Soapwort

Almost too busy for photography today...Our planned early start was delayed by rain, so we eventually arrived on site by about midday. This meant four and a half hours of very concentrated surveying, so that we could leave in time to go to Pete's Mums in the evening. No time to stop and photograph any of the masses of butterflies drifting by...

We arrived home about five, quickly washed and changed, picked Chris up from the doctors (where he'd had the first set of injections required for his visit to India) and made it to Spalding by half past six. We had a pleasant couple of hours chatting, accompanied by cake, cake and more cake! I managed to avoid most of it, which meant I was very hungry by the time we left, not having had time for lunch.

We picked up a Chinese meal on the way home and sat down to eat about half past nine. Then there was just time to process the day's work photographs before crashing out in bed. This image was taken on site just before we left.

Soapwort Saponaria officinalis is a fairly invasive meber of the pink family, and has thriving colonies along many railway lines in the south-east. In the Stone Age (12,000 years BC) or even earlier it is likely that when people went to wash their hands in the stream they grabbed the leaves of plants growing nearby to help scrub off the dirt. Soapwort grows near streams and the lather from its leaves would help cleaning. More recently soapwort was cultivated as a useful plant in Roman gardens and around Roman baths, whilst soapwort was also used to clean and prepare the Turin Shroud.