I like flowers and growing a bit of veg, but would never describe myself as a gardener as such, but I never dreamed that the plant world would be so complicated. The site started off quite simply with colour of flower, evergreen or deciduous then, it went off into the realms of, and I quote..
mat forming
cycad
narrowly colmnar
narrowly conical
rounded to broadly columnar
rounded to broadly spreading
suckering
prostrate
pendulous etc etc
Now don't get me wrong, I know what the majority of these mean but really - look at the photos and tell me what do you reckon?!!!
So I have done the only thing I normally do in such circumstances and I have enlisted the help of the "Oracle" aka my Mother in Law Beryl to help me identify this strange plant, but I would be interested to know if anyone out in blog world has ever seen this anywhere. It has white flowers on it, and the spikey fruit like things are absolutely rock hard.
Bon chance!!!!!xx
It's datura and extremely poisonous.
ReplyDeleteDon't let it seed.
Know what you mean about trying to identify plants, birds, whatever from the book...I've given u looking under the names Danilo gives me as these are all local dialect terms!
thanks Helen - have you seen it before? I will get rid of it immediately, especially as it is in the horses field - when I read wikipedias info on it Neil got quite excited about smoking it until I told him about the mortality rates!!! (He was only joking after already having had an adverse reaction to some dodgy tobacco!!)
ReplyDeleteI wonder how on earth it ended up in my field?!!
It came in from our neighbour's fields...where he kept cattle!
ReplyDeleteIt was a real pain to get rid of it, too.
Was that in France or Costa Rica Helen? On Wikipedia it mentioned it came mostly from America and Mexico. I was wondering how it came here!!
ReplyDeleteCrikey! I have encouraged this plant to grow at random here because I thought it was quite unusual and had 'presence'. I thought that it might be some sort of herb because I saw a whole field full of it last year which gave me the impression that it was useful to have around! Even had a couple outside the front door until they were bulldozed by the builder! Will now ban this plant forever!
ReplyDeleteI have seen this before but I did not know it was poisonous, thanks Roz for doing this post, and thanks fly for identifying it. Diane xx
ReplyDeleteFrance....someone's probably hallucinating on it over here...
ReplyDeleteI had no idea so I'm glad that Fly has helped you out. It does like quite evil though, doesn't it?!
ReplyDeleteIt's such a shame - I quite liked it.
ReplyDeleteGlad to be of service to all of you - who needs google when you are friends with the Fly?!!!xxx
I didn't know what it was at first either...until Andre came over and had a fit when he saw it.
ReplyDeleteIt was like the climber that emerged from a bag of compost from Super U...it was all over the greenhouse until Guy came over and recognised it as a parasite that he remembered wiping out whole fields of grain..
So that was another extermination session...
It just shows how far my gardening skills need to come on when I fail to recognise yet again the difference between plants and weeds!!!!
ReplyDeleteHow did it get into your field? Well............The seed is thought to be carried by birds and spread in their droppings. It can lie dormant underground for years and germinate when the soil is disturbed. People who discover it growing in their gardens, and are worried about its toxicity, have been advised to dig it up or have it otherwise removed
ReplyDelete