Flowering Currant buds

Dear Readers, it might feel a bit early to be thinking about spring (especially as the pond is frozen over again today), but the plants are getting ready for it already, and if you have a close look, you’ll see that lots of shrubs and trees are full of buds, like the Flowering Currant in my garden. It didn’t like the weather at all last year, what with the wet, late spring, but hopefully this year will be better, and we’ll get lots of flowers and hairy-footed flower bees come March.

Male hairy-footed flower bee

There are buds on the ash trees, which look a little like the hooves of miniature deer….

Ash buds

And sticky buds on the horse chestnut – the stickiness is thought to deter insects and to provide a kind of  anti-freeze.

Sadly my Kilmarnock Willow looks as if it’s died, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for a miraculous resurrection…

And because we’ve reached the Twelfth Day of Christmas, and the decorations are going away for another year (how do the years get so much shorter every cycle, I wonder?), here’s a poem that I’ve always loved, for the buds and for the sow. May we all be re-taught our loveliness this year.

Saint Francis and the Sow

By Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

The garden in December 2022

Dear Readers, the temperature has dropped here in London, and the pond has frozen over for the first time since last winter. The street outside was filled with the sound of windscreens being scraped, and my trip to the coffee shop was enlivened by trying to avoid all the patches of ice created when people wash down their shopfronts, only for the water to freeze into a mini ice-rink. And today we might have snow, which is massively inconvenient as we’re out to the theatre to see Sigourney Weaver as Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ (review to follow). But still, the child in me is always excited by that strange light through the curtains on a snowy day, or the sight of snowflakes billowing down.

Incidentally, why is ‘snowflake’ such an insult, when snowflakes en masse can bring  everything to a halt? Just wondering….

The bird table, 2022

I love that there are certain birds that only ever arrive when it’s snowing – we had a fieldfare in the crab apple tree for a week in the snow of 2011, and  siskins always pop in for a feed when there’s lots of the white stuff, but not at any other time.

Siskins in 2017

The one and only time that I had a brambling in the garden was on a snowy day.

Brambling 2017

But even if it doesn’t snow,  we’re promised sub-zero temperatures on and off for the next week or so, and I’m always stunned by the beauty that’s revealed by ice, especially if one has a hat/gloves/a thick coat/some thermals. Just look at the spiders’ webs from a few years ago, and how the ice reveals their structure in a way that nothing else can. So much beauty! A true small pleasure. It’s hard to get out and about when it’s cold, but it’s absolutely worth it.

Crape Myrtle bark in Huntingdon Road

Dear Readers, in mid winter, when there is precious little in bloom (though see here) and the leaves are largely gone, there’s nothing to distract me from the beauty of the bark  on the street trees around East Finchley. Bark has two main roles – keeping nasty stuff (insects, pollution, fungi etc) out of the tree, and keeping good stuff inside (moisture, heat) when the conditions outside are less than ideal. But the different ways that trees have chosen to do this is a subtle pleasure and a great delight.

The Crape Myrtle is famed for its subtle, smooth bark, as you can see in the photo above.

Silver Birch by Gustav Klimt

The white bark of Silver Birch is rightly celebrated, as in the picture above by Gustav Klimt. Many different willows are being planted as street trees now, and it’s not just the traditional willow species that have interesting bark – have a look at the lattice pattern on this Goat Willow from St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, a sign of a mature tree (Goat Willows can live to be 300 years old).

Goat Willow (Salix capra)

Another startling street tree is the Paperbark Maple – this one was spotted close to East Finchley Cemetery, and  a very fine example it is too. No one knows exactly why the bark peels, but as this tree originates in the mountains of China, one explanation is that the bark is lost because in its native habitat it’s often damaged by UV light exposure at high altitude. It could also be so that the plant can rid itself of parasites, both insect and fungal. But who knows?

Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum)

And while we’re on the subject of maples, how about these Snakebark Maples, from the Cleary Gardens close to St Pauls in the City of London? I found them on one of Paul Wood’s Street Tree Walks which I really love – they make me stop and pay attention, which is always a good thing.

Snakebark Maple in the Cleary Gardens

The shiny polished bark of the Tibetan Cherry is another favourite – this one is in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, but these are popular street trees, so keep an eye open.

Tibetan Cherry (Prunus serrula)

And maples aren’t the only ‘paperbark’ trees – here are some Chinese Red Birches (Betula albosinensis) – these are becoming quite popular as street trees in London. Paul Wood mentions that young trees have the ‘red’ trunk but that the tree becomes increasingly white with age.

Chinese Red Birch (Betula albosinensis)

Of course, the one tree that every Londoner is familiar with is the London Plane, and with the idea that it sheds its bark to rid itself of pollution, but during periods of high temperature and drought it will  shed in bucketloads. You can see this most clearly in the photo of the London Plane in Toronto (below) – it was so white that I failed to identify it as a London Plane until I wandered over for a closer look.

London Plane in Toronto, practically white after losing most of its outer bark

London Plane tree during the drought of 2018

Sometimes it isn’t the patterning of the bark, but something else that attracts the attention and helps to identify the tree. For example, Whitebeam trees are known for their habit of ‘spiralling’, as in this tree seen on Paul Wood’s street tree walk around Archway in North London.

Whitebeam in the Whitehall Estate, Archway

And when trees have been coppiced you can get a kind of ‘slow ballet’ effect, as with the muscular hornbeams of Coldfall and Cherry Tree  Wood, though here it looks a bit as if the two central trees are tangoing.

Coppiced Hornbeam in Coldfall Wood

Coldfall Wood during the ‘golden hour’ of late afternoon.

So, although Christmas is over, and the New Year has started, it’s always worth taking a slow meander, especially on a cold, sunny day, to see what you can see. Bark is something of a wonder, and an overlooked one at that. So see what you can see, and report back if you spot anything interesting!

Dear Readers, I spotted this London Plane on New Year’s Eve, a time when we are meant to be considering the year that has gone, and looking forward to the year to come. What a magnificent beast the tree is! Probably planted when Bedford Square was originally built (around  1775), the tree has grown and grown and is starting to gobble up the insolent metal fence that is supposed to contain it. As it oozes out onto the flagstones at a rate of a centimetre or so every few years, I wonder when it will stop. Will it eat the Georgian houses opposite? Will the whole of London eventually be one giant tree? There are worse fates, for sure.

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience. There’s the street tree cut back to a stump, which is regenerating on Fortis Green. There are the weeds that are flowering in December, regardless of whether there’s anything about to pollinate them. And on the personal front, there’s my broken leg, which is about 90 percent back to normal now, I’d say, in spite of its rather horrible fracture.

Plus I’m really, really hoping to see some green on my whitebeam and hawthorn trees come the spring. Fingers crossed!

It’s a funny old thing, resilience. As I’ve learned with my leg, it’s both about pushing yourself and knowing  when to rest and give yourself a break (not literally of course). It’s about the gradual but consistent application of pushback, whether it’s against a metal fence or a government. It’s about determining where your energies are best deployed, and about not trying to do everything at once. Nature knows this – the roots of a plant can find their way through concrete, and it’s the thing that you do everyday for five minutes, without thinking almost, that will make the difference in the end.

And here is a most uncharacteristic poem by Sylvia Plath that I hadn’t come across before – I think it sums up everything that I’m thinking about at the moment. In what is likely to be yet another ‘interesting’ year, let us all summon up our inner fungi.

Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.

Green Alkanet (Pentaglossis sempervirens)

Happy New Year Everyone! May it be a healthy and peaceful one for all of us. 

Dear Readers, I have been writing the Bug Woman blog for more than ten years now, and one of my great joys has been a growing familiarity with my local weeds. And believe me, they can be very local – there are some plants, such as Gallant Soldier, that I generally see in Islington (about four miles away) but not, until recently, here in East Finchley. And on Monday I went out to look for plants in flower for the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt (incidentally, if you want a walk to clear your head after the New Year’s Eve festivities you still have 1st January to do it) – I do love a bit of citizen science, plus this was my first walk in the woods since breaking my leg.

What is it that I admire so much about weeds? Well, Green Alkanet, though hairy and a bit of a thug, is usually covered in bees early in the year, The blue flowers have an intensity that the camera simply can’t do justice to, and the leaves are apparently munched upon by the caterpillars of the Jersey Tiger moth, which has become so much more common in recent years in the south of England.

And while it’s difficult to sing the praises of Smooth Sow Thistle when it’s so often raggedy and covered in aphids, that is kind of the point. Many, many native species like it, and birds will sometimes take the tiny seeds. The leaves are often full of the trails of leaf-mining moths and wasps, and yet the plant survives and reproduces. I have to admire its fortitude, as with so many weeds that live in the harsh, desiccated, polluted landscapes of our cities.

Then there are the plants that love walls – many of these were originally mountain plants, but they found the cracks and crevices of London’s walls and pavements to their liking. There’s the Ivy-leaved Toadflax, which raises the face of its flowers to the sun when they need pollinated, and then turn them towards the soil when it’s time for the seeds to germinate.

Ivy-leaved Toadflax (Cymbalaria muralis)

Then there’s Yellow Corydalis (Pseudofumaria lutea), another Alpine plant that has been happily making its home in the UK since 1796. It is a most elegant plant, with leaves resembling those of a maidenhair fern, and I occasionally see it for sale in garden centres at what my Mum would have described as ‘a silly price’.

And finally there’s Serbian Bellflower ( Campanula poscharskyana), originally from the Dinaric Alps in the Balkans. This one is a fairly recent arrival, first seen in the wild in the 1950s. This plant, and its cousin Dalmatian Bellflower (Campanula portenschlagiana) pop up all over the place here in East Finchley, but never far from housing in my experience.

Serbian Bellflower (Campanula poscharskyana)

Then I spotted the two ‘weeds’ that I think of as being plants of lawns and grassy areas – the Daisy and the Dandelion. The Daisy is one of those flowers that I’m pretty sure you could find in flower every day of the year, bless it. Such a modest little plant, but as tough as you like.

And Dandelions are getting most confusing  from a taxonomic point of view, what with dozens of microspecies being discovered all over the country. Still, I’m pretty sure that this is, at least, a Dandelion.

And there was lots of White Dead-nettle in flower too, though not many bees around to pollinate them.

White Dead-nettle (Lamium album)

Which kind of begs the question – why do plants that are pollinated by insects flower at times when there are no insects about? Partly I’m sure this is due to confusion – the seasons are not as clear cut as they used to be and while day-length is important for some plants, temperature can also be a trigger. Then, some ‘weeds’ are liable to ‘hedge their bets’ by having as long a flowering season as possible, just in case some anxious bumblebee pops out for a sip of nectar. And finally, some plants don’t just rely on pollination for reproduction – they can also spread via rhizomes or other root growths, and while this doesn’t provide the variation that’s useful for a plant population to have resilience, it does at least mean that the plant is able to increase.

And so, it brings me great joy to walk around my local streets and see so many ‘old friends’. I find it inspiring that nature finds a way in such hostile and ephemeral environments as a crack in the pavement or the bottom of a wall. Do you have a plant that others view as a ‘weed’, but that you love? Do share….

Dear Readers, books have always saved me. As a young person, I once disappeared into a book so completely that the whole class of children that I was in got up and went to the next class, while I sat there, eventually surrounded by children from another class. I remember looking up, dazed, and wondering what had happened, while the teacher had great fun, calling me ‘deaf’ as if it were an insult. The world of the book had been so captivating, so completely all-encompassing, that it was more real than the world of a ten year-old.

And when I broke my leg, and the pain-killers only worked for two hours, I would spend the four hours until I could take my next dose immersed in whatever book I could find that would work. And it was surprising what would work!

So here are my favourites from 2024, and do share anything that’s hit the mark for you. I’ve tried to choose only the books that have really piqued my interest and kept me turning the pages long after I should have been sleeping.

First up in fiction is James, Percival Everett’s re-telling of the Huckleberry Finn story from the point of the black slave, (Jim in Mark Twain’s book, James here – the choice of name is telling). It kept me up until 4 a.m. and there is so much here – humour, imagination, brutality and wish-fulfilment. Having read all of the Booker shortlist this year, this is my winner, and it will remain with me long after the other books. Highly highly recommended.

Then there’s another thought-provoking book, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann. On the face of it, this is a book about a love affair between an ageing professor and a much younger woman, but it’s set against the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the upheaval of the period with its gains and losses makes for a profound backdrop. Again, highly recommended.

On the non-fiction front, I found Polly Atkin’s ‘Some of Us Just Fall – On Nature and Not Getting Better‘ a thought-provoking read. I started it when I was recovering from my broken leg, but clearly Atkin has much greater challenges, and I found myself re-thinking  many of the ideas that I’d had about the healing powers of ‘nature’, and the limits of health care. A fascinating read.

And I absolutely loved ‘The Balkans by Bicycle’, by W.Papel Hamsher, republished by his son Mark, and available here. I have reviewed it before here, and suffice it to say that I read it once when really struggling with the pain in my leg, and then read it again when I felt better and was more able to take it in. The section on Hamsher’s stay on Mount Athos was particularly interesting, and I found myself wondering whether it was still a male-only domain ( I imagine so). Hopefully there are rather less bedbugs and other bitey creatures these days.

And finally, for an absolute page-turner and real insight into a particular kind of mind, I highly, highly recommend ‘The Art Thief’ by Michael Finkel, the tale of a solo thief with a love of art and a whole range of interesting personality quirks, who managed to steal nearly $2bn worth of art across seven countries. I’m not usually one for true crime, being a squeamish kind of person with a vivid imagination already packed full of horrors, but there’s no violence here, just a strange kind of self-confidence. And I had to sit down and read it cover to cover. It’s the kind of book that will have you sailing past your bus stop, so beware.

Anyhow, I feel as if this year has been the year that I’ve really re-discovered reading for pleasure. How about you? Let me know what your favourite reads have been. A good book is a never-ending joy, for sure.

Dear Readers, very early on in my wildlife gardening ‘journey’, I discovered that you don’t get much of a say in what wildlife turns up. The instant a seed-feeder was up, there was a squirrel to enjoy it, and very acrobatic they were too. The pond proved to be as attractive as a waterhole in the Serengeti.

And the squirrels could always be relied upon to tell me if there was a cat in the garden – at the first sight of a whisker, they’d turn into demon glove puppets, growling and shaking with fury.

Of course, if I could go back to 1876 (when grey squirrels were first released into Regent’s Park) I would advise against such a thing, as there’s no doubt that grey squirrels can be a nuisance in a whole variety of ways. But in my urban back garden, they bring a welcome touch of anarchy, and I never know what they’ll get up to next. During lockdown, for example, I got the chance to watch a pair of juvenile squirrels, who had been born in the drey in the whitebeam tree, and who were just starting to explore and cause havoc.

And squirrels are completely unperturbed by the weather. Wind doesn’t bother them…

and snow doesn’t deter them either.

And so, the squirrels in the garden always cheer me up, rapscallions that they are. They are tough, determined, and rather more intelligent than people give them credit for. They remind me of Victorian street urchins, always looking for an opportunity to exploit some unexpected resource. And for that, they will always have a welcome in my garden, though I might try yet again to make a squirrel-proof feeder work, after they took the lid off of the last one and hid it somewhere. I have a feeling I know who will ‘win’, though….

Street Tree on Fortis Green 27th December

Dear Readers, even on a cold, misty day there’s always a street tree to cheer one up, and this one is a corker. About a year ago I watched as this tree was sawed off to a stump.

“Well, ” I thought. “That’s the end of that”.

However, the tree obviously had other ideas -look at it sprouting away, bless it! I suspect that some council arboriculturalist will be tasked with ‘sorting it out’, but in the meantime it is fighting back with all of its resources. Let’s see what happens next.

The same tree in April this year

We are very lucky with our street trees here in East Finchley. In the summer, the enormous London Plane trees along the High Road help to keep us cool.

Along Lincoln Road, there are lots of lime trees (linden not citrus 🙂 ) – it interests me that they have been planted on this road, but not any of the others. I suppose that fashions change, in street trees as in everything else.

Lincoln Road used to have a gibbet (a cage for hanging up the bodies of executed criminals) at one end. I think a lime tree is much nicer.

A Very Shaggy Lime (Linden) tree on Lincoln Road

Though even these trees are not immune from a bit of brutal pollarding. I’m glad to say that these, too, are recovering.

Lincoln Road lime tree pollarded in 2023

However, Barnet have recently started offering a scheme whereby you can ‘sponsor’ a street tree, and in general a whole new array of species have been appearing. At the bottom of our street we have Crape Myrtle, for example…

Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica)

…some hibiscus trees…

Hibiscus syraicus

and some Amelanchior (Shadbush). The tree below has an interesting history. One of the benefits of writing this blog is that it sometimes records things that I’ve forgotten. This tree was planted in a tree pit in 2019 after, I note. ‘the original tree was removed due to a fungal infection”.

Shadbush (Amelanchior)

The tree started to lean over at a peculiar angle, and in 2023 the whole tree blew over, with what looks to me like convincing evidence of another fungal infection at the root.

Now the tree pit has been filled in and replaced by an EV charger. At least there’s no chance of another tree meeting the same fate.

But there are two times of year when the street trees in the County Roads here in East Finchley really come into their own.  One is in spring, when the crab apples and cherries are full of blossom.

A cherry tree on Bedford Road

Cherry Blossom at the junction of Durham Road and Creighton Avenue

Spring blossom on the County Roads

The other highlight is autumn, when the leaves start to turn. It might not be New England, but it always cheers me up.

Autumn colour on Huntingdon Road

A newly-planted Ginkgo on Bedford Road

Huntingdon Road again. Not that I’m biased 🙂

A berry-laden rowan tree

The leaves turning on my favourite cherry tree

It’s very easy to go about one’s business without paying attention to street trees, and yet I’ve discovered that if I just stop and look at them properly, I can learn so much – the relatively simple things, such as what species/cultivar they are (not always as simple as you’d think, but in London at least you can have a look at the London Tree Map which might give you a clue), but also the more intuitive things. How does the blossom smell? Is the tree full of bees? Is there a big fat wood pigeon in it, eating the crab apples? Does the tree look in shining health, or a bit sad and in need of comfort? Like so many things in  nature, street trees have a lot to offer, if we’re prepared to put in a little time to get to know them.

A smoke bush tree (Cotinus coggryia) growing very close to my house, and unnoticed by me until a few months ago.

Stop Press! A number of birch tree saplings have very recently been planted along Fortis Green (just round the corner from me in East Finchley). These are Betula ermanii ‘Holland’, otherwise known as ‘Erman’s Birch’. 

When they’re all grown up, they should look like the one below. Birch trees generally are hosts for lots of invertebrates, fungi etc, so it will be interesting to see if any native species use these trees, which are originally from East Asia. Paul Wood, in ‘London’s Street Trees’, says this is one of the first of the birches to ‘turn’ in autumn, with its leaves turning golden as early as October. I shall have to pencil in a re-visit.

Traditional Christmas Pudding, set alight with brandy (Photo by By Ed g2s – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97164181)

Dear Readers, is there anything that says ‘winter’ more than a traditional steamed pudding? Although I am very fond of Christmas Pudding, it always seems a bit too much after all the rich food of the first part of the menu, so we generally have it on Boxing Day. But it seems that different regions in the UK have different steamed puddings, so here are a few that I love, or which sound intriguing.

First up, Clootie Dumpling – we always had this with custard after Christmas dinner when I worked in Dundee. It’s a much lighter version of the traditional Christmas pudding, and is cooked wrapped in a cloth (the ‘Clootie’) rather than in a bowl. In fact, this is making me think that this pudding is probably boiled rather than steamed, but you get the idea. Although it doesn’t look very inspiring, I can vouch for its deliciousness and its rib-sticking qualities, just the thing for a freezing day in the north of Scotland.

Clootie dumpling (Photo By Matt Riggott from Reykjavik, Iceland – Clootie dumplingUploaded by Diádoco, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11205179)

My Mum used to knock up a wonderful steamed jam pudding – I always thought of this as a real London recipe, but apparently it’s also known as Northamptonshire pudding, though there the jam must be raspberry. And very nice it looks too!

Northamptonshire Pudding (from https://www.littlesugarsnaps.com/steamed-jam-sponge-pudding/)

Then there’s Newcastle Pudding, which features glacé cherries…

Newcastle Pudding from https://dragonsandfairydust.co.uk/regional-recipes-newcastle-pudding/

Snowdon Pudding comes from Wales, and features a honey and lemon sauce…

Snowdon Pudding from Snowdon Pudding – The Hedgecombers

and then there’s Sussex Pond Pudding, which has a whole lemon inside – this combines with the sugar and butter filling to make a caramelised lemon sauce. Yum!

Sussex Pond Pudding ( By Ad084257 at English Wikipedia – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25328953)

And finally, there’s that butt of many a pudding-related joke, Spotted Dick. Apparently it was renamed ‘Spotted Richard’ in the House of Commons canteen, to head off any buffoonery, though I think they’d need to do more than rename a few desserts to stop the rise and rise of the double entendre.

Spotted Dick (Photo by By Ad084257 at English Wikipedia – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25328953)

So, apologies if this has made anyone start salivating at the thought of a proper steamed pudding, complete with fat, sugar and excess calories. They are such an old-fashioned thing, which could be a relatively economical way of using up jam/marmalade/syrup/eggs etc etc. And I haven’t even mentioned the savoury steamed puddings, such as steak and kidney pudding, which were such a feature when I was growing up. Does anyone else have pudding memories, or regional pudding recipes? Do share!

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ in Temple Fortune, North London

Dear Readers, there are not many scented flowers that bloom in winter time, and so those that do are all the more precious, both to humans who could do with something to lift their mood, and any bumblebees who pop out from hibernation in order to get some nectar to fuel them through the rest of the winter. Here are a few of my favourites.

First up is Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ – the scent from this shrub can be discerned from metres away, and the flowers start off as deep-pink buds, before fading through all shades of pink to white.

Then there’s Winter Honeysuckle, another bumblebee favourite. The fresh lemony scent of this plant is fragrant enough to be discerned even on a frosty day.

Winter-flowering Honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) with bumblebee

And then there’s this inconspicuous plant, known as Christmas Box.  I’ve wandered past it, sniffing the air and trying to work out where the scent was coming from. There’s a whole hedge of it in one of the County Roads, and for a few weeks every December it really cheers me up.

Christmas Box (Sarcococca hookerii)

And how about some Daphne? This is another deliciously-scented garden plant, one to pop into a pot as close to a door as you can, so that you can get a whiff every time you step outdoors. It is a very poisonous plant, though the berries are the most dangerous part – beware if you have small children who might be tempted to try them (though apparently they taste disgusting, so hopefully this would put most people off).

Daphne odora

For many people, the real queen of winter-flowering scented plants is Witch Hazel. The combination of scent and those strange stringy flowers is a real winner, but this is a very slow-growing plant, hence its prohibitive cost. Still, it is a real beauty, especially on a frosty morning when the twigs are painted with ice. The plant is wind-pollinated, so there’s no real pollinator value, but it is still a cracker.

Witch Hazel (Hamamelis mollis)

And finally, there’s Mahonia. I didn’t think of this as a scented plant, but if you pass a large shrub there’s a delicious honeyed fragrance. Plus, Mahonia is relatively cheap in all its varieties, tolerates low temperatures and is a tremendous favourite with bumblebees, whilst I’ve seen Great and Blue Tits pecking at the flowers for nectar, and a variety of birds eating the berries. I would say that it’s always worth having a Mahonia in the garden, particularly if you live in the south of England where bumblebees are often coming out of hibernation earlier, and even keeping their colonies going right through the winter.

Mahonia aquifolium

So, Readers, do you have a favourite winter-flowering plant?

And just a reminder to UK readers of the BSBI New Year Plant Hunt, which runs from 29th December to 1st January inclusive. A great excuse to get out for a walk after all the feasting, and if you happened to pass a country pub en route, well, so much the better.