CABINET OF CURIOSITIES

  Sweet violets  Viola odorata  produce two types of flower - the familiar scented kind that are amongst the first wild flowers to appear in...

  Hornbeam Carpinus betulus has always been one of my favourite trees. It's native to southern England but widely planted up here in th...

Few of our native wild flowers have such beautiful fruits, but such an unpleasant name, as stinking iris Iris foetidissima . I grew some pl...

There is a saying amongst foresters that 'you should plant as though you are going to live forever'. Sound advice, since most fores...

Thursday's Guardian Country Diary focuses on bird cherry Prunus padus , which has produced an exceptionally fine crop of its beautiful...

Cranesbills are wild flowers with a particularly violent method of dispersing their seeds, that involves a catapult mechanism and is particu...

Until a few years ago we had just one plant of cuckoo pint Arum maculatum in our garden but every yea...

Whenever I look over a garden wall and see this sight it takes me straight back to youthful scrumping adventures. This is an old and ve...

I think it's one of the fundamental truths of natural history that you can find beauty in all living organisms - even a commonplac...

Summer is over and it's time for plants to disperse their seeds. Some just release them on a feathery parachute , to drift away on...

Yew Taxus baccata , one of only three native conifers in Britain (the others are Scots pine and juniper) is a conifer that doesn't pr...

There seems to be a fine crop of elder Sambucus nigra berries in our local hedgerows this year. John Evleyn , the 17th. century writer, ...

Just outside the fence on the south-west corner of our garden there's a large Norway maple whose winged seeds are scattered all over our...

The conker season is here again – amply celebrated today in an article in the Times newspaper (see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u...

Remember those rotating globes of the world that used to be in every school classroom? I recall having a miniature version given to me as...

....and crimson. Why are so many berries – including the species below - red? Guelder rose Hawthorn Sorbus ( intermedia ?) Bittersweet The ...

Knopper galls (above), uninfected normal acorn below   These weird objects are knopper galls, caused by a tiny wasp called...