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Gardening

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A plant ID one please

14 replies

timetorefresh · 20/07/2023 14:48

Can anyone ID this please? Seems to have popped up in a few places and grown alarmingly fast

A plant ID one please
OP posts:
PetronellaOsgood · 20/07/2023 14:52

Sunflower?

crumpet · 20/07/2023 14:59

Do you have an iphone? If you swipe up on your photo then there is a plant finder

granstable · 20/07/2023 17:31

Himalayan balsam?

dubyalass · 20/07/2023 17:48

Himalayan honeysuckle aka Leycesteria. Has hanging purple fruits that blackbirds love.

dubyalass · 20/07/2023 17:49

Should be pretty easy to pull out.

Beebumble2 · 20/07/2023 17:58

Yes Leycesteria Formosa. It can be very useful in the right place. If left it grows quite tall so is good for screening ugly fences etc. You can prune it almost to ground level in the spring and fresh growth pops up or leave it till is a couple of metres tall. It does have an annoying habit of self seeding, but they’re easily removed, or potted up to give away.

timetorefresh · 20/07/2023 20:14

Thanks all. Maybe I won't rip it all out yet. Just suddenly realised one of them was taller than my banana plant

OP posts:
MereDintofPandiculation · 21/07/2023 09:59

Yes, Leycestria formosa. Not Sunflower, whose leaves are slightly hairy, nor Himalayan Balsam, which has narrower leaves with a strong central vein.

For some strange reason, rules for common and scientific names are different. Common names have capitals throughout, eg Bloody Cranesbill (helps to distinguish from that bloody cranesbill) but scientific names have only the genus with a capital, not the scientific, so Geranium sanguineum not Geranium Sanguineum.

Strictly, in formal writing, scientific names are also in italics, which was fine 50 years ago when you just underlined it with a squiggly line as an instruction to the typist, but is a right pain nowadays when you’re typing it yourself.

WhataPlaice · 22/07/2023 08:50

I've just googled that as I wasn't familiar with the name but the plant is lovely and currently on sale with Gardening Express for £19.99. so if you have more than you need why not pot them up and donate to a local plant sale when one is on nearby.

WhataPlaice · 22/07/2023 08:54

MereDint - thank you for sharing your knowledge of naming conventions, I had no idea about any of that or that it was so complicated.

MereDintofPandiculation · 22/07/2023 10:17

@WhataPlaice don’t feel you need to read this, I got carried away!

There’s an International Code for Botanical Nomenclature (and an analogous one for Zoology) to make sure names are consistent, not duplicated, etc. The ICZN has a team who spend their time checking newly published names, so I presume ICBN does too. Then it’s up to peer review to see if any names make sense botanically, eg someone will publish a paper to say that for example, buttercup, Ranunculus, isn’t a single genus, it’s two groups which should be in separate genera. They’d refer to the Code to see which of the groups hung on to Ranunculus, and give a new genus name to the other group. Then they publish, and if they’ve made their case well, the name sticks, and the rest of us grumble that Lesser Celandine has changed from Ranunculus ficaria to Ficaria verna. (ICBN doesn’t allow Ficaria ficaria, whereas the zoological side is full of them, Bufo bufo, Martes martes, Troglodytes troglodytes etc)

At the end of this you may quite reasonably say “why don’t we stick to common names if the scientific names keep changing?” The reason is that scientific names are trying to reproduce the “family tree” of species, so they tell you a lot more than the name, for example, whether you’ve got a reasonable chance of hybridising two species or grafting one on to another, what their preferred growing conditions are like. And they’re in a common language so you don’t have to remember that Muguet de bois is Lily of the Valley, or that Bluebell is a spring flowering bulb in England but a summer flower herbaceous perennial in Scotland.

We’re having lots of changes inflicted on us at the moment because DNA studies are a lot better at sorting ancestry than looking at physical characters.

ErrolTheDragon · 22/07/2023 13:37

I does this mean I should now refer to Sedum Spectabile rather than Sedum spectabile? Grin

MereDintofPandiculation · 23/07/2023 08:58

ErrolTheDragon · 22/07/2023 13:37

I does this mean I should now refer to Sedum Spectabile rather than Sedum spectabile? Grin

Neither. Hylotelephium spectabile Grin

Do try to keep up! Grin

ErrolTheDragon · 23/07/2023 09:35

Well that's my point - I can never remember the new name without looking it up, but I now feel perfectly justified in continuing to use the old one so long as I use appropriate typography.Grin

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