Hoary Mullein. She sounds like the bawdy character in a medieval play. And certainly, there is nothing couth or overly refined about her – a statuesque candelabra of a plant, taller than me, with fluffy greyish leaves and often dishevelled yellow flowers.
I reach out and stroke its downy leaf, smiling as I remember that mulleins are known as “Andrex plants”, presenting as they do the ideal soft wipe for those caught short alfresco. The name “hoary” – meaning greyish white, as if with age or from the ice of a hoar frost – is a reference to its pale fluff. Wriggling motion catches my attention. A large caterpillar marked with distinctive yellow and black munches away on a leaf. It can only be the larva of the mullein moth. A bee gathers pollen, the pollen sacs on its legs turning bright orange-red like painful growths.
The plant has a wasteland, murder-drama vibe. Like a forensic pathologist, it often favours soil that has been disturbed, such as railway embankments, old quarries and gravel pits. It arrived here, at our farm, in soil excavated from beside Norwich cathedral. The seeds had probably lain dormant for many decades, just waiting for the right circumstances.
Blackstone’s Specimen Botanicum, published in 1746, states that hoary mullein was first recorded in 1745 in a typically unglamorous location, “about the ditch on the outside of the city walls at Norwich”. But a quick internet check indicates that there are records dating back to 1670. While the great mullein is widespread, hoary is not. It is a Norfolk and Suffolk specialist, although increasingly found elsewhere. As a fellow Norfolk girl, I feel bonded.
Hoary mullein is just a plant. An easily overlooked, not particularly attractive specimen found in some not particularly attractive spots. I want to make it enough. Enough for us to care about as a small link in an ecosystem, with local history growing through its veins. Maybe by recording its presence, connecting Blackstone’s record to mine, it will somehow matter. So here we go: “Hoary mullein, on rough ground by farm track, July 2022.”
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