Marsh Marigolds (Caltha palustris) are a nice springtime treat, their shiny yellow flowers and glossy heart-shaped leaves filling swamps and marshes and wet meadows with showy botany. Mix in some belching frogs and zooming dragonflies, perhaps a prehistoric snapping turtle or two, and you've got the makings of a fairy tale.
This wet-loving buttercup (Ranunculacea), which clearly doesn't mind pruney fingers and toes, can be found across Canada, down into North Carolina, and over and back up through Iowa and Nebraska. They bloom from April into June, their swampy beacons of yellow about one and a half inches across; the leaves can be as wide as seven inches.
17th Century herbalist Gerard wrote: "Marsh Marigold hath great broad leaves, somewhat round, smooth, of a gallante green colour, sleightly indented or purld about the edges, among which rise up thicke fat stalkes, likewise greene; whereupon doe grow goodly yellow flowers, glittering like gold."
Tennyson seconded the motion: "And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray."
Thoreau, referring to these flowers by their other common name, Cowslip, made it unanimous: "But the season is most forward ... where the cowslip is in blossom, - and nothing yet planted at home, - these bright-yellow suns of the meadow, in rich clusters, their flowers contrasting with the green leaves, from amidst the all-producing, dark-bottomed water. A flower-fire bursting up, as if through crevices in the meadow where they grow."
The leaves have been used in the past as a potherb, but must be briefly boiled with several changes of water between each boil. They should never, ever be eaten raw. Oliver Perry Medsger, writing in 1939, pointed out that they were particularly useful in this fashion "before most garden greens are ready for use."
Marsh Marigolds have gone by a variety of names over the years: Bitter flower, Boots, Bullflower, Bull's-Eyes, Coltsfoot, Coltsroot, Cowlily, Cowslop (my personal favorite), Drunkards (presumably from the way they suck up the water when stuck in a vase), Gollands, Horse-Blob, Mare-Blebs ('blob' and 'bleb' both refer to a blister ... the flowers were known by these names either because of their resemblance to buttercups (ranunculus species,) the roots of which cause blisters, or because the flower buds brought to mind a big, round swelling), Mary-Buds, Meadow-Bright, Meadow-Gowan ('gowan' and 'gollands' are English dialect names for golden or yellow flowers), Palsywort, Spring-Cowslip, Water-Bowls, Water-Dragons, Water-Gowan, and Water-Starwort.
"Marsh Marigolds: a Flower-fire" (c) 2006 Gregg M. Pasterick - All Rights Reserved.
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