I’ve been fascinated with cacti and succulents since I was a
kid. They’re always odd-looking, and sometimes they reward you with beautiful
flowers.
One of the easiest to grow is Sempervivum
tectorum. My mother called it “hen-and-chicks.” This refers (I assume)
to the plant’s growing habit: there’s generally a fat rosette in the middle of
a planting, surrounded by its children, which peek out like happy faces. Sometimes
the “hen” puts out a long chicken-neck blooming stalk in midsummer. The plant
can deal with dry climates and wet climates; as with many succulents, if the
weather goes the wrong way, the plant simply quiets down for a while and stops
growing. As soon as conditions improve, however, it bounces back.
The ancients believed it protected a house from lightning
and sorcery, and even planted it on their (thatched / peat) roofs. (“Tectorum,” its species name, means “of
the roof.” Charlemagne recommended that his subjects plant it on their roofs,
to protect themselves from various evils.) In England and Wales the plant is called
“houseleek,” literally “the house plant.” Old botanicals and herbals say that
its juice can be used to alleviate or cure a long list of ailments: fever, erysipelas (does anyone get
erysipelas these days?), dysentery, thrush, burns, scrofulous ulcerations,
corns, warts, neuralgia, migraines, shingles, and insomnia.
In brief: it’s a sweet benevolent plant that likes to live
where people live, and seems to get along with people very well.
The best of these, and the longest (for the knowledge of
which I thank Richard
Mabey) is “Welcome-home-husband-though-never-so-drunk.”
Now where do you suppose that
name came from?
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