Exceptionally rare & critically endangered Corncockle is growing on several Wellesbourne Allotment plots - one of Britain's most threatened & most beautiful wildflowers. Its cultural history is very interesting too.
Corncockles were extinct in the wild in the UK although until relatively recently very common. They were originally introduced to Europe from their homelands in the Middle East, around 6000 years ago during the Neolithic period. As a species that is pre-adapted to live with arable crops, they did very well in arable fields. They are not strictly climbers, but they are quite good at using a crop to grow up to, or even beyond the height of the crop canopy. They were a very well known arable weed for millennia, often found growing with another very common weed, Cornflower. Because their seeds are a similar size to crop seeds, they were a common (notorious) contaminant of crops, especially Rye, and were resown with the crop. Also, their seeds have a very long life in the seedbank, perhaps over a hundred years. So they can lie undisturbed until some cultivation happens and up they pop. Archaeological evidence indicates they arrived in Britain during the first millennium BC.
Eating Cockle-contaminated bread, especially Rye bread (or porridge), was an everyday occurrence from the Neolithic until the 19th century, as archaeological evidence attests. No doubt some did die from the toxins in the seed, though they those that survived benefitted from the presence of a natural ant-helminth githagenin, which kills intestinal parasites, another ubiquitous health problem of that time.
In Shakespeare’s time Corncockle was one of the most pernicious of weeds – known to such an extent he used it metaphorically: Coriolanus argues with the Senate over their desire to give the people a gift of free corn. Coriolanus likens the gift to a farmer encouraging Corncockle to grow instead of Corn.
“In soothing them we nourish ‘gainst our senate
The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition
Which we ourselves have ploughed for, sow’d and scattered
By mingling them with us, the honour’d numbers;
Who lack’d not virtue, no, nor power
but that which they have given to beggars”
Coriolanus Act 3 scene 1
Could wearing a Corncockle actually have been used a symbol of rebellion in the 16th century?
19th century advances in agriculture – such as the threshing machine griddle, improved seed cleaning and Corncockle were no longer spread with corn seed. Their long decline to extinction in Britain had begun. WIth the introduction of mechanical and chemical weed killing techniques they rapidly declined, along with many others of our arable weed flora. They have been extinct in the wild for decades, although occasionally pop up after cultivation from that seed bank.
It’s also worth noting Corncockle and it’s arable weed familiars, Poppy and Cornflower, especially this year. The battlefields mimicked arable cultivation such that there were incredible displays of arable weeds during and after the First World War. This gives us our emblem of our lost generation the poppy, while in France it is the Cornflower. It could just as easily have been the Corncockle, which we now wear to signify remembrance.
In 2014, The Big Lottery Fund gave Kew Gardens £10M to encourage people to grow wild flowers. The project is called “Grow Wild“. Grow Wild thought it would be a good idea to send out seeds of the Corncockle, and encourage people to plant these attractive wild flowers in their gardens, and anywhere else appropriate.
Someone somewhere discovered the corncockle seeds are poisonous. Indeed if you were foolish enough to eat a corncockle stem it would also give you a tummy ache.
The power of social media transformed this innocuous fact into a media-driven whirlwind of hysteria. These vicious and lethal wildflowers that have somehow been released into the wild and now being hunted down.
The Telegraph reported:-
“In Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, council groundsmen have already been called in to eradicate a patch of corncockles planted in a park by well-meaning Girl Guides.”
Let us celebrate our relationship with the Corncockle, sow Corncockles where ever they may prosper, re-wild our stale sterile public spaces with colour and a little bit of danger.
Let Girl Guides across the country sow Corncockles where they may go, and wear your Cockle of Rebellion with pride.