On the corner of a bed I planted Adenophora “Amethyst” over 10 years ago. I remember that creeping bellflower / ugressklokke (Campanula rapunculoides) was growing in the grass next to the bed and I tried to stop it invading… I thought I had succeeded…
In the last few years the “Adenophora” has started invading this bed aggressively and I decided to remove the plant….. It turned out not to be an Adenophora at all and was creeping bellflower (both in the same family). So, had the creeping bellflower in the grass gradually taken over without me noticing or was my Adenophora (seed propagated from a seed trade) actually always been creeping bellfower. The latter I think. It seems that it is often an imposter for Adenophora:http://tinyurl.com/j3kzq9k
I’ve dug it out, the roots were a decent size although a bit fibrous, so I cooked them and added them to tonight’s salad :)
I think two of my favourite slugs are in love, spotted on the path up to the house last night….the more the merrier I say! There’s so much I haven’t seen out there in the garden and the leopard slug mating ritual is probably the most spectacular…particularly when the penis emerges from the side of the head ;)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvw66h0nbQ
My favourite Himalayan onion is now coming into flower in the garden. This is what I call Sherpa onion (Allium wallichii), it’s a beauty and the bees and hoverflies also love it! The other two pictures are of Norrland onion which has been in bloom for a while now. Both are described in my book Around the World in 80 plants!
A bit of a glut of fruit in my garden. I’ve therefore been drying raspberries and currants :) At the bottom are the dried fruit, also bilberries and saskatoons!
I haven’t shown many pictures from my fantastic tour of New Zealand in March / April 2015. I was transplanting some plants of New Zealand Celery at the weekend, the seed of which I collected on rocks at Porpoise Bay in Southland! A good excuse then to show a few pictures from Porpoise Bay :)
I planted a couple of new edible woodland garden beds with some 40 new plants on the north side of my house at the weekend!! The last picture is my planting map for one of the new beds ;)
I was out in the woods looking for fungi yesterday….the last thing I’d expected to find in the dark coniferous woods was strawberries and cream ;) No, I didn’t eat them, leaving them for the elves…
Called strawberries and cream, the bleeding tooth fungus, the red-juice tooth, or Devil’s tooth, Hydnellum peckii (Norwegian: skarp rustbrunpigg)is a widespread species in North America, Europe and Asia. It is related to the hedgehog fungus. Sadly, it doesn’t taste much like strawberries and cream, tasting very sharp…