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Papaver palaver
Last summer a friend gave me some seeds from the clusters of Papaver cambricum, Welsh poppy/pabi Cymraeg, growing in her garden (formerly Meconopsis cambrica, the hardy perennial was renamed in …
The nut case
Nuts are briefly in demand during mid-winter, but for the rest of the time they’re largely ignored by most people – apart from grievously over-salted peanuts sold as pub snacks …
An African far from home
I have never been able to understand why more people don’t keep houseplants. They purify and detoxify air, they oxygenate, they recycle carbon dioxide, they humidify, they eliminate odours and …
A bite at the cherry
High summer is the peak fruiting time for the sweet cherry, Prunus avium, and although like most foods these days they’re not cheap (approximately £10 per kg/£5 per lb), I …
Sometimes I don’t feel like writing
Achieving biodiversity is not difficult. For instance, there are 40 different plant species thriving in my back garden of only 48 square metres (510 square feet). In one way or …
Toms harry Dic
Every year when spring arrives I can’t resist growing tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum). And every year, around this time in the dog-days of summer, I vow never to grow the bloody …
Going Bananas
Appropriately, given that the plant can only thrive in the equatorial girdle where temperatures average 27°C (80°F), Ecuador slap bang on the equator is now the world’s biggest banana exporter …
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 …