Fascinated by Fasciation: today, Spear Thistle!

 I always seem to be writing about this, but it's a subject which fascinates me - fasciation, or spontaneous mutation.

This caught my eye while I was out walking at the weekend: an arable field, lots of “weeds” around the edges, where the footpath ran, and lots of Spear Thistle (Cirsium vulgare) dotted about. Nothing unusual so far.

But then I saw this one, which was much denser than all the others:

 Intrigued, I went closer, and instead of the usual formation - a branching central stem, long stems with a single flower at the tip - the foliage was all clustered together, and this was the flower......

 

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Building the Rose Tower

 I mentioned the Rose Tower recently, and several people have asked me what it was, and how I made it.

It started when a tree fell over.

It was a very, very old tree....

Many years previously, this had been a real, live tree, growing in a garden, quite happy and content, giving shade to the garden and occasionally producing fruit - I think it was a plum tree, but I'm not totally sure, as this was long before my time.

Over the years, the “leaning out sideways” part got lower and lower, to the point where it was getting difficult for them to mow underneath it, and one sad day, last June, the whole thing fell over.

Oops!

That's the problem with dead trees - they are, by definition, dead, and at some point in their career, they will fall over.

Luckily, it didn't snap off the rose, in fact I think the rose stems prevented it from actually crashing to the ground.

But clearly, something had to be done.......

 

 

 

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Irish Yew: what a terrible thing to do to it!!

 

I was visiting a garden at the weekend: Rodmarton Manor, out by Cirencester. Lovely place, well worth a visit, and I've been there several times over the past few years, which adds another layer of interest for me - how have things changed, what have they done, what new plants have arrived, which old ones have disappeared, what arrangements have “worked”, and which have been less successful, and so on.

Almost the first thing to be seen, on entering the garden, was an old Irish Yew (of which they have many!) which has recently been heartlessly cut back.

 

Now, those of you who have followed me for a while will know that I am usually all in favour of heartlessly cutting back: and anyone who's met me will have heard my little joke about wishing I'd been called Ruth instead of Rachel (both being very biblical names) because then I could have been Ruth the Ruthless Gardener, which I think is hilarious.

So why does this treatment of an old, over-large Irish Yew vex me? ....

 

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It's Ermine moth time again, folks!

 Last June, I wrote about my first encounter with the Apple Ermine Moth, the unpronounceable Yponomeuta malinellus.

 

 

As I said at the time, I have no idea how to pronounce that -

Eee-ponno-mew-ter?

Yuh-poh-know-mew-tah?

Ponno-mute-er? (assuming a silent Y)

However you say it, there were quite horrible: squirmy, wriggly caterpillars which, when disturbed, turned into what looked like a speeded-up film, as they frantically thrashed around, ugh.

 Apparently there are many types of Ermine Moth, and last week I encountered another one......

 

 

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