(European spindle- euonymous europaeus)
It is easy to fall in love with the modest, shrub-like Spindle tree when it is covered in bunches of bright pink capsules late in the year. The Spindle trees in Coates located behind the stone wall in the field alongside the Rectory, were looking great from late September until Christmas this year. I have come across other examples along the old canal walk near the locks beyond the Daneway.
But younger readers should perhaps beware – one of the traditional uses for the tree’s leaves, once dried and powdered, was ‘to drive vermin away from children’s heads’. No visit to the chemist required. More productively the wood was made into eponymous spindles for hand spinning wool, and skewers for use by butchers and cooks.
The tree’s brightly coloured fruit clearly inspired Lord Tennyson in the gloomier weeks of winter, and he included a reference to the Spindle tree in a poem called ‘A dedication’:
‘And after Autumn past- if left to pass
His Autumn into seeming-leafless days-
Draw toward the long frost and longest night,
Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit
Which in our Winter woodland looks a flower.’
The Spindle Tree is quite common on limestone and chalk in lowland Britain.
Geoff Moore
