Yesterday I was up on the old racecourse at Groenendaal. There is a substantial thicket of blackthorn there, but more on that later this week.
Beside the enclosure where the Highlanders graze, on the Ring side, a colony of pink, unabashed spikes is pushing through the turf. This is Butterbur, 𝑃𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑦𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑑𝑢𝑠. It spreads vigorously by rhizomes and can carpet ground with determination.
The flowers appear before any leaves, rising straight from the soil in early spring. In a few weeks enormous, almost prehistoric, dinner-plate leaves will follow, transforming the patch into something lush and primeval.
Butterbur is normally a plant of damp ground and the plateau upon which the racecourse stood hardly seems prime site. However, the straight mile joins the oval in roughly this spot, which is where the finishing furlongs (a furlong is a measure of length equal to 1/8 of a mile or about 200m) started. It was a racecourse with an uphill finish, so the butterbur is in a local depression. I wonder if the 'going' was known to be more on the heavy/soft side at this spot. If so, we have a possible explanation for the plant's presence.
So just in case anyone who reads my posts used to go racing there, is what I have written plausible?