In time honoured tradition here is this year's batch of HXB.
The weather is roasting just now and the best bit is that the night time temperature is holding up well above freezing. I have been pricking out flowers and sowing beans and squashes. If we were to get another frost forecast I would have to take seed trays indoors. Some space has been freed up in the shed now that the potato planting has started. That is another Good Friday tradition (planting potatoes).
Here's a plant I just can't get in focus. The macro setting on my camera just hates the arrangement of the flower petals (which refuse to conform to the botanical ideal of a flower) and instead latches on to the leaves. The flowers are cylindrical, vary in colour from one end to the other and are reputed to be pollinated solely by the increasingly rare turtle dove (although they are also self fertilising as a backstop). It is a member of the poppy family Papaveraceae.
They caught my eye on my wanderings, and I adopted my usual practice of snapping them on camera for an identity parade back in the comfort of my own home. Only every shot was out of focus. I was fuming!
So why is this called fumitory (Latin: smoke, earth)?
Here are some of the common explantions:
1. As Pliny famously noted: if you rubbed it on your eyes it had a similar effect to being engulfed in smoke.
2. As you approach it has the ephemeral appearance of a puff of smoke.
3. The leaves are wispy like smoke.
4. If you ease the root out of the ground a smell of smoke is released.
5. It reproduces through the interaction of smoke and earth, not by seed. (Really?)
6. (Tied in with 5) This plant is held to be one of the first to appear after the ground has been scorched by fire.
Answer: You decide, but I don't think 5 is on.
There is a yellow version too grown in gardens as yellow corydalis. I happened across some at Inveresk Lodge Garden just the other day.
After my recent experience with its wild sibling this was as near as I dared get to the flower.
Taking a tour of National Trust property Inveresk Lodge Garden yesterday this amazing eruption couldn't fail to catch the eye:
It is similar in structure to Cuckoo Pint (Arum maculatum) only the spadix (bit that looks like a sweetcorn cob) and spathe (lantern like leaf) are both bright yellow. And it is bigger. This is not from another planet but it is from another continent: North America. It goes by the prosaic names of "Western Skunk Cabbage" or "Swamp Lantern" amongst others. Its Latin name is Lysichiton americanus.
It is thriving in a boggy border downhill from a spring in the Garden. The skunk bit comes from the smell it emits to attract pollinators (beetles particularly). The cabbage bit arises from the root ball like a cabbage head that throws up the flower from about a yard underground. This was known to the native Americans as a valuable food source during a harsh time of year. The appearance of the flower heralds spring. All in all a stunning weird and exotic plant.
p.s. Went to Lauriston Castle yesterday and guess what? They have a big collection of Western Skunk Cabbages:
and alongside them the white Eastern Skunk Cabbage:
The verge beside the canal towpath is ideally suited to Coltsfoot. It emerges en mass at this time of year with its dandelion like flowers which open and close with the light.
The flowering shoots appear first:
Coltsfoot - Tussilago farfara L
Followed by the waxy, vaguely maple leaf shaped, leaves as seen in the centre of the following picture:
These persist when the flower stalks waste away. Reproduction is both by wind dispersal of seed and vegetatively through rhizomes that reach a metre down into the soil. There are between 1500 and 3,500 seeds per plant. With these characteristics you will not be surprised that it is a very persistent visitor - once it has a hoofhold. Like rosebaywillowherb it will travel the full length of the canal (or motorway).
What's it good for: It has a reputation as a medicinal herb, especially recommended as a cough remedy. Mineral content is very high in sodium, magnesium and calcium.
After my protracted excursion into the wild you might think I have given up raising vegetables. Fear not. I did get carried away with the warm patch at the end of February and sowed lots of things. Then of course the weather turned cold. Today for instance the thermometer has peaked at a balmy 7C as the sun has made an appearance. The night time temperatures have hovered perilously close to freezing. I have the paraffin heater at the ready because the greenhouse is bursting at the seams. Under the circumstances the production line from propagator to indoor lights to greenhouse to outdoors, has well and truly come to a grinding, if temporary, halt. I've taken a snapshot of the situation with the benefit of the aforementioned sunny interval:
Propagator
Indoor lights
Greenhouse Right
Greenhouse Left
Greenhouse centre
Hardy outdoors
Shed
I do have two rows of early potatoes already planted at the plot
But the rest are waiting for the Good Friday day of planting.
It has been a nervous week of watching the temperature forecasts and I am so looking forward to a change in the wind direction and a jump in the temperature so that I can get the production line going again. After all it is April and according to the seed packets it is the ideal time to sow just about ANYTHING you may care to grow.
As I write the sun has disappeared and a shower of hailstones is pelting down.
After my recent post on Purple Dead nettles and Ground Ivy I set myself the task of finding the elusive Hensbit. Yes, it is rare for a weed to be elusive, especially one of those "easily confused" weeds, but Hensbit has proved just that. It occurred to me that maybe it flowers at a different time of year, but even so the leaf formation (wrapped around the stem) is the key distinguishing feature and that should be visible before flowering. I was also armed with the information that Hensbit is most commonly found on tilled soil - and our allotment site has 26 mostly tilled plots. So off I set with camera in hand.
First discovery: There are two similar deadnettles. Aside from the Red there is the "cut leaved" which at first sight looks like Hensbit. But it can't be Hensbit because the leaves are heartshaped and stalked (petiolate). This has been considered as a subspecies of the Red as you can tell from the Latin name: Laminium hybridum, but the two plants differ in several ways aside from the purple leaf coloration.
Green serrated leaf margins, slender stalks It's Serrated Leaf Deadnettle.
Purple leaved "Red" Deadnettle
So it turned out that on my plot there were two similar but distinct deadnettles but no Hensbit. I extended my search to the other 25 plots, and just when I was about to admit defeat I found this:
Leaves grouped in stalkless whorls around the stem at well spaced intervals!
Top view of Hensbit
and here is alongside a neighbouring Red Deadnettle
It is only on one plot out of 26 (and the other two plants are spread from one end of the site to the other). I call that rare!
3/4/19 post script.
It now seems that there are three deadnettles on our allotment site, or four if you include hensbit as a deadnettle . The Northen Deadnettle (Lamium confertum) shares many features with Cut Leaf Deadnettle (Lamium hybridum). See Northern Deadnettle ID for a full specification. This seems to be a perfect match for some of the deadnettles that are clearly not Red Deadnettle.
