More used to seeing this species web ‘tents’ on the ground in the grass, I wouldn’t have realised who had built this one if I hadn’t seen her guarding it.
In the meadow, the Nursery-web spider would probably have escaped my notice too if I hadn’t been trying to get closer to a butterfly in the brambles. Keeled garlic, whose flowers attract Common Blue butterflies and the long stand of Hemp Agrimony on the woodland edge are in bud. In herbal medicine it was claimed the herb was a remedy for for urinary diseases, epilepsy and gout.
Lady’s Bedstraw contains the chemical coumarin, used in the drug dicouramol, which will prevent the blood clotting. The leaves and stems yield a yellow dye and the roots a red dye it was said that when cattle feed on it, it reddens their bones. In the north of England the yellow flowers were once used to curdle milk, giving rise to several associated names such as cheese rennet and cheese renning. Lady’s Bedstraw was once one of the most useful of the meadow flowers it was commonly used as a ‘strewing herb’, a natural form of air-freshening and for stuffing mattresses. Lady’s bedstraw is a food source for the huge Elephant hawk-moth caterpillar, then is favoured by the adult moths as a rich source of nectar. The migrant Humming-bird Hawk Moths are attracted to it too. On warm sunny days the air surrounding the frothy yellow flowerheads is deliciously fragranced with the scent of lightly perfumed fresh hay. Lady’s Bedstraw is a plant of dry grassland, dry banks, downs and old established sand-dunes.
It is from this legend that the common name for the plant was taken, and also led to the belief that a woman lying on Lady’s Bedstraw would have a safe and easy childbirth. Medieval legend has it that the Virgin Mary lay on a bed of Lady’s Bedstraw in the stable of the inn in Bethlehem, as the donkeys had eaten all the other fodder. Lady’s Bedstraw- Galium verum Welsh- Briwydd felen Frothy sunshine-yellow Lady’s Bedstraw brightens the grass and on this warm sunny day scents the air with the delicate fragrance of fresh-cut hay.
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