Cyclamen hederifolium, Primulaceae

I was never a great fan of Cyclamen until I started buying this little beauty, C.hederifolium, as a winter house plant. It ticks all the boxes: attractive foliage; compact and very floriferous form; long-lasting (some that I bought back in December are still in bloom); sweetly scented (at least the white-flowered varieties are - I can't detect much scent in the darker pink and red varieties); and it's cheap - the nursery where I buy them sells them for £1 each. 

One particularly attractive feature of Cyclamen is the shape of the flower buds, that are twisted like the swirl of a dancer's skirt.

The only tricky thing about growing this little beauty is remembering not to over-water it. The densely packed leaves and flowers succumb to Botrytis at the stem bases if you do.

Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn', Adoxaceae

The darkest days of winter in our garden have been brightened by the scented flowers of Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn', which has been in bloom continuously since late November. The first flowers tend to be damaged by the worst of the winter weather but the recent ones, now it's a little milder, have a more intense colour. The twigs make good cut flowers for a small vase because the flowers are borne on their tips and open to perfection indoors.

V. x bodnantense is a hybrid between V. farreri and V. grandiflorum, raised at Bodnant in North Wales in 1935.

It used to be thought that Viburnum belonged to the honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae, but recent molecular studies using DNA sequencing have shown it to be a member of the family Adoxaceae. Forty years ago, when I was a trainee botanist, the Adoxaceae was believed to contain just a single species, town-hall clock Adoxa moschatellina but, as is so often the case, molecular biology has revealed unsuspected phylogenetic relationships. 

White Magic

Some snow adds a touch of magic to a botanic garden in winter. These pictures were taken today in Durham University Botanic Garden

Rhododendron dauricum and ..................

....Mahonia x media 'Charity'

Kniphofia spp., Red-hot Poker, Xanthorrhoeaceae, sub-family Asphodeloidea

It came as a surprise to me that red-hot pokers thrive in my garden here in North East England. If you look at the distribution map of the species, through Africa and Madagascar, with an outlier in Yemen, you'd imagine that heat and dry conditions are a requirement but when you look at the habitats occupied by many of the species - cooler, higher altitude sites - maybe it's not so surprising that they do well in my flower borders. This summer, which was cool and wet, seems to have suited them pretty well......

.... especially this yellow-green flowered variety. I've lost its label but I think it might be 'Percy's Pride'. This plant produced 15 flower spikes and was in bloom for six weeks.

The best display of Kniphofia uvaria that I've ever see in Britain is this one, in the sand dunes on the Northumberland coast at Low Newton-by-the-sea where it is verging on becoming invasive  They're not the conditions that would be easy to replicate in most gardens though.

I'm always interested in the native insects that visit exotic flowers in British gardens. In its native habitats Kniphofia is pollinated by sunbirds and each individual flower produces a large volume of nectar to attract these energetic pollinators. The nectar must trickle down those long, downward-pointing tubular flowers, because peacock butterflies seem to have no trouble in reaching it.

Access is more of a struggle for wasps, which will do almost anything to reach sweet nectar in autumn when they are no longer feeding their brood. This enterprising individual discovered that the easiest way to reach a reward was to chew a hole through the corolla ...... 

...... while this one chose to do it the hard way, forcing its way into a flower that really evolved to accommodate a sunbird's long, slender, curved beak.

Masterwort, Astrantia maxima and A. major., Umbelliferae

Ever since masterwort Astrantia major was introduced into British gardens in 1597, from its native central and eastern Europe, garden writers have been somewhat dismissive of the plant. William Robinson, in The English Flower Garden in 1883 was wary of its invasive tendencies (".... apt to over-run and exhaust the soil") and suggested that "if grown at all it should be in rough or wild places, or in the back part of the shrubbery". 

However, the species in the picture above, Astrantia maxima, is rather more delicate and trickier to cultivate, so is unlikely to be invasive. It needs better, more moisture-retentive soil than A. major.

It's easy to see why the more commonly cultivated A. major  was sometimes known as 'hattie's pincushion" and why Graham Stuart Thomas, in his Perennial Garden Plants (1976) described the flowers as having "...an interesting and beautiful shape". . 

It isn't obvious that this is a member of the Umbelliferae but if you shrink that ring of papery bracts and elongate the pedicels that support the individual florets the result is a more obvious umbel.

The plant has a long flowering period, seems to do well in sun, shade and dry soil in my garden, makes an attractive long-stemmed addition to a bunch of cut flowers and, best of all, is an excellent source of pollen and nectar for .....

... hoverflies ....

                 ..... and bees, that merely need to walk over the inflorescence to collect their reward with minimum effort. 

Monk'shood, Aconitum napellus, Ranunculaceae

"Helmet-fluore, or the great Monkes-hood, beareth very faire and goodly blew floures in a shape like a helmet; which are so beautifull, that a man would think they were of some excellent vertue, but non est semper fides habenda fronti " wrote John Gerard in his herbal of 1597. And, indeed, appearances are not always to be trusted, because Gerard then went on to describe the dire consequences of eating this poisonous member of the buttercup family. "The force and facultie of Wolfs-bane [another common name for members of the monk'shood genus] is deadly to man and all kindes of beasts .......The symptoms that do follow those that doe eat of these deadly herbs are these; their lips and tongue swell forthwith, their eyes hang out, their thighes are stiffe, and their wits are taken from them." 


But as long as you don't eat it, this is a fine plant for the herbaceous border, with the flowers of a violet-blue hue that's shared by wild columbine, another member of the same plant family.


Gerard noted that the plant was also found in alpine meadows "where you shall find the grasse that growth round it eaten by cattell, but no part of the herb it selfe touched, except by certain flies, who in such abundant measure swarme about the same that they cover the whole plant". He then describes how a confection made from twenty of these flies that are immune to monk'shood's poison was an "excellent  remedy not only against the Aconites, but all other poisons whatsoever".

Looking at the rather sinister flowers from the side, it's easy to see where the names helmet-flower and monk'shood came from.


The nectaries of the flower are located way up inside the upper petal that forms the hood, where only long-tongued bees can reach it.

The flower is dependent on bumblebees for pollination and the strong bilateral symmetry of the flower means that they have to force their way in through this narrow opening, where they brush against the stamens and stigma as they struggle to reach the nectaries in the hood. The stamens ripen before the stigmas (protandry) and in this picture you can see a couple whose anthers have burst, shed their pollen and whose stamen filaments have elongated. There are six more whose anthers have burst to release white pollen but whose stamen filaments haven't elongated, but the majority of the numerous anthers present have yet to release their pollen.


I've posted some photos of bumblebees visiting the flowers here.

Giant Fennel, Ferula communis, Umbelliferae

I've waited seven years for this.


Back in 2007 I bought a small plant of giant fennel Ferula communis, when I was mainly attracted by its delightful, ferny, four-pinnate foliage but also tempted by the promise of a giant inflorescence.

Every year since then it has produced a few magnificent leaves, almost a metre across, but has never showed any sign of flowering. Finally it has summoned up the energy to perform, which is remarkable on two counts. 

Firstly, this is a plant from dry, rocky places in the Mediterranean - in countries like Greece - and this is cold, rainy Durham in northern England, in the grip of the wettest summer on record. 

This is its natural habitat (image source) 

Secondly, according to Marjorie Blamey and Christopher Grey-Wilson's Mediterranean Wild Flowers:

'The stems becomes hard and woody on drying ..... the pith, when dry, burns slowly inside the stem and can be carried alight - it may well have been the original Olympic torch'.

And, of course, this is the year when the Olympics come to Britain. Nice timing!

Other sources claim that the stems were used by Prometheus when he stole fire from the gods on Mount Olympus and gave it to humans.

The stem is robust - and has been used for making furniture, apparently - and the leaf bases sheath the stem in this very distinctive manner.

The inflorescence finally finished elongating when it was close to three metres tall ....

...... then its yellow umbels bloomed. The only way to photograph these is from the upstairs bedroom window......

........... although they do look attractive from below, against the sky.

It's also a very good 'bee-plant' attracting a constant procession of bumblebee visitors to these umbels, each of which is as big as my fist.


Worth waiting for!


Giant fennel is monocarpic and the plant will die after flowering, but I'm tempted to try that stem as a home-made Olympic torch....