When you walk round the back of the Law and go through the old quarry you need to keep your eyes peeled for this innocuous looking plant. For it's big fleshy leaves served multiple purposes in days gone by.
The plant in question is Tree Mallow and it is an invasive plant that first made its way here during the medieval period.
Scottish soldiers serving as part of the Bass Rock castle's permanent garrison could not easily get back to the mainland (whether it was storms or pesky English invaders that were the problem tended to vary over time). This meant that injuries would go untended and infection set in. A solution had to be found.
Step up Tree Mallow! For when you crush the leaves into a poultice and apply it to injuries the resulting green mush will keep the bugs at bay preventing infections. You also had a lovely big leaf that could double as medieval toilet paper. Given the lack of alternatives to hand on the Bass Rock this was a great addition to the flora and fauna on the Rock (I for one would definitely not recommend trying to use a gannet and rocks are just uncomfy - although Vikings did use a rounded rock but I digress). This led to the plant being cropped regularly over the time the castle was operational and when the last soldiers left at the end of the 17th century they left the Tree Mallow behind.
As you can imagine nature always finds a way to spread and over time the plant made its way to the mainland, our other islands. This wasn't due to human intention but rather the fact that it's flower, whilst a beautiful pinky violet colour, has thousands of wind blown seeds. The plant started popping up all over the place, hence its appearance en mass in the Law Quarry, where I spotted it today.
Lighthouse keepers on the Bass and Fidra, suffering from the same difficulties of accessing the mainland, decided to make use of this handy plant for the same purposes as the medieval soldiers. And so it went on until the lighthouse keepers left at the end of the Twentieth Century, when the Tree Mallow went a bit mad.
With no human bums to wipe or wounds to disinfect, the plant became a pest as it proliferated across the places seabirds - specifically puffins - wanted to use for nesting. Craigleith's puffin population crashed as the Mallow formed a dense jungle until the Seabird Centre's volunteers formed SOS Puffin to cut the Mallow back thus letting the puffins bounce back.
So next time you see a plant hanging out of a cliff with big fleshy leaves spare a thought for the soldiers and lighthouse keepers lives that were made that bit easier by its presence. But (excuse the pun) also spare a thought for the the many SOS Puffin volunteers who slog their way across the islands here cutting back the Mallow.
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