Chapter II: Weeds and Alien Plants

A slight knowledge of botany adds greatly to the interest of a garden, and is besides often of practical value. With such knowledge, one forms a habit of looking even at weeds with some interest, and this has led to my finding several strange plants among them. I have for example come across the following in the kitchen garden:

"Saponaria vaccaria," with its curious angled calyx and pretty pink flower.

"Galium tricorne," very much like common goose-grass or cleavers, but rare in England, and quite unknown in this neighbourhood.

Annual mercury (closely allied to the common perennial Dog's mercury), green and dull-looking, only of interest because it is rare.

"Holosteum umbellatum," which again is rare and not much more attractive to the casual observer.

"Draba muralis," allied to "Shepherd's purse," and not unlike it, but as rare as that is common.

"Melilotus officinalis," a graceful yellow pea-flower. When this first appeared it was quite a stranger in these parts, but afterwards for several years it was continually turning up in different corners of the garden, indeed even in 1911, twenty-six years since its first visit, I found a stray specimen.

"Ranunculus arvensis," a weak-looking buttercup with curious rough seed vessels.

"Scandix Pecten-Veneris," an ordinary unattractive umbelliferous plant, but with extraordinary long beaks to the fruit, which are supposed to be like the teeth of a comb. Both of these are I believe common in other parts of the country, but they are unusual here.

"Poa nemoralis," a stranger grass of elegant growth, came one year in the rougher part of a rock-border. It was made welcome and kindly treated, but though allowed to follow its own devices and though several seedlings sprang up round it, they were all gone in a year or two. A rarer grass still, "Setaria glauca," once turned up in a cucumber frame.

In 1907, a seedling fig came up close to the wall of the house. It has now (1912) several shoots about eight feet long. The same year another seedling fig appeared in the kitchen garden, and that too I have transplanted to a warm corner of the house-wall, where it has made a nice bush.

For several years we have found seedling tomatoes growing in the kitchen garden, and in 1911 we gathered seven pounds of green tomatoes from two plants to make into jam.

When first I came here, and for a long time afterwards, "Erysimum cheiranthoides" was always among the kitchen garden weeds, and one year I found growing in a bed of onions its near relative "Erysimum orientale," which is quite a rare British plant.

Greater celandine, a rather handsome perennial with somewhat glaucous leaves and bright yellow flowers, used to be an abundant weed on the banks and among the bushes, and is still (1911) to be found in the garden, though in diminished quantity.

In 1889, a strange plant appeared which puzzled me a good deal at first. It was tall and straggling, but had no flowers. Next spring there were several of the same plants, very much branched with something of the habit of a mugwort, and long spikes of flowers at the end of every branch. I discovered it to be a species of "Ambrosia," a native of North America, but I soon discovered also that it increased by underground runners in every direction, and was only too thankful to get rid of it.

Two years before, I had found another visitor, this time from South America, with bright yellow flowers, evidently allied to forget-me-not, which proved to be an "Amsinckia" (intermedia ?). There were about 20 plants of this annual in one border and several others in other parts of the garden. With some consideration, but with no particular care on my part, it has maintained itself in more or less quantity in the same herbaceous border ever since.

In 1897, a single plant of an "Allium" appeared and grew to a height of more than five feet, straight up with very stout stems, one and a half inches in circumference, and handsome heads of reddish-green bell-shaped flowers on drooping stalks, which afterwards, in fruit, became quite straight and upright. I found it to be "Allium Dioscorides," a native of Sicily and Sardinia. There were many tubers at the root when I took it up, but none of them ever grew so tall and fine as the original.

One or two plants that I have introduced myself have proved very tiresome weeds. In 1875 or thereabouts, I brought back from the wild part of a large garden in the neighbourhood a balsam with rather a conspicuous yellow flower ("Impatiens noli-me-tangere," I think). It made itself at home at once, but as it would keep within no bounds, I have done all I could "to get without it," as they would say here, but it defies me to my face and in spite of relentless persecution, again and again every spring it comes up smiling in an abundant crop.

So indeed does a tall polygonum ("P. cuspidatum" I believe it is) that I brought back from the same garden about the same time. It absolutely refuses to budge from the place where I first allowed it to grow. It does not perpetuate itself by seed like the balsam, but from little odds and ends of rootlets and suckers that hide themselves in the soil.

What I take to be a variety of "Oxalis corniculata," a very pretty little thing with dark reddish-brown leaves and deep yellow flowers, is another uncontrollable subject. It is perennial and yet increases by seed as fast as a balsam.

A plant which on the top of a stone wall is very pretty, "Linaria vulgaris," has proved a veritable plague to me in the garden. I had it sent to me originally by a nurseryman for the "Peloria" variety, and as if the disappointment of that were not enough, it added insult to injury, or rather injury to insult, by running below the surface in a provoking and persevering manner and showing itself in most unexpected places. Although the normal "vulgaris" is so irrepressible, I have found "Peloria" quite the reverse, and have never been able to keep it above a year or two.

The double-flowered varieties of most plants are, as a rule, more difficult than the ordinary single, but a little potentilla ("reptans" ?) with a yellow ball of double flower has proved an exception here. No single-flowered plant could get over and under the ground faster than this has done.

In 1886, in an out-of-the-way path among trees, an orchid, "Epipactis latifolia," came up in the very middle. I took care that it was not disturbed, and found it again in exactly the same place four years later, no sign of it having been seen in the interval. Never before, or since, have I found a plant of that or any other orchis growing wild in the garden.

One year (1887) in a border nearly full of rhododendrons, close to the front door, a curious looking thing made its way above the ground, which, at first sight might have been put down as something between a hyacinth and a lily-of-the-valley, but was said to be "Muscari comosum." I had never planted it and during the fifteen years that I had been here had never seen anything like it. I very carefully marked the spot when it died down, but from that time to this (1911) during all the 24 years that have passed it has never shown itself again.