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Going Bananas
Bananas originate in the tropical jungles of today’s Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines in south-east Asia, where many rare varieties of the massive Musa genus still grow wild. The ideal …
Flora Cardiffia
I regularly used to drive up and down the M4 between London and Wales in the 1970s and 1980s, initially on a motorbike and subsequently in a car. When I …
Lemon aid
Such is the truly horrifying state of Cardiff, of Wales, of the UK, of Europe and indeed of the entire planet from pole to pole…and such is the ever-accelerating momentum …
A fuchsia is toppled
The fuchsia had to go. I thought something was wrong with it back in the spring when the spectacular annual profusion of crimson and purple pendulous flowers quickly became blackened …
Gooseberry: a fool’s guide
Even though I encounter it all the time, I never cease finding the immense ignorance of the general UK population shocking. I can barely believe the speed with which the …
Daffodil time
Perhaps because of the mild winter, the yellow explosion of daffodils (Narcissus) seems to have come slightly earlier than usual this year, adding garish colour to public parks, roadside verges, …
Coriander candour
Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) is an interesting plant. A member of the huge Apium genus of umbellifers, closely related to other important culinary plants such as caraway, carrot, celery, chervil, cumin, …
Gardeners’ Question Time
Franklin Englishman: A very warm welcome to Gardeners’ Question Time. Today the programme comes from a fly-tip off Seawall Road in southern Cardiff where the panel and I are the …
King Basil
If someone held a gun to my head and said “You can only use one herb ever again, choose now punk or I’ll blow your brains out” (admittedly, an unlikely scenario), my …
Rooting around rwden
The most underused and unappreciated of all the winter vegetables is surely swede. The big purple root was once ubiquitous in the UK, a routine staple with the school dinner and …
