A childhood spent observing the ways of wild plants and cultivating plants in gardens helped fashion my observational skills. I still recall my fascination with reading scientific plant names as a child – they seemed to convey something magical. By the time I was seven I was reading gardening and wildflower books and absorbing the names. Like many people I have met later in life, I was enthralled by the lovely artwork of Rev. William Keeble Martin’s New Concise British Flora, and I scoured the pages for new words and facts. The image of marsh sow-thistle (Sonchus palustris), a rare plant of fens and marshes of South-East England, particularly captured my imagination. It was almost thirty-five years before I saw it in the wild, and my fascination and love was renewed.
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Brambles and Buddleja
Many of us enjoy a walk through a wood in autumn. We take pleasure in the weakening rays of the sun and the autumnal scent of freshly fallen leaves. Whilst gazing at the hazy beauty of a fog-laden wood, all too often we trip up. Our feet have been snagged by a bramble stem. After some cursing and attempting to remove the offending briar from the path, we return home. For many of us, that is as far as our relationship with brambles goes. Some of us may enjoy blackberry picking and eating blackberry and apple pie or blackberry jam, but that is all. It’s an oddity of the English language that when we don’t like them, we call them ‘brambles’ and when they give us pleasure, they are ‘blackberries’.
I am rather fond of brambles, though not as fond of them as batologists, to whom I shall return shortly. Why the fondness? First, being a botanist, I’m keen on all plants and I cannot think of a wild plant that I am unable to admire, although, it is fair to say that some more heavily hybridised varieties of garden plant leave me a little cold. Back to brambles: their role in the ecology of our countryside is probably one of the more important of our wild plants. When in flower, they provide nectar and pollen for a myriad of invertebrates. Their roots, stems and foliage are food for many more, as well as for various mammals such as deer. Wild boars are like them, too; the young shoots and roots are a tasty snack, and the boars’ penetrating snouts churn up the soil and create new habitat for other wildlife.
Brambles even host a range of specialist fungi that call them home. I’m particularly fond of fungi. To date, I’ve not had an opportunity to work with them in a crime scene. I have had to content myself with looking at fungal fruiting bodies at a crime scene and contemplating how they may be of use. Being inquisitive is a double-edged sword though, as it is very easy to divert your mental energy to interesting but ultimately unproductive avenues of thought and examination. I’m usually brought to the present by Sophie calling me to order by muttering ‘eyes on the job Spencer’. One day I’ll show her! However, being curious can be very productive, because it often enables you to look at a case in a way that the police team had not conceived of. This is particularly true of botany – most investigators have never worked a case that has a botanical angle. One of the more common and easily seen fungi to grow on brambles is the violet bramble rust (Phragmidium violaceum). Violet bramble rust is an obligate biotroph, which means that it is unable to complete its rather complex life history without the presence of brambles. It can be seen as reddish-purple blotches on bramble leaves through summer until the leaves fall in autumn. Of course, we most value brambles for their fruit, as do some wildlife. The fruit of these plants are an invaluable food source for many species in late summer.
However, the main reason I am fond of brambles is because I often encounter them at crime scenes. I am happy to see them not only because I value them for their aesthetic or ecological value but because they are often of assistance to me in my role as a forensic botanist. Some types of brambles are common in places where people abound and where crimes are committed. This is not because they have an affinity for humanity but because humans tend to increase the nutrient load of soil and water courses (mainly through agriculture, sewage and transport). Brambles thrive in these conditions; they are greedy feeders and the extra nutrients we supply are to their liking.
So, why are brambles of use when investigating crime scenes? Brambles can be thought of as vegetable calendars (all plants are for that matter; we just need to learn how to understand them). They can be of assistance in estimating how long a person’s remains have been at the location they’re in. Quite often when a body is first found, the police will not know who the person is. To establish their identity, the police will pursue various avenues of investigation. One important question will be ‘how long has this person been here?’. In some cases, brambles (and other plants too) may help resolve that question. Despite appearing chaotic and messy to us, a bramble thicket is not disordered. It is an elegant and choreographed structure that enables the bramble plant to maximise its potential within its environment.
To understand how brambles grow it helps to know and understand the other plants they are related to. Brambles are members of the rose family (Rosaceae). The rose family is a fairly large one, with nearly 3,000 species (for comparison, there are about 28,000 types of wild orchid). Members of the family include, not surprisingly, the rose (Rosa) as well as plums and cherries (Prunus), apples (Malus), hawthorns (Crataegus) and strawberries (Fragaria). Of these, brambles are most like strawberries. Both plants have similarities in fruit structure, but more importantly, aspects of their growth are also comparable. Strawberry plants have a short, stout rootstock that produce long, thin trailing stems (runners) from which new plants develop.
Brambles, and their close relative raspberry (Rubus idaeus), have a variation on this body plan. Every spring, the plant sends up one or more fresh vegetative growths (these are called canes in gardening), whose role is to increase the physical territory that the plant occupies and outcompete other plants. With brambles, the growing tips of these stem arch, and when the tips meet the ground, they produce fresh roots and a new plant. This is why brambles are so good at tripping us up; they’re often rooted at both ends – creating a natural tripwire. The following year the same stem changes its function; it produces shorter side-shoots, which flower and then bear fruit. During the summer, when the plant is flowering, further vegetative shoots arise from the ground and grow through and over the flowering stems. Over a period of years, the plant steadily gets larger as the fresh stems overtop the older ones (which gradually weaken and die). Thus, for all their chaotic demeanour to us, brambles are very ‘organised’ plants with an effective strategy for surviving in our hedgerows, woodlands and the nutrient-rich corners of our habitations, where many crimes are committed.
The ability of brambles to gradually encapsulate territory is of value to me as a forensic botanist. Once a deceased person is in the environment, plants and animals respond to and accommodate their presence. If a person’s remains become surrounded by bramble plants, they will soon be covered by the plants’ enshrouding growth, awaiting discovery. It is my role to use the tell-tale signs in the plant’s structure to estimate how long the person has been where they are. This involves carefully examining the position of the stems arising from the root stock, as well as observing how the stems have aged. I will examine as many rootstocks as possible on which to base my conclusions and I may need to take samples for more detailed examination afterwards.
I have revealed how brambles can help fight crime. But what of batology? Brambles, alongside some other members of the rose family, such as the whitebeams (Sorbus), have a rather curious way of reproducing. They don’t have sex. Or, to be more accurate, most of them don’t have sex. Many bramble species reproduce by apomixis (a rather handy Scrabble word), which results in the formation of a seed without the necessity for fertilisation. Apomixis is a complex phenomenon that is fairly widespread in flowering plants. One of its consequences is that these asexual brambles are effectively vegetative clones; another is that they are often very restricted in their range and extremely rare. The Trelleck bramble (Rubus trelleckensis) is restricted to Beacon Hill in Monmouthshire, Wales, and may be vulnerab
le to extinction. It is not alone in this regard. Many of the 300 or more recognised micro-species of Rubus fruticosus agg. (the collective term for this group of brambles) found in Britain and Ireland are similarly scarce. They are known as micro-species because the characteristics used to separate them are often very subtle, often microscopic. The complexity and diversity of brambles is such that relatively few botanists among us are brave enough to embrace them. Those who do are known as batologists, a name derived from the ancient Greek (báton) for blackberry. Becoming a batologist takes time, patience and iron-clad fingertips. During my time at the Natural History Museum in London I had the honour of becoming acquainted with the king of British and Irish batology, David Ellis Allen. Not only is he a man of vast knowledge on brambles but his erudition in natural history and the history of our nation’s botany collections is remarkable.
At this point, I am hoping you may feel a warm glow when thinking of these plants. Sadly, all is not rosy with brambles. All too often, ecological damage is one of the consequences of humanity’s activities on this planet. In many cases, this damage is caused by invasive non-native species. Owing to their tasty fruit, we have taken our brambles from their homelands and transported them all over the world. For many places, such as New Zealand and Hawaii, the consequences have been disastrous. Many of Hawaii’s incredibly endangered plants are under threat due to competition with invasive non-native brambles and the damage caused by the feral pigs that forage on them. Luckily, in some cases control measures have been found. The violet bramble rust fungus has been introduced to areas such as New Zealand, where it is used as a biocontrol agent against invasive brambles. The fungus is so specialised and specific in its requirements that it is considered extremely unlikely that it will move to an alternative host.
The humble bramble is so much more than an annoying tripwire. Embrace its wonder next time you stumble over one in your local wood or park.
I moved to London in 1989. Back then, the streets of Hackney where I lived, were not full of elegant hipsters. There was a lot of rubbish, though. Before London, I had lived near Diss in Norfolk, where I’d worked for the prestigious Blooms of Bressingham, at the time one of the most important horticultural nurseries in the country. While I was there, I successfully applied for a studentship at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. My last summer in Diss was chiefly spent in a large, rambling farmhouse, all crooked stairs and dark passageways, with an equally rambling household. I lived in one portion of the house with young horticulture students who also worked for Blooms, and the family who owned the property lived in another portion. The house had a delightful and weed-filled walled garden with a fine veteran mulberry tree. My friends and I spent many summer evenings sitting under that tree, enjoying a drink. It was a lovely place, although at times I was slightly irked by being woken up at seven in the morning by the guitar-playing evangelical Christians who had possession of the remaining portion of the building.
One of the people living in the house was called Simon. He was an intense young man who lived in the evangelical wing of the house. He had travelled far and wide and had spent some time in Africa working on an experimental agricultural research station. He’d brought some seed back from his time there, and he shared some of the seed with me. One of the plants that I grew from his present was white leadtree or jumbay (Leucaena leucocephala). In the 1970s and early 1980s, this Mexican plant was considered a miracle tree that would help reduce rural poverty in arid tropical regions of the world. As a consequence it was introduced to new regions worldwide. It is drought resistant, produces firewood and is excellent fodder for animals. Since then, its reputation has descended from these exalted heights and it is now considered one of the more serious invasive non-native trees globally. It is also remarkably hardy. One of my plants has survived in a sheltered corner outdoors in central London for the last decade, and it has successfully produced a second generation.
My jumbay plant reminds me of my times in Norfolk and of Simon. It also reminds me of a terrible turn of events. A few months after I arrived in London, he moved down as well. At the time, squatting was legal and I ended up in a large community of squats in Hackney. About two hundred of us lived on two streets near London Fields. Simon chose to live in a house that was barely standing. Being remarkably talented, he rebuilt the house himself. Without his efforts, the house would no doubt have been condemned and fallen down years ago. Now, it overlooks London Fields and the hordes of sunbathing new urbanites of Hackney.
I always found Simon a little too intense and charged for my liking, and I tended to keep contact with him to a minimum. I would occasionally visit him for a chat and a cup of tea and obligingly admire his latest piece of renovation. One day, as I was walking to the park on my way into Soho, Simon invited me in. He led me into the basement of the house and started extolling his latest building achievements. He invited me to sit down in the sole chair in the room. As I did so, he became particularly animated about the concrete flooring he’d just completed. Simon really wanted me to approve of the wonderful finish and the quality of the work. I mumbled some appreciative sentences and made my escape. A few months later, Simon moved out of the country and I never saw him again.
I did hear about him, though. A couple of years later, I learnt that Simon had just been charged with murder or manslaughter. In the intervening time, he’d travelled around the world once more, but by degrees his conscience weighed upon him and he’d returned to this country. He walked into a police station and confessed to killing a man. While he had been renovating the house, he had befriended a younger man who was homeless, and he invited him to share the house. For some unknown reason, one evening Simon killed the other man with either an axe or a heavy spade. He then buried the man in the basement and concreted the floor over. The very floor he’d been so keen for me to approve of. I’d been standing on top of his victim. To this day, I don’t know the details of the police investigation, but as Simon made a full confession, they are unlikely to have needed to use clues from the natural world to establish when he died. The awful postscript to this story is that the identity of the young man he killed is unknown. Somewhere, someone is wondering what happened to him.
One plant that always reminds me of Hackney and the almost forgotten murder of the unknown young man, is buddleia. Its omnipresence in urban and suburban Britain leads many to believe that it is a native wild plant. It’s not: the first time it was recorded in the wild here was in the 1920s. Since then it has gone on to occupy thousands of hectares of land. In the south-east it is certainly far more abundant than Japanese knotweed and probably causes far more environmental damage. I first started to notice the abundance of buddleia after I became a student at Kew Gardens. My train commute from Hackney to Kew gave me the opportunity to watch this plant colonise London’s railways and wastelands (botanically speaking, they are anything but ‘waste’; they are floral havens, full of fascinating native and non-native plants). My time at Kew was a mixed experience. I learned a huge amount and I encountered fantastic people and amazing plants. But, like a lot of others, growing up gay in the 1980s had left its scars. Being told by the national media and public opinion, almost daily, that ‘your kind’ are all evil paedophiles and that you’ll rot in hell after dying of AIDS is no joke. Quietly, I unravelled. I ran away from my life and hid. Staff at Kew tried to get me to return but I could not bear the thought. I finally realised that working in horticulture wasn’t for me. I then spent several years misbehaving and working in bars. Later on, I worked in a further education college as a Personnel Officer, in the days before the profession mutated into Human Resources.
During this time, I was quite disconnected from the world of plants. Except for the ones in my garden and on the windowsill, including a cactus I’d had since I was seven; I still have it over 40 years later. Growing up in the country, I was used to fields of flowers (sadly now largely gone), and the idea that the wild plants in the urban environment could be truly interesting eluded me. I
later came to appreciate the ‘weeds’ of our cities and this in turn has helped me look on familiar plants, such as the bramble, in a new light.
Brambles and Buddleja vie for space in our urban and suburban landscapes. They often share that space with the homeless. The steady escalation in numbers of the homeless on our streets should be cause for national shame. Not only is each one a personal tragedy but the burden for their care is being thrust upon the police and other emergency services. Each year as we move deeper into winter, the number of people dying outside in our towns and cities climbs upwards. Most of those people are found within hours. But on occasion, those who sought safety and shelter in the urban wastelands and woods are left alone for weeks, months or even years. Railway sidings and embankments are particularly favoured spots.
Murder Most Florid Page 5