I am out walking with a group of friends; it is something I organise every month. Then someone announces, “We haven’t had one of your botanical facts yet, Ian ”.

This is not going to be easy; it is early November, and we are standing in an uninspiring rough pasture dotted with a few sheep. I glance around for inspiration and notice a large area of Soft Rush (Juncus effusus) in the corner. Every walker will be familiar with rushes.

This unassuming, and clump-forming plant is frequently overlooked and often avoided, growing as it does in wet places.

This plant, which has the look of bright shiny-green knitting needles, doesn’t look like a candidate for the most botanically exciting species, but every plant has an interesting story to tell.

Everyone in the group looks on expectedly as I tell them it was highly valued by our ancestors, and if you take a close look at its tiny flower in the summer months through a hand lens, it is truly beautiful.

The word ‘rush’ comes from the old English ‘rezg’ meaning to plait, braid or weave and hints at the plant’s usefulness over many centuries. The stiff cylindrical stems have been used for all kinds of basketwork, woven into chair seats and used to cover stone and mud floors of houses, providing basic insulation from the cold.

Perhaps the best-known use of the Soft Rush is as a rudimentary form of candle, known as a rushlight. The stems contain a spongy pith which, when soaked in animal fat, can be burned to produce a gentle light. Being very cheap to produce, the rushlight was often the only form of artificial lighting available to the poorer households.

Rushes were collected in late summer, then soaked in water to soften the bond between pith and skin. The skin was then peeled away to leave the pith, a thin strip of skin being left to provide some rigidity. The strips were then hung up and dried.

Fat dripping from cooking meat was collected, and the rush was then drawn through the fat, before being left to harden, and was then ready for use.

The rush would be clamped at 45 degrees in a rushlight holder, to provide the best compromise between light and burn time.

If you wanted more light, you could light both ends, but that was thought wasteful and was the origin of the phrase ‘burning the candle at both ends’.

www.wharfedale-nats.org.uk