A side channel of the river Nene flows under the old derelict mill. In the midday sun the twirling house martins forage beakfuls of wet mud. The out channel is fringed with a swath of reed sweet-grass and sweet flag, and scattered, waist-high, lank, yellow-crowned spikes of great yellow-cress. Through the forest of blades banded demoiselles flitter, catching the sun. The females of these big damselflies are metallic green; the males a deep, rich iridescent blue, and in flight they flash shining blue thumbprints on their four wings.
On a patch of sandy ground stands a solitary henbane. This most grotesquely beautiful of plants is topped with a ring of big floppy-lobed flowers. The petals are a jaundiced yellow, netted with purple veins that coalesce in the violet throat where a flaccid bunch of anthers and a longer style rest. The leaves are pastel green with a covering of long sticky hairs. Henbane is credited as smelling of rotting flesh, but to me this one reeks of foul human body odour. Some claim to like the smell of henbane; the mind boggles, quite literally – sniffing it too deeply can cause dizziness. Not as deadly as some of the "banes" or related nightshades, this is still not a plant to tinker with: it contains a potent cocktail of alkaloids that disrupt the senses.
It has been used in traditional medicine to remove toothache, ease coughs, calm the nerves or instil sleep, or even as an anaesthetic. Side-effects or overdoses can result in vomiting and visions. Smelly flowers with a rotten stink are a signature of a fly-pollinated plant. I don't see anything visit the flowers, but there are several dead flies, beetles and caddisflies caught in the sticky tangle of leaf hairs. Could it be that this plant has slight carnivorous tendencies, fertilising its soil with the nitrate-rich bodies of passing bugs?
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