viable seeds, so I don’t yet know what the seedlings look like. Dorothy Bexon did discover the seed embryos often produce more than the two leaves found in flowering plants (dicots), a trait more often found in the older conifers, and that there is no clear relationship between the extra leaves and the roots.

If Jupiter’s Beard ever does reproduce, the seedlings are safe. I put the plants in a narrow, wind blown bed, where Bouncing Bess moves about. I don’t clean there until late spring, when I can separate those desirable plants from the more aggressive tomatillos that look much the same when they emerge.

My ignorance makes them safer than Ariadne’s distractedness.

Notes:Bell, Charles D. and Michael J. Donoghue. "Phylogeny and Biogeography of Valerianacea (Dipsacales) with Special Reference to South American Valerians," Organisms, Diversity and Evolution 5:147-159:2005.

Bexon, Dorothy. "Observations on the Anatomy of Some Polycotyledonous Seedlings of Centratus ruber," Annals of Botany 34:81-94:1920.

Chevolleau, S., J. F. Mallet, A. Debal and E. Ucciani "Antioxidant Activity of Mediterranean Plant Leaves: Occurrence and Antioxidative Importance of Alpha-a-tocopherol," Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society 70:807-809:1993.

European Union Corine Project. "Inland Rocks, Screes and Sands," Corine Biotopes Manual, 2005.

Gerard, John. Herball or Generale Historie of Plants, 1597, cited by Maude Grieve, A Modern Herbal, 1931, edited by Hilda Leyel.

Lentini, Francesca and Francesca Venza. "Wild Food Plants of Popular Use in Sicily," Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 3:15+:2007.

Ghirardini, Maria Pia, Marco Carli, Nicola del Vecchio, Ariele Rovati, Ottavia Cova, Francesco Valigi, Gaia Agnetti, Martina Macconi, Daniela Adamo, Mario Traina, Francesco Laudini, Ilaria Marcheselli, Nicolò Caruso, Tiziano Gedda, Fabio Donati, Alessandro Marzadro, Paola Russi, Caterina Spaggiari, Marcella Bianco, Riccardo Binda, Elisa Barattieri, Alice Tognacci, Martina Girardo, Luca Vaschetti, Piero Caprino, Erika Sesti, Giorgia Andreozzi, Erika Coletto, Gabriele Belzer, and Andrea Pieroni. "The Importance of a Taste. A Comparative Study on Wild Food Plant Consumption in Twenty-one Local Communities in Italy," Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 3:22+:2007.

Thompson, William."Centranthus," in The Treasury of Botany, 1876, edited by John Lindley.

Photograph: Jupiter’s Beard leaves, 3 April 2010.