endlessrarities | Apr. 24th, 2010

Last night, Carol Klein's featured plant spot on the BBC programme 'Gardener's World' was the borage family. I had borage in a seed mix once and loved it - they're supposed to self-seed like crazy, but I've never had much luck with this, I'm afraid.

Now, being a Bronze Age metalwork person, artefact classification and taphonomy is a subject of great interest to me. Since our artefact classification systems are grounded in the work Linnaeus did on plants, plant classification is also a subject about which I'm naturally curious. But I'm not a botanist. I just plant the things and hope they'll grow.

Ms Klein's feature began with the pulmonaria. Now, I've always noticed that like the pulmonaria, the flowers of the forget-me-not change colour from blue to pink. At least, I always thought it was was blue to pink. (My mother used to say that the flowers that were blushing were the ones who'd been enjoying carnal relations...) Though the implication last night was that they went from pink to blue...

I wasn't surprised to hear that both the pulmonaria and the forget-me-nots are included amongst the borage family. Since borage has hairy leaves and a blue flower, this all makes sense. But the one ommission from the list was the brunnera. Brunnera may not be as hairy as pulmonaria, and their flowers don't change colour, but their family resemblance to forget-me-not is unmistakable.

Intrigued, I went brunnera-hunting on Wikipedia. Sure enough, they're yet another member of the borage family. It's a shame they didn't get a mention on Gardener's World. Ours goes from strength-to strength each year, and I'd really recommend them to anyone.

Here's the brunnera at its floral best, with yet another hellebore to the fore:-

It's similar to the forget-me-not in many ways, barring the fact that it's stubbornly perennial, and that its leaves do Interesting Things once the flowering's stopped.

I'm aware that just about everyone else in the world has got wonderful tulips in the garden right now. I'm afraid I just don't do tulips. They can't cope in my garden - I think the soil's too damp for them. I have a mixed planting of Black Parrots and Red & White Parrots in the front border - of these, only one Red & White Parrot is in bud this year.

I also had a wonderful show of double tulips over many years, which included the varieties Carnival de Nice, Beauty of Apeldoorn and Lady Montgomery. Lady Montgomery deigned to make a rare appearance last year, and this year all we've got is the Beauty of Apeldoorn, which are getting less and less imposing every year, They started out as red and yellow, and now they're just yellow with a tiny flush of red. Here they are, set against some hellebores:-

There's a black hellebore at the left hand side but it's playing hard to get amongst the daffodils and lathyrus. As for the lathyrus... Well, that has to be seen to be believed and it won't be long before it's doing its thing...

I took a terrible risk today and planted out two begonias. They're in a big pot so if the worst comes the worst I can bring them in PDQ, but I'm hoping the frosts are over now. The senetti are coming along great guns - here's a view of them potted up (with an inevitable hellebore in the background):-