Scots lovage is a plant of the northern coasts in the British Isles, one of a select group of native plants including the oyster plant, Mertensia maritima (see Plant of the Week June 7th 2021) and the Scottish primrose, Primula scotica, that are limited not by low summer temperatures like most southern denizens of our flora but by relatively warm conditions during the months of winter and spring.
How does that work? Scots lovage is a specialist arctic plant, adapted to survival along the arctic coasts of northern Europe and eastern North America. It has respiration rates that are higher at low temperatures than those of more southerly plants, enabling it to start into growth early in the arctic when temperatures are too low for most temperate species. They therefore burn off their carbohydrate reserves faster than they can replenish them by photosynthesis in the long months of short daylengths and low light intensities of the English winter.
Crawford (2008) remarked that in this sense, ‘adaptation is the first step en route to extinction’. In other words, the cost of improved physiological performance in one area can be reduced performance and competitiveness in another.
Description
Ligusticum scoticum L., Scots lovage, is a perennial flowering plant in the carrot and celery family Apiaceae, (formerly the Umbelliferae, from Latin umbella, a parasol or sunshade).
Scots lovage was first recorded in Britain by Robert Sibbald in 1684, and was described in 1753 by Linnaeus in his Species Plantarum as Ligusticum scothicum. This is therefore strictly the correct orthographic variant, used by Kew’s Plants of the World Online, in America and elsewhere in Europe, but British floras generally prefer scoticum.
Specimens of Ligusticum scoticum from Brodgar, Orkney (left) and Tyninghame, East Lothian, showing magenta/purple pigmentation of the stems. The leaves are ternate or twice-ternate, and have clasping bases. © Chris Jeffree
Scots lovage is a short, perennial herb that grows to about 60cm, rarely more, often less, especially in exposed locations. It has a short (20-40cm) starchy taproot about 2-3cm wide at the top, not unlike a small parsnip. The entire plant is glabrous (no hairs) and non-glaucous (not waxy). The mature stems are hollow, stiff, round, but its upper stems can be strongly ridged. The petioles and peduncles are also ridged and generally pigmented magenta or purple, not in the spotty way of hemlock and giant hogweed but much more uniformly. The petioles and even the major veins of the leaves are also often pigmented.
Left: The lower leaves are twice-ternate and have long petioles with clasping bases. Upper leaves are ternate and more or less sessile. Right: Almost all parts of the plant are smooth, hairless, glabrous and glossy, without visible wax. Small areas of papillose epidermis at some of the leaf joints are the nearest thing to trichomes © Chris Jeffree
The lower leaves are twice-ternate or 2-trefoil, with coarsely and sharply-toothed margins. Their outline is not unlike that of Aegopodium podagraria leaves, but the leaflets are much more fleshy, leathery, bright green and glossy, and Aegopodium lacks the magenta / purple pigmentation and its lower pinnae are not so reliably ternate. There is in fact a published record (von Numers et al. 2009) of a voucher specimen in Helsinki having been collected in southern Finland in the 1940s assigned by the collector to Aegopodium podagraria, but later re-examined and determined to be Ligusticum scoticum some thirty years later, when it was realised that the habitat was unusual for Aegopodium.
The petioles of the lower leaves are long, channelled on the adaxial side and ribbed on other surfaces, and their bases are inflated, sheathing the stem. The petioles and the sheathing base may be green, but are most often coloured all over or striped deep magenta/purple with anthocyanins. The upper leaves are sessile, and 1-ternate.
The flowers are small, about 3mm across, actinomorphic (radially symmetrical), greenish white, with mauve anthers. The points of their five petals are curled inwards, giving the false impression of a notched outline. The inflorescences are flat, compound umbels about 60mm in diameter, with green bracts or bracteoles, shorter than the pedicels, beneath umbels at all levels.
Like many other Umbellifers, lovage is insect-pollinated, by flies and such species as soldier beetles, which seem to love Umbellifers generally, but there seems to be little specificity for any particular pollinator. (Palin (1988)
The fruits are strongly ridged, somewhat flattened ovals, twice as long as wide, and with a similar ratio of cross-section. Their ridges are winged. Flowering is about July-August, the seeds ripening by October-November.
© Chris Jeffree
The fruits of Scots lovage are flattened ellipses with prominent winged ridges. Note the bracts and bracteoles beneath the umbels at both levels © Chris Jeffree
Lovage has no capacity to reproduce vegetatively, so all progeny are from seed. The seeds float, so can be distributed along rocky shores by wave action during winter high tides.
Global Distribution
Our subspecies, L. scoticum ssp. scoticum, is one of Hultén’s amphiatlantic plants, present in suitable habitats in North Western Europe and also in eastern North America. Lovage shows little variability within its amphi-atlantic area, and there are no known hybrids, but there is an accepted subspecies, named after Hultén, L. scoticum ssp. Hultenii (Fern.) Calder & Taylor, which occurs along northern Pacific coasts. The differences are subtle: L. scoticum ssp. Hultenii has slightly larger fruit, a more domed rather than flat shape of the inflorescence, a rounder shape of the leaf teeth and looping of minor veins at the leaf margin (Hultén (1958); Palin (1988)).
Distribution in Britain and Ireland
Lovage has its southern limits within northern Britain and is a rarity south of the Scottish border, with only a few records along the north Northumberland coast as far south as Lindisfarne and a single location in Cumbria. It occurs all around the coasts of the Scottish mainland and islands, including Orkney and Shetland. It is present along the northern coastline of Northern Ireland but in the last 100 years appears to have retreated from former sites in eastern NI as far south as Belfast. Similar retreat is evident in southwest Scotland, and the last record of it on the Isle of Man was more than 50 years ago.
Further south, lovage may be replaced in very similar habitats by rock samphire, Crithmum maritimum, a Mediterranean species with a southern limit In Tenerife and North Africa which until recently reached its northern limit in south-western Scotland. Isolated recent records near Dunbar and Arbroath, may indicate that it is advancing slowly north into former Ligusticum haunts, driven by the milder winters resulting from climate warming, as Ligusticum retreats.
Habitat
Cliffs and rocky shores are lovage’s preferred habitat, usually safely above any wave action but close enough to be splashed and sprayed regularly with sea water. Its growth is even reportedly enhanced by 10% seawater, although sodium chloride alone appears to be insufficient to stimulate growth.(Okusanya 1979)
Photograph © Chris Jeffree
Photographs © Chris Jeffree
Lovage often grows with other halophytes (salt tolerant) species of rocky shores, such as Armeria maritima, Atriplex species, Plantago maritima, Tripleurospermum maritimum, Rhodiola (syn. Sedum) rosea and Silene uniflora, and on the edge of coastal grassland among Festuca rubra and Sonchus arvensis. It is not often present among foredune and dune grasses, which are subject to constant wind erosion and accretion, but Palin (1988) reported that it performed very well in sand in cultivation, suggesting that it simply prefers more stable substrates. It is readily devoured by sheep and is intolerant of their grazing and trampling, which may confine it to cliffs and rocky terrain where it is least likely to be subject to grazing or human foot traffic.
Lovage is frost tolerant to at least -10 C (Palin 1988), and shuns the warmth of the sun, both in summer and winter, preferring north-facing situations, particularly close to its southern limit. In Northumberland, for example, the known locations of the plant are all north-facing.
Uses
In the past, Scots lovage may have been a valuable source of vitamin C for hunter-gatherers, sailors and others living near the coast. It has long been used as an edible herb by coastal inhabitants of Scotland, parts of Scandinavia and the Baltic. All parts of the plant are edible, with a flavour that combines notes of parsnip, parsley, celery and dill. It makes an excellent flavouring for a freshly caught mackerel, stuffed with leaves and steamed or roasted wrapped in foil. These days, the dish could even be cooked in your dishwasher. However, instead of taking this increasingly uncommon plant from the wild, I recommend you either grow your own (seeds and whole plants are commercially available in the UK) or instead use its much larger relative, the 2-3m tall garden lovage Levisticum officinale, which has a very similar flavour. Whether you can tell the difference may depend on how many gin and tonics you have had before dinner.
REFERENCES
Calder & Roy L.Taylor (1965) Ligusticum scoticum subsp. hultenii (Fernald). Canadian Journal of Botany 43: 1396
Crawford, RMM (2008) Plants at the margin. Ecological limits and climate change. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62309-4
Crawford RMM and Palin, MA (1981) Root respiration and temperature limits to the north-south distribution of four perennial maritime species, Flora 171, 338-354
Grace, John (2021) Plant of the Week – June 7th 2021- Oyster Plant, Mertensia maritima https://botsocscot.wordpress.com/2021/06/06/plant-of-the-week-june-7th-2021-oyster-plant-mertensia-maritima/
Hultén, Eric (1958) The amphi-Atlantic plants and their phytogeographical connections. Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Handlingar, 7 (1). Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm.
Linnaeus, C. (1753) Species Plantarum 1, 250
Lunan, Murray (1937) Anatomical Investigations on Ligusticum scoticum. Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh 32 (2), 353-361
Palin, MA (1988) Ligusticum scoticum L. (Holoscias scoticum (L.) Fr.) Biological Flora of the British Isles No. 164 Journal of Ecology 76, 889-902.
Royal Horticultural Society https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/10099/i-ligusticum-scoticum-i/details
Stroh PA, Humphrey TA, Burkmar RJ, Pescott OL, Roy DB & Walker KJ, eds. (2023) BSBI Online Plant Atlas 2020 Ligusticum scoticum L. https://plantatlas2020.org/atlas/2cd4p9h.
von Numers M., Hæggström, C., Hæggström, E., Franzén, H., Franzén, J. & Carlsson, R. (2009) Scots lovage, Ligusticum scoticum, is spreading in the Åland Islands, SW Finland. Memoranda Soc. Fauna Flora Fennica 85:1–5.
Okusanya, 0. T. (1979). An experimental investigation into the ecology of some maritime cliff species. III. Effect of sea water on growth. Journal of Ecology, 67, 579-590.
©Chris Jeffree, July 2023
Botany in Scotland 