A-Z Challenge 2016 - Wildflowers 'K'

My theme this year is wild flowers. Most of us will be aware of the flowers that grow in our gardens but what surprises me is how few wild flowers that I know.

I pass them every day but rarely look at them. Well this year will be different - even if many of them may fall under the letter 'X' for unknown.

'K' - Kingcup, Knapweed

In Ireland bunches of the first of my flowers were hung over doors on May Day to protect cattle from witches and fairies. Not bad for what may be one of the longest established native plants in Britain, one which would have thrived in the melt waters of the ice age. One of the buttercup family it grows in marshy places, damp meadows and riversides.

Kingcup or Marsh Marigold

It's a plant that is known by a plethora of names - Mollyblobs, Horse Blob, Gollins and the Publican; in Scotland it's the water gowan or water gowland. But I've always known it as the Kingcup.

The large, golden, cup-shaped flowers can hardly be missed.

Kingcups

While the whole plant is poisonous its buds were once used as a substitute for capers.

My second flower resembles a thistle without prickles.

Common Knapweed

There is a marvellous story about this plant.

If a woman puts its open florets inside her blouse and any open into the flower, then a lover will come her way.

Its knob-like heads are sometimes called hard-heads. Knap is another name for knob.

Medicinal uses include relieving sore throats and healing wounds and scabs.

There is no doubt that knapweed is a favourite with bees and butterflies.

Peacock butterfly on knapweed

Attributions:

• Kingcup or Marsh Marigold - 14 April 2009, ex geograph.org.uk, by Keith Edkins in Byron's Pool Nature reserve - CC BY-SA 2.0 generic
• Kingcups - 20 May 2008, ex geograph.org.uk, by M J Richardson - CC BY-SA 2.0 generic
• Common Knapweed - 3 July 2013, by Natalie S - CC BY-SA 4.0