flower – Ruth Blogs Here

This is our third summer in this house, and still the garden brings surprises!

For the last two years, at the back of a busy-ish mature flower bed next to the back fence, two small mystery plants with strange whorls of green leaves along the stems have grown to a height of about 18 inches or so. The first year they produced some leaves but nothing much more.

Last summer the plants returned to a similar height as before, and at the top of their stems this time there were a couple of strange little buds that initially showed some promise but eventually gave up and came to nothing of any note.

And as my nascent gardening knowledge is based mainly on working out which plants are which retrospectively, generally from their flowers (once they start to bloom), I’ve been a bit stuck with successfully identifying this one to date.

But earlier this year I deliberately reduced the volume of some of the other older, mature plants that seem to have taken over this particular flower bed and to my surprise although one of my mystery plants has repeated its half-hearted will-I-won’t-I response from last year, the other has grown well beyond its previous 18 inches and is now a good four feet in height.

As well as the impressively large whorls of leaves along the lower length of the stem, there are also a few single leaves higher up leading to what seem to be individual upside down hanging flower buds, single and separate – there are 13 buds on this one plant stem.

And yesterday the first lower bud has finally opened up to produce this little gem… According to an image search on Google it seems this is actually a Turkscap Lily, and apparently the petals should curve completely back on themselves, so we’ll wait and see what happens next.

Nature never ceases to amaze me, and as I slowly change things in the garden with my cautious trial-and-error approach it feels like nature is happily rewarding my well-meaning efforts with delights such as this little beauty…

Flower of the Day

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