Looking for the sublime

I was fascinated by Canada as a teenager. It came from looking at pictures in books that I borrowed from the local lending library and, while I appreciated the skyscapes of the prairies, it was the grandeur of the mountains, the lakes and the forests that had the most appeal. There was also the sense of scale and the vastness of it all.

The interest in the Canadian landscape re-surfaced when I was an undergraduate. Fascinated by animals and plants, I knew that I wanted to continue to study Biology by conducting research in the field. I mentioned this, together with my feelings about the boreal landscape, to one of my lecturers and he kindly put me in touch with possible research supervisors in Canada. These contacts resulted in several provisional offers, providing I could get funding from teaching assistantships or research grants. However, nothing more came of it and I stayed in the UK; my fascination for boreal landscapes being given reality when I studied lakes and rivers in northern Sweden and in Finland. It was in these countries that I could get a sense of wilderness; of something that appeared to show no influence of humans. I can sum up this sense by using, as illustration, Gallen-Kallelas’s painting Lake Keitele (see below). Gallen-Kallela was a seeker of “virgin Nature” and I can easily empathise with that [1].

During my undergraduate years, I spent many happy Saturdays visiting the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery (as it was then) in London. Torbay, where I grew up, was not a centre for looking at a wide range of paintings and I felt drawn to the galleries and to certain works. It wasn’t because of any skill that I had in art, as I have no artistic talent, but I felt a strong connection with some of the images and the way that landscapes had been portrayed. It was similar to looking at pictures of Canada when I was younger - something “clicked” and I didn’t know why, nor was I interested in thinking about that.

As an old man, I realise that my interest in the boreal landscape, and the various ways in which it was illustrated in great paintings, were part of the same identity – I am an unabashed Romantic with a love of the sublime. The latter possibly comes from a religious upbringing that clearly influenced me, even though I left formal religion when I was twelve. It now takes a nebulous form, but it is certainly there (and not only in paintings, but also from music and poetry). While artists like Caspar David Friedrich and Harald Sohlberg introduced Christian symbolism into their paintings of sublime landscapes, there seems to me something even more powerful if the landscape overwhelms without any obvious theistic force (although theists might suggest that I was just being blind).

It’s not to say that I don’t appreciate both natural and painted landscapes that do show human influence. The Renforsen rapids on the River Vindel in northern Sweden always fill me with awe [2] and, during the spring flood caused by snow melt in the mountains, there is something about their impressive power that certainly stirs the soul. There are, however, so many signs of human influence here: bridges, paths, a hotel, a café, mill buildings, car parks, etc. that one realises it is far from wilderness. If part of the splendour of being in wilderness comes from tranquillity, Renforsen, other rapids, and raging seas are part of another kind of awe; that which contains an implied threat. Compare Gallen-Kallela’s Lake Keitele with Johan Christian Dahl’s The Lower Falls of the Labrofoss (see below) to see examples of this contrast. Both portray the sublime.

Of course, the art and aesthetics of the sublime have been written about many times and I’m not saying anything new. Rather, in a pretentious way, I’m trying to understand my personal view of landscape and what has made me so enraptured by some natural and painted scenes. I’m hooked.

[1] https://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/01/an-artist-who-loved-virgin-nature.html

[2] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2012/12/ammarnas-and-renforsen.html

Bee orchids, Darwin and Creation

I have often thought that it is easier to believe in the creation of organisms than in their evolution. All that is required is a belief in a Creator, but if one does not have that, one is left to pondering the many steps that must have occurred to produce the extraordinary adaptations of, and associations between, living organisms that we see around us. We cannot comprehend the time scales over which these changes have taken place, so all we are left with are our speculations.

In the past few weeks, I have been taking a WEA course on the influence of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species on 19th Century thought. It is led by Paul Ranford, the excellent historian of science, who introduced us to other works by Darwin, including his book The various contrivances by which orchids are fertilised by insects, orchids becoming a consuming passion of the great man while he recovered from the effort of producing the “Origin”. It set me to reading what Darwin had to say about the bee orchid (Ophrys apifera – see below, with an illustration from Darwin’s book). 

These are some extracts from Darwin's book [1]:

The Bee Ophrys differs widely from the great majority of Orchids in being excellently constructed for fertilising itself..

..When a pollen-mass is placed on the stigma and then withdrawn, the elastic threads by which the packets are tied together break, and leave several packets on the viscid surface. In all other Orchids the meaning of these several contrivances is unmistakeably clear – namely, the downward movement of the lip of the rostellum when gently pushed – the viscidity of the disc – the depression of the caudicle as soon as the disc is exposed to the air – the rupturing of the elastic threads – and the conspicuousness of the flower. Are we to believe that these adaptations for cross-fertilisation in the Bee Ophrys are absolutely purposeless, as would certainly be the case if this species has always been and will always be self-fertilised? It is, however, just possible that insects, although they may have never been seen to visit the flowers, may at rare intervals transport the pollinia from plant to plant..

..The whole case is perplexing in an unparalleled degree, for we have in the same flower elaborate contrivances for directly opposed objects..

..As it can hardly be doubted that O. apifera was at first constructed so as to be regularly cross-fertilised, it may be asked will it ever revert to its former state: and if it does not so revert, will it become extinct?

The question is a valid one and Darwin involved his correspondents in finding out more about the fertilisation of bee orchids. One of his regular correspondents was Philip Henry Gosse, the avid creationist, who was busy in 1863 “examining bee orchis for Darwin at Petit Tor” [2].

The bee orchis (orchid) gets its common name from its appearance, said to resemble a solitary bee and we know that male bees are essential for the fertilisation of some orchids. We do not know whether the flower looks like a bee to bees but we do know that the floral pigments give signatures under untraviolet light that may act as attractants. Since Darwin’s time, we recognise that another important mechanism is involved in attracting pollinators and this is of much greater significance than the appearance of the flowers, that so fascinates humans. Orchids in the genus Ophrys secrete chemicals that mimic sex pheromones produced by female bees and these vary from species to species, thus attracting specific pollinators, although accidental fertilisation by a range of insects may also be a possibility. Ophrys apifera is fertilised by a solitary bee in Mediterranean regions but, as Darwin discovered, self-fertilisation occurs in the northern part of its range.

There is a lively contemporary debate on the significance of the various factors involved in the fertilisation of Ophrys [3,4,5] and, fittingly, this exchange of views took place in a journal of the Linnean Society, the society that was instrumental in introducing Darwin’s ideas on evolution. The three papers (and there are many others on the topic) show clearly just how complex the evolution of the orchids has been. Mention must also be made of why male bees are often the agents of fertilisation of the orchids, by transferring pollen from one flower to another. The females of solitary bees mate soon after emergence from the pupa [6] and it is probable that there is a surplus of males or, if mating is a once only event, there are males constantly looking for mates and, by deception, being attracted to orchids.

The whole arrangement is a remarkable example of co-evolution and one wonders about the timing of the steps involved in the association and whether they were gradual or rapid (over geological time). What came first? Was it the mating biology of bees, the selection of colour patterns in Ophrys flowers that became attractive to insects, the production of a series of chemicals that act as attractants, differences across the range of the plants, or what?

[1] Charles Darwin (1862) The various contrivances by which orchids are fertilised by insects. London, John Murray.

[2] Edmund Gosse (1896) The naturalist of the sea-shore: the life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[3] E.Bradshaw, P.J.Rudall, D.S.Devey, M.M.Thomas, B.J.Glover and R.M.Bateman (2010) Comparative labellum micromorphology of the asexually deceptive temperate orchid genus Ophrys: diverse epidermal cell types and multiple origins of structural colour. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 162: 504-540.

[4] N.J.Vereecken, M.Streinzer, M.Assaye, J.Spaethe, H.F.Paulus, J. Stöckl, P.Cortis and F.P Schiestl (2011) Integrating past and present studies on Ophrys pollination – a comment on Bradshaw et al. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 165: 329-335.

[5] R.M Bateman, E. Bradshaw, D.S.Devey, B.J.Glover, S. Malmgren, G.Sramkó, M.M.Thomas and P.J.Rudall (2011) Species arguments: clarifying competing concepts of species delimitation in the pseudo-copulatory orchid genus Ophrys. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 165: 336-347.

[6] https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/lifecycle/

I would like to thank Paul Ranford and my WEA classmates for their stimulating discussions. It is great to leave a course with many more questions than answers – after all, that’s the fundamental nature of science.

A gray whale off the coast of South Devon?

The gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus – see above) is today only found in the north Pacific Ocean, yet skeletal remains have been found in the eastern Atlantic [1]. Indeed, Gray named the genus [2] from a cervical vertebra that bore a very close resemblance to vertebrae of an “imperfect skeleton” discovered in Sweden. This vertebra was sent to Gray by William Pengelly FRS of Torquay (see below), a distinguished palaeontologist and famous for his excavations of local cave fauna, especially those of Kent’s Cavern,

This is what Pengelly wrote [3]:

A few years ago, but the exact date has escaped me, there was brought to my house [“Lavorna”] a large bone which had been washed ashore on Babbicombe beach [the old spelling], near Torquay. It was not difficult to see that it was part of the vertebral column of a cetacean, and that it had undergone considerable abrasion. That, however, which chiefly arrested my attention was the fact that such parts of its surface as were unrubbed were covered with a darkish stain, from which the abraded parts were free: a fact which led me to conclude that the stain was superinduced.

The staining reminded Pengelly of that on bones from deposits formed from a submerged forest within the current Torbay [4] and which had subsequently become flooded. These deposits contained the bones of deer and other terrestrial animals, but whales clearly could not have existed here. Radiocarbon dating of the vertebra, and two others that were also collected from Babbacombe Bay, just to the north of Torbay (see above), showed the bones to be 340 ± 260 years old – very recent compared to the submerged forests and thus likely to have become stained by falling on to the sediments. It is presumed that there was a population of gray whales in the eastern Atlantic until the 17th Century [1], but how the Babbacome vertebrae came to be washed ashore remains a mystery. The bones are large (the one illustrated below being 41 cm across) and that only adds to all the questions as to their origins. Perhaps gray whales were regular visitors to Babbacombe Bay and Torbay? Perhaps the bones were thrown overboard from a ship returning from the Pacific with unusual mementoes? Who knows?

[1] P.J.Bryant (1995) Dating remains of gray whales from the eastern North Atlantic. Journal of Mammalogy 76: 857-861.

[2] J.E.Gray (1865) Notice of a new whalebone whale from the coast of Devonshire, proposed to be called Eschrichtius robustus. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London pages 40-43.

[3] W.Pengelly (1865) On cetacean remains washed ashore at Babbicombe, South Devon. Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 1(iv): 86-89.

[4] http://rwotton.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-mammoth-tooth-from-submerged-forest.html

Wotton’s place in the history of Biology

Stanley Goodman, the eminent economist and historian, mentioned the name of Edward Wotton to me. As Stan is a polymath, it came as no surprise that he had come across Wotton, but I knew nothing of my namesake (and no relation, I presume). Of course, I was then prompted to find out more. It turns out that Edward was an important figure in the history of Biology, yet he is not mentioned in Charles Singer’s textbook on the subject [1]. So, who was Edward Wotton and why was his book - De differentiis animalium libri decem [2] - an important influence on contemporary biologists and those who were to follow?

Born in Oxford in 1492, Edward was educated at Magdalen College School, where he was a chorister, and at Magdalen College Oxford, graduating in 1514 [3]. He then moved to the newly-established Corpus Christi College to teach Greek, although he retained rooms at Magdalen. Bishop Fox, the founder of Corpus Christi, granted Edward leave and he travelled to Padua, a great cultural centre, with its well-established University (founded in 1222) and glories such as the Scrovegni Chapel and its wonderful interior by Giotto. At Padua, Edward studied for an MD and returned to Oxford to receive the same degree in May 1526 [3].

Edward Wotton was admitted as a fellow of the College of Physicians and, like so many of those who practised medicine at the time, developed an abiding interest in natural history, not so much from first-hand study but from extensive scholarship of known texts, especially of those by Aristotle and his followers. The result was the publication of De differentiis animalium libri decem in 1552, an encyclopaedic account of the knowledge of the time. I find it a challenge to read as it is in Latin, so I am dependent on others to inform me of its details. Animals are described under headings, starting with many-toed mammals and ending with zoophytes (plant-like animals).

A feature of the book is that it separated factual material from that embellished by folklore [4], like the Natural History of Pliny, who was described by Singer as:

..a man of immense industry with an enthusiasm for collection. He did not, however, collect natural history objects, but only information or rather misinformation about them.. ..Unfortunately, Pliny’s judgement was in no way comparable to his industry. He was excessively credulous. Thus his work became a repository of tales of wonder, of travellers’ and sailors’ yarns, and of superstitions of farmers and labourers. As such it is a very important source of information for the customs of antiquity, though as science, judged by the standards of his great predecessors, such as Aristotle or Theophrastus or Erasistratus, it is simply laughable.

Given this attack on Pliny [1], it is even more surprising that Wotton’s book is given no mention in A Short History of Biology, especially as Wotton, like Pliny was a collector of information rather than a first-hand observer. However, the book is cited in Mayer’s The Annals of European Civilization 1501-1900 [5].

Unlike Edward Wotton, Thomas Moufet (or Muffet or Moffet) was a collector and carried out extensive field studies on insects. Like Edward, he studied medicine in mainland Europe (in Basel, after graduating with a BA from Gonville Hall Cambridge, having transferred from Trinity College [6]). Moufet’s book Insectorum, sive, Minimorum animalium theatrum draws on Edward Wotton’s knowledge [7 (and see above)] and was published posthumously in 1634. This book is mentioned by Singer [1] as being important in the history of Biology, but:

The significance for science of classical scholarship was on the wane, and the work of the later schools is conducted in a new spirit.

Interestingly, one reviewer, Haller, believed that Moufet “gave credence to too many fabulous reports [but] acknowledged him to be ‘the prince of entomologists’ before John Swammerdam” [6]. He was certainly inundated with specimens that were sent to him and Singer recounts that he was urgently in need of descriptive terms [1].Some of the illustrations from Insectorum sive are shown below and they enable us to identify insects today, so they must have been very powerful images in their day. There are hundreds of them and the shift in approach from Wotton to Moufet is significant, as Singer points out. It presages the approaches to the study of Zoology that were to follow, but Edward Wotton certainly had an important rôle in the development of studies in the subject.

[1] Charles Singer (1931) A Short History of Biology. Oxford, Clarendon Press.

[2] Edward Wotton (1552) De differentiis animalium libri decem. Paris.

[3] A.F.Pollard (revised by Patrick Wallis) (2004) Wotton, Edward (1492-1555). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29999

[4] Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition) 1910-11 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:EB1911_-_Volume_28.djvu/1052

[5] Alfred Mayer (1993) The Annals of European Civilization 1501-1900. New York, Barnes & Noble.

[6] Victor Houliston (2004) Moffet [Moufet, Muffet], Thomas [T.M.] (1553-1604). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/18877

[7] Thomas Moufet (1634) Insectorum, sive, Minimorum animalium theatrum. London.

My thanks to Stan Goodman for introducing me both to Edward Wotton and to Alfred Mayer.

Honouring Sid Wotton

In her anecdotal history of small-town life in Paignton [1], Peggy Parnell writes of a local outfitter’s business and its progress from a humble start to having several successful shops. Perretts was considered “up-market” and had a year-round clientele, as well as the casual summer trade found in any seaside resort. The company was run by three generations of one family and was staffed with tailors to make alterations to clothes, and shop assistants to “measure-up” and engage in sales patter. It was so different to today’s internet-dominated approach to clothes retailing and, of course, the business no longer exists.

Included in Peggy Parnell’s chapter on Perretts is the paragraph shown below:

Obviously, a tragic occasion as he was only 59 years old, but who was Sid Wotton and, if he left such an impression on the owners and the staff of the company, what was his effect on the public who shopped in Perretts?

Firstly, Sid Wotton had a deep knowledge of outfitting, was unfailingly courteous, remembered returning customers and their requirements, and was very loyal to the Perrett family, as they were to him. Add to these qualities, the ability to make a sales pitch and you have all the essential ingredients of a valuable employee in the old world of retailing. What else do we know about him?

Sid Wotton was born on 17th August 1909 in Princes Street, Paignton, and he remained in the town (except for war service in Belgium, see above) all his life. On 10th October 1934 he married Doris Youlden at Winner Street Baptist Church (see above), attended by both, and where Sid was a member of the choir. In 1933, he had been involved in the selection of a new organist [2] and Sid had a fine tenor voice, singing hymns and oratorios with gusto. In addition to his singing, Sid also spoke at Church garden parties (see below) and it is easy to see that his skills as a salesman were useful if these parties involved fund-raising.

Sid and Doris had three sons, all brought up to attend Winner Street Church each Sunday, and the anniversary of the founding of the church was usually celebrated by a group photograph, like the one below. In addition to his connection with the church community, Sid was a Freemason, becoming Worshipful Master of Torbay Lodge No. 1358. Outside those interests, life revolved around Perretts and the growing family, but then illness intervened. Doris, who was anxious by nature, suffered from uncontrollable hypertension and this led to a stroke from which she died aged 49. This must have been a very difficult time for Sid, especially as he had been diagnosed with diabetes and then developed cardiovascular disease. By 1965 all three boys had left home and we come to the events described by Peggy Parnell. That’s not how Sid should be remembered.

Andy Warhol suggested that everyone should be famous for 15 minutes. I’m not sure that a paragraph in a book counts as fame, especially when the ending is so tragic. Rather, I want to celebrate the Sid Wotton who was such an important person to those who knew him and who showed fine qualities of loyalty and service in everything that he did. It’s all history now, of course, but that doesn’t make celebrating the man any less important.

[1] Peggy Parnell (2013) A Paignton Scrapbook. Stroud, The History Press.

[2] Patricia M. Leaman (1986) A History of the First 100 Years of Winner Street Baptist Church, Paignton. Publisher unknown.   

I would like to thank David Wotton for telling me about the reference to Sid Wotton in Peggy Parnell’s book.

Remarkable, primitive animals from Cockington Stream

The small village of Cockington in Torbay is very popular with visitors who come to see its thatched cottages, old forge, and many other charming buildings, all nestling in a valley. It was the destination for the last carriage ride taken from his home in St Marychurch, Torquay, by the great natural historian Philip Henry Gosse, accompanied by his son Edmund. The ride, shortly before Henry’s death in 1888, is described very movingly by Edmund in a biography of his father [1,2].

I was brought up in Torbay, so I made the occasional visit to Cockington village as a child, although, as a family, we mostly stayed away from popular places. My fascination with natural history came from family walks in early childhood and it was the alien aquatic world that really grabbed my imagination. While marine organisms of the shore were readily visible - seaweeds, limpets, barnacles - most were hidden until one turned over stones in rock pools, or was lucky enough to wander down to the low water mark during Spring tides.

Childhood visits to the cinema in Paignton to watch films by the divers Hans and Lotte Hass made me aware that there was a natural world of which I knew very little and this added to its fascination. My imagination of this world extended to my play and I remember vividly placing a metal biscuit tin over my face, taking a deep breath and then diving under the bedclothes - nothing interesting was found! Using a snorkel in the sea would have terrified me as, although I was fascinated by what I saw in the cinema and in aquarium tanks, I was terrified of putting my head under water. It was truly an alien world for me and the feeling of wonder that so many aquatic organisms were unfamiliar stayed with me.

Later, I wandered around the coast on my own, looking at rock pools and I also enjoyed walking along country lanes, just for the pleasure of discovering new places, and being re-acquainted with those that were familiar. While I was happiest investigating the seashore, I also looked at the margins of local ponds and streams. On one walk along Cockington Lane - the same lane that Henry and Edmund Gosse had followed in their carriage - I decided to look for animals in the small stream that runs close to the road (see below). The upper part of the Cockington stream is dammed to form ornamental ponds and it then flows to the sea. Curious about what might be living in the stream, I picked up a few stones from the bed and, after examining them for a few seconds, was pleased that flatworms were very common and seemed to be on all the stones that I looked at. I still recall the discovery, even though it was nearly sixty years ago.

The flatworms were gliding over the surface of the stones and I was absorbed in watching their movement, as it wasn’t possible to see how they propelled themselves. Their locomotion is achieved by the beating of many thousands of microscopic cilia (small hair-like extensions from the cells covering the bottom surface of the worm), cells also secreting a mucus trail on which each worm moves, just as snails do. If watching their movement wasn’t fascinating enough, knowing that freshwater flatworms have remarkable powers of regeneration filled me with even more of a sense of wonder. I didn’t carry out any experiments like those shown in the videoclip below (where the movement of flatworms is also seen clearly) [3], but I knew about this ability. Not exactly like the sort of things that Hans and Lotte Hass filmed, but a fascinating part of the aquatic world nonetheless and to be seen only a short walk from where I lived.

Cockington gets many visitors and it is also a popular attraction for residents of South Devon, but I wonder how many of those having a cream tea, or strolling among the thatched buildings and lovely gardens, then walk back to the sea front along the boardwalk path? And of those, how many decide to look in the Cockington stream and see a quite different, yet fascinating, world? I am guessing that I was always in a very small minority.

[1] Edmund Gosse (1890) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[2] https://rwotton.blogspot.com/2017/12/henry-gosse-finds-sandhurst-in-torquay.html

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m12xsf5g3Bo&t=58s

Saffron

When I was a boy, growing up in Torbay in Devonshire, we would occasionally have saffron buns as a treat. As I recall, they were only sold in one bakery and they looked very similar to the ones in the image below. The buns were markedly yellow, but otherwise looked like other fruit buns and we ate them cut in half and spread with butter. I had no idea how saffron was obtained, although I knew it came from crocuses, and I was also aware that the buns were a little more expensive than the more usual varieties: they also had a characteristic taste. There was some mention in conversation that saffron buns were made for celebrations in neighbouring Cornwall, but I had no idea that saffron was used anywhere else in the World, whether in buns or in any other type of cooking. Mine was a parochial life.

Saffron buns, of a characteristic form, are a feature of the Santa Lucia festival in Sweden that is celebrated on 13th December each year [1]. In this tradition, children take part in a procession in their schools, where a girl is dressed as the saint and has lighted candles (or battery-driven equivalents) in a crown on her head. After the singing of traditional Santa Lucia songs, the festival ends with everyone tucking into the buns (lussekatter), although why they should contain saffron is not known, as the history of the tradition is sketchy.

Saffron (the stamens of a crocus, see above) is used in a wide array of dishes, both savoury and sweet, as well as in baking buns, and it was already established as a spice in Old Testament times [2]. In an article in The Guardian, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall gives a description of the origins of saffron (and also how it came to be grown in the part of the country where I was brought up) [3]:

Saffron [the saffron crocus] first grew in western Asia. The Moguls took it from Persia to India, and it has been cultivated in Kashmir since the third century A.D.. By the 10th Century, Arabs were growing it in Spain, where some of the world’s finest saffron is still produced. In the 13th Century, crusaders returned from Asia Minor with crocus corms and began growing it in Italy, France and Germany. The story goes that a pilgrim smuggled a corm back to England in the 14th century.. ..Within a couple of centuries, saffron meadows spread in a precious purple carpet across Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, where Market Walden even changed its name to Saffron Walden..

..But in some ways East Anglian “crokers”, as the crocus growers were known, are parvenus. Here in the West Country, we’ve been going for gold a lot longer. We exchanged tin for saffron with Phoenician traders and crocus meadows existed around Bude until the 19th century; West Country cooks turned the magical stamens into sunny loaves and cakes. Historically, we could literally count saffron as a local ingredient; traditionally, we still do.

In the article, Hugh then does on to give recipes for: saffron chicken with rice; saffron honey ice-cream; and Cornish saffron tea bread (just like the buns of my boyhood). The recipe for the latter is adapted from one by Elizabeth David, who recommended eating the bread with a glass of sauternes – something which would not have met with approval in our household.

The process of producing the best Spanish saffron is described in an article in the “i” newspaper of 21st November 2018 (see above). Crocuses are picked by hand, making sure that stems are broken near their base, and the flowers collected into baskets that are taken to be spread out on a long table. Picking is always carried out early in the morning, before the fierce heat of the sun affects the flowers adversely, and the process of plucking out the three stamens is then carried out by hand, to be followed by gentle drying over a fire. The article goes on to say that “The journey from field to jar must be completed within 24 hours to maintain freshness and comply with the EU-backed Denominacion de Origen Protegida (DOP) regulations”. It is no wonder that saffron is so expensive, wherever it is produced, and many substitutes [4] are passed off as the real thing. However, these never have the same density of colour and depth of flavour.

Saffron is not just of value in colouring and flavouring food: like many spices, it also has medicinal properties, including its value as an anti-oxidant [5]. It has also been used traditionally to reduce the effects of urinary tract infections and to ease childbirth [6]. Research on animals points to its value in treating some cardiovascular conditions, depression and macular degeneration, prompting suggestions that its biochemical constituents – crocin and crocetin – should be investigated further in a therapeutic role [6].

This throws up the question: did our ancient forebears first use saffron as a medicine or in colouring and flavouring food? We cannot know the answer and the selection of saffron must have come by trial and error at a time when our (non-human?) ancestors tried eating anything that they found, before settling on those that were edible or had a use. From there, they must have discarded the whole crocus and begun using just the stamens to concentrate the effect of the spice, using drying to produce an even more potent product.

The distribution of the native saffron crocus (Crocus sativus) is very similar to that of Colchicum spp., another crocus-like plant (see above) but from a different botanical family [7]. These also have medicinal properties, as they contain colchicine [8], long known as a treatment for gout and other joint problems. Unfortunately, colchicine has unpleasant side effects when taken in quantity and our ancestors would have developed nausea and gastro-intestinal disorders if they ate a lot of Colchicum plants before discerning their medicinal value.

We’re now moving off topic and into ethnobotany, but it is fascinating to consider how we came to select the wide range of foodstuffs that we enjoy today, especially as we now have a global perspective. It’s all a long way from the saffron buns I enjoyed as a boy in Torbay and I wasn’t sufficiently curious then to find out more. I am now, though.

  

[1] https://sweden.se/culture-traditions/lucia/

[2] Song of Solomon 4:14 in The Holy Bible.

[3]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/mar/26/saffron-recipes-hugh-fearnley-whittingstall

[4] V.Khilare, A.Tiknaik, B.Prakash, B.Ughade, G.Korhale, D.Nalage, N.Ahmed, C.Khedkar and G.Khedkar (2019) Multiple tests on saffron find new adulterant materials and reveal that 1st grade saffron is rare in the market. Food Chemistry 272:635-642.

[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41110151

[6] G.K.Broadhead, A.Chang, J.R.Grigg and P.McCluskey (2016) Efficacy and safety of saffron supplementation: current clinical findings. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 56:2767-2776.

[7] C.Brickell (editor-in-chief) (1996) The Royal Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants. London, Dorling Kindersley.

[8] B.Dasgeb, D.Kornreich, K.McGuinn, L.Okon, I.Brownell and D.L.Sackett (2018) Colchicine: an ancient drug with novel applications. British Journal of Dermatology 178:350-356. et al.

My thanks to those who posted on the “Torbay Undiscovered, Lost, Forgotten, Unloved!” Facebook page in response to my request for details about saffron buns in Torbay.