Once a knight was walking beside a river with his beloved, but he slipped on wet grass into the river. He clutched at the vegetation as he fell but it was to no avail. As he disappeared under the water, dragged down by his heavy armour, he threw the handful of blue flowers he had snatched from the bank to his lady and his last words were “Forget me not.”
So goes a tale from Germany, but the small bright blue flowers of Myosotis species were more commonly known as the less appealing scorpion grass before being woven into Victorian sentimentality, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has the flower entwined literally into a love token in his poem The Keepsake. The scientific name Myosotis translates from ancient Greek as mouse ear which describes the shape of the rounded hairy leaves.
The old name comes from the long spikes of flowers that uncurl to stand in an arch like a scorpion’s tail. The beautiful bright blue five petalled flower with its golden centre is also known as bird’s eye.
There are ten different forget-me-nots in the UK but we have records of just five recorded in the valley: field, wood, water, early and changing forget-me-not. They can be tricky to tell apart, especially as there are cultivated garden varieties that are very happy to jump over the garden wall. You are most likely to find field forget-me-not unless you are actually in woodland or beside water.
Field and wood forget-me-not are very similar, the difference is down to the tiny hairs just under the individual flowers and whether or not the seed nutlets protrude beyond the old flower, a job for serious botanists, just forget-me-not does for most of us. Water forget-me-not does what it says on the tin, it grows with its feet in water, there are large colonies beside the ponds on the Knapp and Sidbury’s Millenium Meadow.
As with many flowers, forget-me-not sends signals to pollinators such as solitary bees when it is ready to be ‘done’. When the flower first opens and has ovules ready to be pollinated the centre is bright yellow inviting the insects to come and feed hopefully carrying pollen on their bodies. Once fertilised, the yellow fades to white and the insects have adapted to ignore these because there is no food on offer. The changes are even more stark when viewed in ultra-violet light which bees can see.
The changing forget-me-not goes further and the whole flower changes colour from white to pink to blue as it matures. You can find changing forget-me-not up on the Delderfield Nature Reserve on Peak Hill but you will have to look carefully because the flowers are tiny, less than 4mm across at their largest.
Like so many of our herbaceous wild plants, forget-me-not was used as a herbal tea to treat coughs and as a diuretic. There seems to be some basis for these uses and there is evidence developing that it has a positive impact on cognitive health. As well as the common name, this makes forget-me-not an apt symbol for the Alzheimer’s Society who are dedicated to helping people hang on to their memories. Do please remember to send them a donation some time if you have enjoyed this article.
Ed Dolphin
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