What wild flowers have you seen?

[oddoneout]

Early greens, and helping to control invasion?

http://wildfeast.co.uk/tag/three-cornered-leek

https://www.wildfooduk.com/edible-wild-plants/three-cornered-leek/

[gradus]

Just give up grow a 'wild garden' gradus! One can always justify a semi-wilderness...we do....on environmental grounds.
Actually, I'm not quite sure what a wild onion is. Is it a particular species? And what colour flowers do they produce? If we've got them, they're probably indistinguishable among the wild everything else.

It looks like this:https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wi...w=1536&bih=710

Edible and with a strong onion smell. I doubt I've rid the garden of it as it self-seeds everywhere.

Not a weed but a giant Nicotiana Sylvestris grew in our garden last year fully 6 feet tall with huge leaves and enormous flower spikes. This was certainly not a problem as it has the sweetest of evening scents but surprisingly it grew in the intersection of 2 walls where extreme dryness might be expected and it positively thrived in last Summer's scorching temperatures. I cut it back in the Autumn and it is now producing the first leaves of new growth. A little further along two other large versions of the plant also grew, all of them presumably from seed dropped by plants in former years. I saved seed and have sown some to see if it comes true and I can raise a new super-large form of the plant, if anyone is interested I'd be happy to send some seed if you PM me.

[ardcarp]

How things change.. Global warming? Here's what it says in Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers. I can't find a publication date, but we must have bought it in the late 1960s.

"Habitat: Locally abundant on moist banks and roadsides, usually not far from the sea in Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands, much less so in S. Wales and S. Ireland; very rare elsewhere. April - June."

No mention of its being an 'invasive' or 'introduced' species. And we saw it flowering in Feb. this year. We see it in Brittany too.

Interestingly, there is a wooded path which leads from a beach in Cornwall up to a village about a mile inland. The seaward end has banks full of 3-cornered leek, but about halfway along, they peter out to be replaced with ordinary wild garlic.

We've never thought of eating them, as we rather treasured their presence. But now they're so common, we'll maybe try using the leaves as if they were chives.

[oddoneout]

It looks like this:https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wi...w=1536&bih=710

Edible and with a strong onion smell. I doubt I've rid the garden of it as it self-seeds everywhere.

Not a weed but a giant Nicotiana Sylvestris grew in our garden last year fully 6 feet tall with huge leaves and enormous flower spikes. This was certainly not a problem as it has the sweetest of evening scents but surprisingly it grew in the intersection of 2 walls where extreme dryness might be expected and it positively thrived in last Summer's scorching temperatures. I cut it back in the Autumn and it is now producing the first leaves of new growth. A little further along two other large versions of the plant also grew, all of them presumably from seed dropped by plants in former years. I saved seed and have sown some to see if it comes true and I can raise a new super-large form of the plant, if anyone is interested I'd be happy to send some seed if you PM me.

If it smells of onion and is in evidence now it is likely the leek. Another allium that spreads is ramsons - wild garlic - but that is later and its name gives away the 'can't mistake' identification.
Incidentally the page of images demonstrates why latin names are useful; wild onion covers a multitude of plants!
Nicotiana is a short-lived perennial in suitable climates but tender in this country so grown as an annual. It does self-seed, and the rootstock may over-winter as you have discovered. Occasional seedlings of N. sylvestris still pop-up in one of the borders where I do volunteer gardening, more than 5 years after the original plants were bedded out. It's impressive and always attracts the public interest, but having such large leaves and being so tall in what is something of a wind tunnel border is a problem.

[oddoneout]

How things change.. Global warming? Here's what it says in Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers. I can't find a publication date, but we must have bought it in the late 1960s.

"Habitat: Locally abundant on moist banks and roadsides, usually not far from the sea in Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands, much less so in S. Wales and S. Ireland; very rare elsewhere. April - June."

No mention of its being an 'invasive' or 'introduced' species. And we saw it flowering in Feb. this year. We see it in Brittany too.

Interestingly, there is a wooded path which leads from a beach in Cornwall up to a village about a mile inland. The seaward end has banks full of 3-cornered leek, but about halfway along, they peter out to be replaced with ordinary wild garlic.

We've never thought of eating them, as we rather treasured their presence. But now they're so common, we'll maybe try using the leaves as if they were chives.

Not so much global warming as a plant successfully adapting I would suggest. It is Mediterranean in origin I think, hence assumption of tenderness, but many plants once they have got established are more cold tolerant than expected. Being a bulb is a good defense, unless frost penetrates far enough and hard enough to cause damage, and having ants spread the seeds guarantees a good spread capability to offset winter losses.
Hottentot Fig is another that does well here despite appearances and origin. https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/disc.../hottentot-fig

[ardcarp]

Hottentot Fig

Especially abundant in the Isles of Scilly...some areas smothered in them. A lovely sight,



The giant echium also thrives there.



Much taller than a person.

[cloughie]

Today saw my first wild garlic flower this year.

[oddoneout]

Today saw my first wild garlic flower this year.

I was going to say that's early then realised where you are. Did you smell it before seeing it? As a child the last part of my journey home from school was past a copse with a small stream running through and it was possible to smell the carpet of garlic quite some distance down the road when it was in full flower.
I was rather surprised by this from the National Trust

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/places-where-wild-garlic-grows

which seems from the tone of the text to be aimed at children. I thought the message these days is to leave things in the wild to avoid damage and risk of incorrect identification. If it's OK to pick wild garlic how do you get across that picking bluebells isn't OK(one of those images is of a bluebell wood not garlic). Wonder if the foraging carte-blanche applies to other wild food on NT sites.

[Bryn]

Not blooming as yet but the wooded area around the children's play area across the road from my abode is densely carpeted in bluebells (that's the native variety, not the Spanish invaders). Should be quite a show, in the near future.

[gurnemanz]

Celandine are coming through. Pretty yellow flowers but invasive and I do try to remove them, making sure as far as possible to root out all the little tubers. Ongoing annual struggle.

[oddoneout]

Celandine are coming through. Pretty yellow flowers but invasive and I do try to remove them, making sure as far as possible to root out all the little tubers. Ongoing annual struggle.

I know what you mean. I've just been preparing a 'winter' bed next to the patio and am all too aware that weeding out celandine is going to be an ongoing process for the foreseeable future, as there were two big colonies in the area. Their mini-tubers mean they have the resources to reach the surface even when buried deeply, and said tubers are easily scattered during cultivation. I must admit though to having, somewhat perversely, planted a celandine elsewhere in the garden. It is the form 'Brazen Hussy' with wonderful dark bronze leaves, and my experience of it in a previous garden is that it's probably not quite as invasive by nature but also that when grown somewhere dry it spreads gently rather than ramping away. It wouldn't really matter if it did get a bit enthusiastic though as it is in a wild bit of the garden as ground cover under decorative birch and rowan trees. I also have the unrelated but rather pretty greater celandine in the garden as well - just appeared a couple of years ago as these things sometimes do - and it is beginning to colonise. It's much much easier to edit out, although care is needed with the bright orange sap.

[ardcarp]

Photographed by Mrs A couple of days ago. A meadow full of them. Unbelievable mimicry of a bee.

[oddoneout]

They are amazing aren't they? When I was a child there was an escarpment rising behind the housing estate where I lived and the rabbit bitten turf was covered with orchids - first early purple and then the bee. We had some appear briefly under a hedge in the carpark where I work, but they haven't flowered the past couple of years. If it was ever returned to close grazed pasture they would appear again I'm sure, but for now the conditions don't suit them.

[Constantbee]

Photographed by Mrs A couple of days ago. A meadow full of them. Unbelievable mimicry of a bee.

Ooh! Bee orchids We get a few here but not many as they tend to prefer lime-rich areas. There’s a roadside verge near here where we sometimes see a lot of common spotted orchids, though. I went back a couple of months ago to check if they’d come back this year but the area had been churned up by parking. In fact, a couple of 4x4’s turned up as I approached, and out poured numerous dogs, kids of various shapes and sizes and aged relatives. You can’t blame them as there’s some good walking in the area. I felt I ought to say something to them about the wildflowers but you never know quite how people are going to react these days, and as there were rather a lot more of them than me I decided to let the matter pass – for the time being. I might take it up with the council if I get round to it, though.