IN my last column of April 2014, I wrote about the downy drift of cuckooflower which had appeared on a damp grass verge at the foot of Blackwell bank south of Darlington. I received a lovely response from people who were also fascinated by this unusual flower.

Then a week later, the lawnmowers moved in, and scythed the lot down.

Last weekend, I noticed the downy drift of light lilac cuckooflower was again standing out beside the A66, and that it would be worth a footnote in my last column of April 2015. But yesterday morning when I went to check, there was a tribe of fluorescent-jacketed Highways Agency men armed with strimmers and an industrial mower cutting down the cuckooflower.

Even though my car filled with the beautiful smell of freshly mown grass, it was a sad sight.

This year, though, I have become intrigued by another roadside plant that I noticed a couple of weeks ago flowering on the central reservation of the A1 all the way up to Newcastle. It is a grubby white – not brilliant like a snowdrop nor fresh like a daisy – but it has colonised the bare patches at the road’s edge.

These bare patches are known as the “saltburn strip”, because the de-icing salt applied liberally to winter tarmac splashes onto the verge, creating a hostile environment in which not even the dandelion can survive.

But Danish Scurvy Grass can. It is a northern European coastal plant that until the mid 1980s was quite happy living in salty environments by the sea. But then it twigged on to the salty possibilities of our dual carriageways, and it spread from coast to country along the bare roadside ribbon, the saltburn strip.

As its seeds have been blown along by the rushing vehicles, it has become the fastest spreading plant in Britain in the last 50 years.

Just as Danish Scurvy Grass is not Danish, it is not grass either. It is, in fact, a member of the cabbage family.

But it does cure scurvy, the scourge of sailors which was caused by their limited access to fresh food when at sea. The leaves of scurvy grass have a high Vitamin C content, and Captain James Cook is said to have noticed the restorative effect it had on sailors who ate the Common Scurvy Grass growing on Whitby’s cliffs.

Whenever near land on his voyages, he had large quantities of green vegetables and local scurvy grass delivered to his ship – in New Zealand, which he was the first person to map in 1769-70, there are 11 types of Cook’s Scurvy Grass that he encouraged his crews to eat.

Since I spotted it on the A1, I’ve noticed it beside practically every main road across County Durham – although not yet in Teesdale. There’s even a fine clump of it growing out of roadside paving beside the A66 roundabout at the top of Blackwell bank, unless the fluorescent chaps with the strimmers have cut down the scurvy grass in its prime as well.