TURTLE HEADS AND OTHER STUFF

TURTLE HEAD PLANTS IN DITCH ON TURNER RD...

...CLUSTER OF TURTLE HEAD FLOWERS

Tuesday, 7:45 AM.  60 degrees, wind variable, mainly light.  The sky has a low overcast,  and it is foggy and misty.  The humidity is 97%, but the barometer, which stands at 29.66", is beginning to turn upward.

    Joan and I are in the middle of a common but quite arduous task; cleaning out the basement and deciding what to keep, what to sell or give away and what to take to the dump.  Over a long marriage we have accumulated things from our parents and other relatives, things left by our now grown children, and memorabilia and accumulated things from our own lives.  Just getting things up the stairs and into the garage was a Herculerian task.  What kinds of things?  Old clothes, ("Did I ever really fit into those?"); old photographs, ("Who is that sitting next to grandma?"); old appliances and office equipment, ("What do you suppose that was used for?"); and in general, ("Who do you suppose left that here?").

     We have so much stuff we have rented a storage unit to accommodate the overflow and serve as a place to sort things out. There are things I have already transported both directions. Twice.  It is a brutal process, and I can already hear our kids and others complaining, "How could you have gotten rid of that?"  To which I will answer, "Because you never came and got it!" 

    And I am telling anyone over forty who will listen, "Stop buying stuff!"

    Turtle head, Chelone glabra, in the figwort family, the Scrophulariaceae, is native to eastern Canada and the northeastern US, and can be found sparingly in roadside ditches, lowlands, stream banks and other wet areas.  It is overall a rather undistinguished plant, growing in height from two to four feet with simple opposite leaves, but the clusters of unusual, creamy white flowers (sometimes tinged with purple) are rather attractive.  It is not necessarily uncommon, but is probably most often overlooked by the casual observer.  The genus name means "turtle" in Greek, and the species name refers to the leaves being smooth, or hairless.  Another common name is "snake head," the flowers being reminiscent of a reptile head, either turtle or snake.
   Its leaves are extremely bitter, and were used in both English herbal medicine and in American Indian medicine as a tonic, purgative for children's worms, for liver complaints, dropsy, jaundice and so forth.  I do not know if it is still so used today.  It is browsed heavily by deer (rather amazing, since it is so bitter) and that is probably another reason for its relative scarcity.