THIS is the time of year to enjoy wildflowers and blossoms at their succulent best.

We just enjoy the sights and the scents, but in the old days folk relied on plants. This week I searched out some of the secrets surrounding hawthorn, wild garlic, lady's smock and marestail. Each once had an important use which these days have been forgotten.

The white blossom of hawthorn not only smells sweet, especially when washed clean after a shower of rain, but at one time was brewed into a white wine.

In the autumn the red hawthorn berries were brewed up into a wine which was like a cross between a rose and a champagne. It is very fizzy and I have often brewed this, but you should not drive even if you have only taken a sip. It is pretty lethal stuff!

Wild garlic is also known as ramsons and stinking onions. The Anglo-Saxon name for the plant was Hramsa and as the plant grows very well in valley bottoms, it has led to place names such as Ramsey or Ramsay. Our East Lancashire town of Ramsbottom was once called Hramabottom!

The leaves and the underground stems all smell of garlic and the monks once used the plant in cooking. If you like the smell of garlic, but do not want to taint your breath, I have a solution for you. Collect some leaves and place them on a warm plate and then serve the meal. It smells beautiful - very appetising.

The flowers of wild garlic are white and star shaped and when they grow in huge numbers the white blossoms really do look a treat.

Lady's smock also has a number of alternative names including cuckoo flower and scurvy plant.

The plant belongs to a family called Cruciferae which indicates that the four petals are arranged in the form of a cross. The name lady's smock takes us back to the days of medieval England when the pale lilac flowers looked like the smocks which the ladies once wore. The name cuckoo flower relates to the fact that the flowers bloom at the same time that cuckoos start to make their presence felt.

I love the old rhyme which tells us: "The cuckoo comes in April Sings its song in May Then in June it changes its tune And then it flies away."

Why scurvy flower? Lady's smock contains a lot of vitamin C which is known to cure the once deadly disease of scurvy which affects the skin and other soft tissues of the body.

Marestail has no medical properties, but was nevertheless a very useful plant. The leaves are full of silicon (sand) and are therefore almost as rough as sand paper.

These days to clean our pans we go to the supermarket and buy some Brillo pads or other so-called "pan scrubbers."

Folk in the old days did not waste their brass, but strolled to their local damp area and collected mare's tail. This was their ideal pan scrubber