Ipsden altar frontal: oil seed rape
Flowers for the altar frontal must in all fairness include an example of the flower of the oil seed rape plant as it would given an unbalanced picture of the local fauna to exclude it on the basis of it being a commercially grown exotic rather than a naturally occurring indigenous plant. Large fields of yellow make a huge impact for a few months a year but in my first year in Ipsden, I found fields of the plant very difficult to identify before flowers appeared.
Ipsden altar frontal: oil seed rape
Early leaves grow low and luxuriant from a pronounced crown very like a brassica, but vast fields of cabbages in the Chilterns – some mistake surely? After a few weeks, things get more confused. Plants suddenly shoot up, rather like a teenager on a growth spurt, with long, spindly stalks (up to a metre tall) and scant long and equally spindly leaves, until suddenly the plant looks like more like a legume Only when the flower appears, the brashest yellow of yellow, can the novice plant watcher be certain of its identity and biological family, for now it looks exacyly like the bolted cabbages remembered from ill-kempt allotments or abandoned bits of garden. After the flowers of course come long thin seed pods and then it looks like a legume again – a cross between a pea and a laburnum – but don’t be seduced, cling firmly to the brassica family, for at the end of the day the oil seed rape plant is pretty much a bolted fruiting cabbage. Fancy that!
P.S. 20 June 2016
I’m told – by those in the know – that oil seed rape is the only one of the 4 main oils (soya, sunflower, palm and rape) which can be grown in the UK. (In case you’re wondering, as I did, “what about olive oil?” it turns out that olive oil production is very small in terms of volume and comes no where near the amount produced by the 4 mentioned above).
11 Comments
And smells very like a bolting cabbage at this time of year!
Fortunately, we’ve never had a small as bad as that – but the intense sweet cloying smell of the flower is heady enough (and even headachy) when the sun’s been on it all day.
All this time living with oil seed rape in a filed somewhere nearby and I’ve never had the boiling cabbage smell. When the rain is over I shall go out, find an appropriate field and have a sniff – you’ve got me very curious now.
I always thought that Oilseed Rape was flora, but never mind. The frontal will be glorious when finished. I shall have to take a trip to view it ‘for real’.
Well it is in so much as it’s the flowers that produced the seeds!
No pressure to get it finished then if people are going to make special trips to view it!
But, thank you for being interested in it.
One of my least favourite plants – it’s a hayfever trigger for me – but the embroidered version is much pleasanter!
Umm, it’s not supposed to cause hayfever as it’s an insect pollinated plant rather than wind pollinated which I gather are the real problem. However, I do agree with you that it definitely has some similar effect and makes us feel tight around the throat, a bit sneezy and headachy with the smell – but only if right on top of it. Poor you if you’re ultra sensitive, hay fever is utterly miserable.
I always worry when I see vast yellow fields of rape, they have them here too. All GM modified… although they are beautiful….
Hope all goes well with your move Mary.
Not sure ours are GM modified – yet. That may change now we’ve voted for Brexit. For me the yellow is just too yellow to be beautiful but you Lydia, obviously have a more charitable heart.
I have mixed feelings about oil seed rape, for me the acid yellow colour looks very unnatural, which makes me suspicious of it, on GM grounds, perhaps unfairly, not sure x
Yes, I’m not keen on the colour either – but it’s not GM round here. V. nutritious though.