Flaming June of late flowers and first fruits

DESPITE its traditional use in a climatic context, ‘Flaming June’ is not a weather-related event but a now famous painting previously thought to be worthless. Whether or not the month’s weather was traditionally hot enough to warrant the description ‘flaming’ is unclear, although over the last two decades the midsummer month has showered us with unseasonably cool temperatures and high rainfall.

May steams into June as the browning blossoms on hawthorn hedges fade from memory, but another ubiquitous native tree and shrub starts to fill the air with a sweet, winey aroma. This soft and subtle scent comes from flat flower heads (umbels) of the common elder tree, in sharp contrast to the heavy and almost putrid smell of hawthorn blossom back in May. June sees elder take over from hawthorn as the backdrop blossom in the hedgerow and woodland margin, although in sheer floral intensity elder cannot compete with hawthorn. But in combination with the mild, sweet fragrance delivered by dog rose, it transforms the ambience into a summery floral bouquet.

First fruits of the season on a cherry plum tree in late June.

Common elder (Sambucus nigra) will always provide the backdrop blossom for June, but hidden away in the hedgerow on hillsides and deep in woodland are other, rarer and more retiring native tree species. By June, these trees and shrubs are eager to present their white flowers for pollination and fertilisation so that newly set fruits have time to swell and ripen before the shrinking days and cooler temperatures of autumn set in.

Whitebeam (Sorbus aria) is the classic case but more likely to be seen as a custom-bred amenity tree. Whitebeam in the wild is a locally abundant, complex collection of subspecies found on rocky hillsides like the carboniferous limestone landscape of Cheddar Gorge in Somerset. The flowers are borne in densely packed inflorescences called corymbs (clusters). Both corymbs and the individual five-petal flowers are immediately reminiscent of those borne by the closely related rowan (mountain ash) tree (Sorbus aucuparia). Rowan is much more ubiquitous than whitebeam, with an earlier flowering period which is essentially over by May’s end.

READ MORE: May Day, May Day: A history of hawthorn

Hidden away in the hedgerow is the dogwood (Cornus sanguinea), rarely attaining the status of a small tree but starting to flower profusely in the first days of June. The tiny, white, star-shaped flowers are borne in loose, dainty heads (corymbs) with a floral format and formula described by G. S. Boulger in his Familiar Trees (1895) “as hardly a better lesson in geometrically regular symmetry” – 4 sepals x 4 petals x 4 stamens.

Just as hawthorn blossom provides the backdrop to May, common elder blossom does the same thing for June.

Such structural order contrasts sharply with the historical mess and muddle surrounding the tree’s common name. Suffice to say it has less to do with canine creatures, despite the alternative name of ‘hound berry’, and more to do with daggers that were made from the exceptionally hard wood appropriately called dagwood; only to be corrupted to ‘dogwood’ at some point in England’s similarly messed-up culture and language.

The flowers are reputed to produce copious quantities of honey-rich nectar and as such are frequently visited by a wide variety of insect life, although in reality its foetid flowers emit an unpleasant pungent smell. The reason is to attract those types of insect (flies and beetles) which are compatible both structurally and behaviourally with the dogwood’s floral form and structure for pollination purposes.

I treasure old tree texts written by iconic authors like G. S. Boulger and Edward Step because they are invariably correct down to the very last botanical detail. For instance, Edward Step (Wayside and Woodland Trees, circa 1900) says the centrally positioned flower in the dogwood corymb (flower cluster or inflorescence) is always the very first to open and possesses five petals and five stamens instead of the regular four of each.  Inspect the hedgerow in early June when the dogwood’s flower buds are beginning to burst, and you will see his observations, made over a century ago, are still spot on.

Dry-loving dogwood is a ubiquitous and frequent feature of hedgerows, flowering in early June.

Following hard on the heels of dogwood is the guelder rose (Viburnum opulus), another attractive and important native of Britain’s hedgerows. Unlike the dry-tolerant if not dry-loving dogwood, guelder rose is more at home and more frequent in shady, damp hedgerows where this whitest of white blossom brightens an otherwise uniform green hedge well into the second half of June. The white flowers are terminally borne in flat corymbs (clusters) with a flat lace-cap appearance which distinguishes them from nominally similar white corymbs borne by related trees including common elder and wayfaring tree. Guelder rose is sometimes called water elder in recognition of its love for damp, shady places.

READ MORE: April showers and woodland flowers

The ever-vigilant Edward Step (1855–1931) said the outer ring of larger and pure white ‘imperfect’ (infertile) flowers is there to attract insects. He says the ‘material’ that would normally be used to fabricate the male and female organs has apparently been used to construct a broader, brighter and whiter corolla to lure potential pollinating insects into the central mass of ‘perfect’ (reproductively equipped) flowers which secrete nectar and are very sweet smelling. The inner core of ‘perfect’ flowers is tubular (bell-shaped), creamy white in colour, with stamens and stigma maturing at the same time.

Deep in the woodland is the hawthorn deluxe – the wild service tree.

At the same time but deep in the woodland is another even more retiring tree about to burst into bloom. Unlike the wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana) of the hedgerow, the wild service tree (Sorbus torminalis) is not a tree in name only but a true woodland tree, recently generating much interest as a source of quality timber. However, back to the white flowers borne by this quite uncommon native tree, with striking similarities to the flowers of Britain’s most common native tree – the hawthorn. And not too surprising since both belong to the plant family Rosaceae.

My first encounter with a wild service tree in flower has left two indelible imprints on my mind – similarity with hawthorn and not to make assumptions about midsummer weather in England despite the old description of ‘Flaming June’. It was early June with rain falling vertically from the sky and drenching the luxuriant early-summer growth of south Essex woodland. Soaked to the skin and close to calling it a day, we came across a mature wild service tree in a grassy clearing. The first thing that came into my mind about the flowers and leaves, and still with me today, was ‘hawthorn deluxe’.

The spring equinox seemed like yesterday, but today is the 22nd of June with daylight hours already seconds shorter than the day before. There remain at least two if not three months of warm weather, but we are already reminded that autumn and the fruits of the season beckon, albeit from a distance. Some of the early flowering trees are already bearing soft, colourful fruit including Prunus cerasifera (cherry plum or myrobalan plum) with its cherry-sized, plum-shaped fruit ripening yellow to red on white-flowered, green-leaved wild-type trees, or dark red to purple on pink-flowered, red-leaved bred varieties, respectively.

And wild cherry or gean (Prunus avium), with its clusters of luscious-looking, dark red cherries, is extremely tart but clearly a tasty treat for blackbirds, which strip the trees in no time at all. Wild cherries are small enough for blackbirds to swallow whole and subsequently regurgitate the seed. Believe it or not, scientists in central Europe researched and computer-modelled seed distribution by radio-tagging blackbirds. They found that seed regurgitated in forest situations was more likely to germinate and produce new trees than seed regurgitated onto farmland.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

Hawthorn blossom’s putrid smell led medieval communities to claim reminiscence of the Great Plague in London. Hardly surprising since scientists would later discover that a chemical called trimethylamine present in hawthorn blossom also formed in decaying animal tissue.

‘Flaming June’ is the title of a painting by Victorian artist Sir Frederic Leighton painted in 1895. It depicts a young woman in a sheer bright orange (apricot) dress, sound asleep on a marble bench under a canopy in the midsummer heat. Today the work by Frederic Leighton is considered a classic of Victorian art and accordingly valuable, but as recently as the 1960s ‘Flaming June’ was considered garbage, languishing unsaleable in a junk shop in south London. Painted in a London Studio, its permanent home is now the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico.

Cherry plum fruits have been eaten raw or cooked for centuries if not millennia by communities within the tree’s native Mediterranean and western Asian regions. I have never actually tried them myself and I am slightly shy from my experience in the tropics where I have seen the consequences of people eating wild fruits they are not totally familiar with. The seeds of stone fruits like apricots, peaches, cherries, plums, and therefore cherry plums, contain a compound called amygdalin which is definitely poisonous if ingested.

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