BBC Radio 4 Extra

The Passion in Plants (Omnibus)

Religion & Ethics

Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

The Road to the Cross - Hawthorn and Speedwell

BBC Radio 4 Extra - The Passion in Plants (Omnibus)

Naturalist Bob Gilbert traces the association of British wild plants with the Easter Story

Naturalist Bob Gilbert and his friend Brother Samuel traces the associations, centuries old, of British wild plants with the Easter Story.

Over centuries people have used wildflowers to share our stories, including those in the Bible. As stained glass windows reminded ordinary people of its characters and events, so did the plants of the hedgerow that they encountered every day. In this way many trees and flowers came to play a part in telling the Easter story.

Writer and naturalist Bob Gilbert considers the key moments of Christ's Passion and the plants that in folklore came to reflect them. With his friend Brother Samuel, a Franciscan friar, Bob searches for these in wild locations ranging from rural woodlands and meadows to the pavements of Poplar in the East End of London. They explore their traditions, how they came about, and their meanings.

Plus readings from writers such as AE Housman, Tennyson and the author of Dream of the Rood, together with songs and music.

They begin with Palm Sunday and the triumphal entry to Jerusalem. In the woods at Hilfield friary in Dorset Bob and Brother Sam look for the goat willow or sallow - the pussy willow plant - which was, still is in some places, cut early in the morning and carried in Palm Sunday processions. They visit, too, ancient yews at Tandridge and Crowhurst in Surrey. Evergreens were rare and yew branches were also used to represent the palm fronds. Standing inside a huge, hollow yew they consider the significance of these venerable and mysterious trees.

The last Supper, the meal Jesus took with his disciples in the upper room, was the Feast of the Passover, when Jews eat 'the bitter herbs' as a reminder of the harsh experience of their enslavement in Egypt.  Ilana Epstein, an expert in Jewish culinary traditions and a great cook herself, reveals the identity of these herbs and their the subtle significance.

In British tradition sorrel and tansy (used to get rid of worms!) became the equivalent of the bitter herbs. They grow in Bob's garden in Poplar and he and Brother Sam follow traditional recipes, cooking a tansy pancake and a dish called simply, a 'tansy'.

Why does the elder never amount to more than a scruffy, scrubby bush? Because, full of remorse after betraying Jesus with a kiss, Judas Iscariot hanged himself from an elder tree. Bob and Sam look closely at an elder and find a certain fungus that often grows on it - auricularia auricula-judae, Latin for 'the ear of Judas'.

The torture of Jesus and the weaving of a crown of thorns is represented in British tradition by the hawthorn, a plant particularly rich in folklore, being associated with spring and the coming of new life as well as with death and decomposition.

Christ carries his cross on to the road to the place of his crucifixion. There is the story of Veronica, who steps forward to wipe the sweat and blood from Christ's brow with her veil. Bob and Sam search the city streets to find the plant that now bears her name and has come to be associated with aiding people on their journeys - the Veronica or speedwell.

The Easter story reaches it critical moment with the crucifixion of Christ at Golgotha, the 'place of the skull'.

In British folklore several different trees are said to have provided the wood for the cross but none more commonly than the aspen which has ever since been condemned to tremble with remorse. Bob and Brother Sam encounter an aspen in an urban park and consider its stories, as well as the wider role of trees in both Christianity and other world religions.

Several plants, all with spots on their leaves, were said to have grown at the foot of the cross and to be stained by the dripping blood of Christ. Among them were the early purple orchid and the wild arum or cuckoo pint. Bob and Brother Sam find the first spring rosettes of these flowers unfurling beside a country lane, before moving on to woodland to seek out the tiny plant whose name encapsulates the dramatic events of the day: the Good Friday plant or moschatel. 

Then Bob and Brother Sam celebrate the culmination of the Easter story, seeking out the plants associated with the Resurrection.

As Christ rises from the tomb it is the pearlwort, according to Gaelic legend, that is there to cushion his first footfall. Bob and Sam find this diminutive plant in the cracks between paving stones in an East London street.

One of the most beautiful stories of the Resurrection is of Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Christ and mistaking him for the gardener. As she reaches out to towards him he tells her not to touch him. This Biblical story is told again in the name of the 'touch-me-not' balsam. Rare and late flowering, Bob and Brother Sam have to resort to the herbarium at Kew Gardens to see a specimen.

In the culmination of the story, they do, however, manage to find in the woods at Hilfield friary, the beautiful wood sorrel. Flowering at Easter, it is known as the 'Alleluia plant'.

Omnibus of five parts.

Readers: Bettrys Jones and Ell Potter

Producer: Julian May

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2020.

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