Great mullein: the queen towering above all. Her spike can be as tall as 2 meters. (Mine clocks in at 2.5 meters!) Her furry leaves conjure folk names like “cowboy toilet paper,” “old man’s blanket,” and “feltwort” – in fact, the word “mullein” originates from the French word “mol” for “soft.” Native Americans and settlers lined their shoes with the leaves for warmth.
Mullein is not just soft: it’s flammable. Roman soldiers dipped the long plant stalks into grease and used them as torches. These days, people smoke mullein to alleviate allergies and lung problems.
Mullein often emerges in neglected or forgotten areas unprompted and overlooked. Take a second look: The flowering spike is loaded with individual flowers. Each one opens for only one day and the flowers can change from female to male to pollinate themselves.
Each plant produces hundreds of seed capsules, each with hundreds of seeds themselves (for a total of over 100,000 seeds from a single plant). That’s a lot of seeds.
Mullein and other members of this family are nature’s underdogs. But why is this family called the figwort family? Why is the Latin name the incomprehensible “Scrophulariaceae”?
“Wort” signals this plant family’s medicinal applications: In ye olde times, plants with the suffix “wort” in their name meant medicinal. (Not the styleworts, though.) Figwort’s Latin name, Scrophularia, signals its former use in treating scrofulia, a lymph node disease associated with tuberculosis.
The figwort family used to be much bigger, but recent molecular analysis has led to splitting most of the species off into their own family, the plantain family, itself full of healers. I wonder how the figworts felt about that.
Another member of this plant family is called slugwort (Hebenstretia spp). I prefer not to speculate which medicinal application this plant was deemed useful for.
With all those flowers, Scrophulariaceae plants are pollinator paradises. Their flowers are distinctively symmetrical and lipped. They host butterfly larvae and lure special oil-feeding bees (and even birds).
California figwort (S. calfornica) attracts bees by emitting UV light that is sensed by the bees. It is thought these bees coevolved with the plants because they have unusually long legs for collecting the oil.
Twinspur also attracts oil bees. The flowers have two translucent sacs or “windows” which help the bees collect oil. Bees: the true wizards.
If it’s not worts, it’s bushes. Several bushy plants in this family favor dry desert climates and sandy coasts. One such plant is the barometer bush, known for its ability to predict rain: It can bloom several days before a rainstorm in response to increased humidity.
Emu bushes (also called eremophilas), native to Australia, are so called because emus eat their fruit, thereby spreading the seeds. Their fun-looking berries pair nicely with another berry-full bush food, the quandongs.
The shape of emo bush flowers are designed to accommodate birds, which pollinate them. Oil-loving bees, flower-dunking birds… what’s next? If it’s not abundantly clear by now, flowers and their pollinators are intricately linked.
Many emu bush plants also have traditional medicinal uses (known as bush medicine) among indigenous Australians.
We have returned once again to the medicinal. Someone reminded me recently of the Ojibwe definition of medicine: the strength of the Earth.
“Down in the mullein meadow
The lusty thistle springs,
The butterflies go criss-cross,
The lonesome catbird sings”