An Artisanal Chestnut Chair

In the Haute-Vienne and neighbouring 'counties' of the south-west of France like Limousin a rustic tradition is clinging on. Developing as a commercial product in the 19th century, by the mid-20th century there were 20 artisanal workshops making large quantities of chestnut furniture that is unique to the area.  All the workshops had to close during the Covid pandemic, and almost all never reopened. Nowadays, after a low point of a single workshop making this furniture, now there are a handful of people who are working to prevent the skills dying. The best known workshop operating today is that of Pascal and Martine Raffier, at la Chapelle Montbrandeix and they are doing their best to train younger artisans.

At the beginning of the 20th century there were 5000 people employed in Haute-Vienne making chestnut furniture. These artisans, called feuillardiers, would select and mark suitable chestnut trees for the foresters to coppice. These managed trees gave a range of products, including large numbers of pickets, much valued by winemakers for the vineyards of the South-West. As well, there was a range of simple, durable furniture made, with a great diversity of forms.

 

A chestnut armchair in the Chateau de Bridoré.

 

The chestnut armchair has become one of the iconic products of the region. Initially it was small family workshops making this furniture, and the industry thrived in the post-War period up until the 1970s. Multiple generations were involved in the manufacture, and some workshops were able to employ a handul of staff. The furniture was sold in fashionable Paris stores such as Galeries Lafayette. Older inhabitants of the area can remember wagonloads being sent to Paris on the train from Chalus. Luxury hotels on tropical islands ordered dozens at a time.

But plastic came to dominate the outdoor furniture market, and it could be built more cheaply in developing countries. The focus of the workshops in the Haute-Vienne switched to the repair of chestnut furniture. Pieces needing their seats or table tops rewoven would be brought to the artisans by devotees of the style who had owned the chairs for decades.

To make a chair the artisan selects lengths of chestnut that are dried in an oven. The artisan first removes the knots with a pocket knife. Thin strips called clisses (splints) are cut on a special old machine to form the 'canes' which will be hand woven to form the seat and back. After the woven panels are done they are framed in rattan and the splints carefully cut for a neat finish. It takes two hours over two days to make a finished chair, during which time the wood is prepared, the main structure is put together, the woven panels are added and everything is finished off.

The furniture was appreciated because of its light weight combined with durability. It was resistant to insect damage and the pieces have a sort of quirky creativity which consumers enjoyed for their holiday houses. Le Corbusier is said to have been very fond of the armchairs, and these days they are marketed using his name for the model.

Faking Sudden Death

 

 European Peacock butterfly Inachis io (Fr. Paon du jour).

Male insects are remarkably persistent. They have to be if they want to reproduce and mate with a passing female. It is not the males who decide if mating will take place, it is the females. One of the techniques that female butterflies and dragonflies of some species will use if they don't want to mate is to drop out of the air or off their perch as if they have suddenly died when approached too persistently by a male. The bemused male will hover above for a while, but the female is capable of maintaining the charade for quite some time, so eventually the male pushes off. The female makes a 'miraculous' recovery and flies off in the opposite direction. What she's done is not without its own risk though. She could find herself predated or injured whilst on the ground. But mostly it's an effective way to get rid of a sex pest. Twenty years ago a study of butterflies playing possum showed that in 27 out of 31 instances the female succeeded in avoiding unwanted male attention in this way.

 

 Female Brimstone butterfly Gonepteryx rhamni (Fr. Citron).

If you are in the Touraine Loire Valley, watch out for the behaviour in butterflies such as the Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni (Fr. Citron), European Peacock Inachis io (Fr. Paon du jour), Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria (Fr. Tircis), or Wall Brown Lasiommata megera (Fr. Mégère). 

 

 Wall Brown butterflies Lasiommata megera (Fr. male Satyre, female Mégère) engaged in courtship behaviour. The female, on the right, has dropped her wings. She's not playing dead in this instance, but offering an invitation to the male.

Female Speckled Wood butterfly Pararge aegeris (Fr. Tircis).

Wild Strawberry Season is Upon Us

There are several wild strawberry species, but only one is worth eating, so it is worth learning how to identify them. They are considered one of the greatest treats you can wild forage, and archaelogical evidence suggests we have been eating them for thousands of years.

 

Barren Strawberry.

Around here there are three species that are frequently confused. They are Barren Strawberry Potentilla sterilis (Fr. Potentille faux fraisier), Mock Strawberry Potentilla indica (Fr. Fraisier d'Inde) and Wild Strawberry Fragaria vesca (Fr. Fraisier des bois).

 

Barren Strawberry.

One has leaves that look just like a wild strawberry plant, and white flowers that greatly resemble the true wild strawberry. Many people will delightedly leave these growing in their garden when they turn up, but then be disappointed because they never have any fruit. That's because they are Barren Strawberries and if you know what to look for there are ways of telling them apart by looking carefully at the tip of the leaves.

 

Mock Strawberry.

Then there is another one, which does have alluring looking red fruit, but when you eat one they taste of nothing. Luckily they aren't toxic, so you won't do yourself any harm if you eat them, but they are disappointing. These are the Mock Strawberries. They are not native, but introduced from Asia and have naturalised.

 

Mock Strawberry.

All these species grow in the same season, and in the same habitats. It is not uncommon to encounter a mixture of species growing intermingled.

 

Wild Strawberries.

 

So here are my top tips for telling them apart:

Wild Strawberries

1. White flowers with rounded petals which overlap.
2. Drooping or hanging conical fruit.
3. Strong sweet floral strawberry flavour.*

Mock Strawberries

1. Yellow flowers with a ruff of green bracts that sits just below the pointed calyxes and extend beyond the flowers.
2. Globular fruit on erect stems.
3. Insipid taste.

Barren Strawberries

1. White flowers with knotched petals that do not overlap.
2. No fruit.
3. Leaves have a central tooth at the tip which is shorter than the ones either side.
   

 

Wild Strawberry.

*I know most people who know Wild Strawberries rave about them and are thrilled to find them, but personally I find them a bit too soapy tasting. 

You should be aware that low growing wild fruit *might* be contaminated with tapeworm eggs (Echinococcus sp) due to the presence of wild and feral canids (foxes, stray dogs, wolves) in the environment. French people of a certain age may give you dire warnings of what will happen if you forage for fruit below knee height. In some families the parasite you are avoiding is liver fluke (Fr. douve de foie), which is transferred in wet environments from sheep. I would have thought all this applies equally to mushrooms, but I've never heard it mentioned in that context... And in the old days, the hideous disease you would be keen to avoid was rabies...

Cornflowers

The Cornflower Cyanus segetum (syn Centaurea cyanus) is named such because it is found wild in cereal crops. In French it is called le Bleuet. Because of centuries of international grain trading the plant, which is native to Europe, can be found in North America and Australia, its seeds having been carried there in grain cargoes. As an arable weed though, since the mid-20th century it has become much rarer and more localised as a wild flower.

The flowers, which are usually deep blue, can also sometimes be white or pink. The leaves are a bit downy and grey-green. Right now in the Touraine Loire Valley if you know where to look for them the flowers are at their peak, and they will be visible until perhaps July. The Creuse valley, with its sandy alluvial soil and open flat farmland suits them perfectly. The plants are resistant to the current generation of herbicides, and difficult to control mechanically (rather the opposite -- they thrive on the disturbance! and their roots are strong) But earlier herbicides really dealt the population and distribution of this species a blow and modern seed cleaning practices destroyed significant numbers of harvested seed thus preventing them re-entering the natural seed bank. The overuse of nitrogen fertilisers has also caused a decline in cornflower population. Thus in some places you are now more likely to encounter them on roadsides rather than in crops, or they may have been eradicated altogether. In time they could still recover though, because the seeds may well be still viable in the soil, and modern crop rotations favour it. In France, although there is concern about the species and some projects to protect it, it is not considered likely that it will go extinct. In the Touraine the species can be abundant, but to the north, west and south-west the picture is not so good.

The name 'bleuet' to signify this flower first appeared in written French in 1380. Today there seems to be confusion between cornflowers and chicory Chicorium intybus, an abundant blue wild flower found on waste ground throughout France. But chicory has much paler flowers and is a perennial, whereas cornflowers are annuals.

Because of their colour the flowers have been much prized for making garlands, either with the actual flowers, or depicting them in ceramic glazes. They seem to be associated with a remarkable number of political movements, some of them rather nasty, some of them absolutely admirable. Here in France they are best known as the symbol of remembrance for veterans, in the same way that poppies are used in Britain and parts of the Commonwealth. Up until the mid-20th century French mothers would receive red, white and blue bouquets of poppies, daisies and cornflowers on Mothers Day (which is this coming Sunday in France). 

The pigment in cornflowers is called protocyanin. It's a type of anthocyanin (a pigment that gives blue, red or purple colours to many plants). Protocyanin expresses as blue in cornflowers but red in roses, for example. The pigment is extracted commercially to colour food products such as yoghurt.

Studies have shown that cornflowers can be useful in taking up lead from contaminated soils, particularly if used in combination with certain fungi or bacteria.

The flowers are edible, although they don't add much in the way of flavour, just the novelty of pretty blue petals scattered on your cheese or ice cream. Traditionally they have been used to make a decoction used as eye drops to treat conjunctivitis, and the science seems to indicate this would indeed have helped.

Cornflowers produce a lot of very sweet nectar so they are very attractive to pollenating bees and flies. The fine seeds they produce are popular with European Gold Finches. They are attractive and easy to grow in your garden, quite dry hardy, and so they are one of the plants I recommend if you are wanting to garden in a wildlife friendly way. Studies have shown that they make an excellent companion plant for brassicas in the garden, because they produce scents attractive to cabbage moth. So plant them amongst your cabbages to lure away cabbage moth. The caterpillars will then be parasitised in greater numbers, and many of the eggs eaten by beetles. Sow the seeds in late spring or early autumn. Deadhead them or pick them for taking indoors to encourage further flowering.

All photos taken by me earlier this week near Chambon in the Creuse Valley.

Notre Dame des Champs

Follow the Roman road from Boussay along the wooded ridge of the Bois aux Prêtres, as I often do, and you will come across a curious grotto hidden in the woods on top of a slope. A sort of stone bower with a nod to the famous site at Lourdes, it is topped with a rather etiolated statue of the Virgin Mary.

Every year in early August pilgrims come to honour her, and a mass is celebrated in the woods by the grotto. Benches and trestles are laid out and a meal served in the clearing in front of the grotto in the evening. 

Last summer I happened to walk up there just after the pilgrimage. The path was lined with home made bunting and the grotto filled with flowers. There was not a scrap of rubbish to be seen.

The statue was erected in August 1906 and I assume the current landowner's family commissioned the entire grotto construction.

Note that the land is privately owned, so technically you need permission to visit the chapel. The site also happens to be one of the best wild orchid sites in the area. I have recorded 14 species for the site.

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug

 Brown Marmorated Stink Bug Halyomorpha halys (Fr. Punaise diabolique) is a shield bug that has arrived in Europe from its native Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China. It's an increasingly serious pest of fruit crops. I suspect it is the reason my rhubarb is often insect damaged. Like all bugs they feed by jabbing their hypodermic like proboscis into their food and sucking. As you can imagine this ruins commercial fruit and offers a potential vector for plant disease.

A Brown Marmorated Stink Bug which blundered into Simon at the doctor's surgery a few days ago.

The bugs are larger than the various native shield bugs, and come in a mottled brown pattern. It can be distinguished from lookalike native species by the two bands of white on each antennae and the pale triangles around the abdomen. Similar looking bugs with three bands of white or yellow bands on their antennae or pale squares around the abdomen are native species and nothing to worry about.

They come to the attention of most people when they attempt to overwinter inside houses. Now that they are in France they've dispersed quite quickly. The adults can fly, and all stages of their life cycle are often unwittingly transported by humans when merchandise is distributed.

A Brown Marmorated Stink Bug found in our house in January.

The French National Agronomy Institute (INRAE) was on the case within a couple of years of their arrival and has identified several species of tiny parasitic wasps which will attack these bugs. The INRAE is working with two Asian species of wasp which parasitise the stink bugs' eggs and act as a biological control.

Members of the public who encounter a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug are encouraged to report it on the INRAE database https://ephytia.inrae.fr/fr/C/20539/Agiir-Signaler-une-punaise-diabolique

A Brown Marmorated Stink Bug found in our house in January.

The first sighting in France was in 2012, but initially observers did not realise what they were looking at and misidentified them as a harmless native lookalike, the Mottled Stink Bug Rhaphigaster nebulosa. They finally arrived in Indre et Loire in 2020 and are now established in the majority of French départements (counties).