Shake, rattle

Veering off the path to the coast I rustled through a patch of yellow rattle stalks. The yolky flowers are over but the seed pods remain attached to the stems and they clatter like a myriad  papery cymbals as you brush through them (hence their name). This grassland 'weed' was once abhorred by farmers because its hemi-parasitic habit inhibits the growth of grass. Now though it is beloved of anyone wanting to establish a short sward-like lawn or a wildflower meadow. Without the competition of abundant coarse grasses traditional wild flowers can take root, attracting invertebrates such as grasshoppers, butterflies and bees.

I picked a bunch of these rustling stalks (extra) and will shake out the seeds over the bald patches in what was our lawn in the hope that next year I may be able to rattle though my own Rhinanthus minor meadow. (It's actually quite difficult to establish successfully.)

Simon Armitage wrote a poem about this plant on one of his long walks remembering, through it  the sparse grazing and desperate agrarian lives of long ago.

Yellow Rattle (Poverty)

Hairless, leaves unstalked, toothed.
Two-lipped, lower lip decurved.
Calyx distended in fruit. Semi-parasite,

throws itself on the parish
gets its hooks into good roots.
A beggar to shift

once it gains a toehold.
Bad-mouthed by farm folk
Goes among meadows, grassy places

Hard times, one by the verge
hunched, cap-in-hand,
shaking the poor box, the husk

of its see-through purse
in its see-through fingers
dry-voiced, whispering

spare any change Sir,
a penny for Fiddle-case
a penny for Shackle-basket
help poor Pots'n'Pans
a penny for Rattlejack,
spare a few pennies for old Pepperbox Sir, 
a penny for Cockscomb
a ha'penny for old Hen Penny, Sir,
remember old Shepherd''s coffin
remember poor Snaffles
a penny for Poverty Sir, most kindly.

When I brush past,
When I breeze through,
When I swish by.