That liberal shepherds give a grosser name

[callmemadam]

This week I have been mostly weeding wild arum or Arum maculatum, which looks like this:



Drawing by John Nash from The Native Garden

Nobody knows for sure if this is the plant Shakespeare meant but it must be a good candidate. Most people call it Lords & Ladies or Cuckoo Pint. I don't mind a few of these under trees or in wild spots but I don't want them spreading through the borders. At this time of year, when you're clearing, you see clumps of them everywhere and they are extremely hard to dig up completely, bulb and all. Not quite as bad as a bluebell in the wrong place, but close. Later in the year the leaves disappear and you forget all about them until twice as many appear the following spring.

Comments

[minniemoll.livejournal.com]

A weed I don't have! I didn't think there were any....

But I have mare's tail, which is evil, and that stuff with stickly stems and little round burrs that get in cats' fur (goosefoot weed?) as well as a huge crop of nettles and many other things I don't know the name of. And evening primrose, which would be okay if there were just a few, but not by the hundred.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Bad luck on the mare's tail, which we don't have. Plenty of the sticky stuff (I don't know what it's called, either)and ecologists would have you nurture your nettles. If evening primroses were rare, everyone would want them. Gardeners are so perverse that there's probably someone, somewhere trying to grow just one plant in completely unsuitable conditions.