I always associate Easter with the resurrection of flowering life. Although the holiday is early this year, our garden and woods are already full of birdsong and blossoms – cherry and apple, sloe and hawthorn, cowslips and coltsfoot.
Sadly, this spring will not bring back from the dead one of my favorite back garden inhabitants: a tall, woody shrub that perished over the winter, victim of a split trunk caused by its own burgeoning weight. I’ve spent many sultry summer afternoons basking in the shade of its deep-green leaves and star-like purple flowers, and was traumatized when spring did not bring new shoots emerging from its barren trunk. Only yesterday, we admitted defeat and cut it down (much to the disappointment of our neighbor peering over the fence, who loved it just as much as we did).
Rest in pieces
I wish I could tell you what it was, but I have never been able to find anyone who knows. It’s not native to Ohio, or I would have had to memorize its appearance and Latin names in my extensive undergraduate botany courses. Neither could I identify it with my Gray’s Manual of Botany, a doorstop-sized dichotomous key that will eventually lead you to identify any species – if you’re willing to count bud scars, inspect pollen shape and dissect the ovaries of flowers under a microscope.
Blooms, in happier times
The tree in the foreground on the right, last summer_
I was wondering if anyone out there could help me? I’d like to buy a replacement, and a positive ID would really help. Have a look at the pictures: it’s a woody shrub with ovate leaves, tree-like and prone to growing two or three meters tall. The purple flowers have five petals and an orange center, resembling the Solanaceae (the family that contains deadly nightshade and tomatoes), but nothing looked promising in that section of Gray’s so I’m suspecting it’s something else.
In the meantime, I hope you all have a relaxing Easter/Passover/long weekend, however you define it.
My mother, who knows everything about plants, suggests you email the photo to Steve or Daphne at Radio Lincolnshire, but is betting on Solanum sp.
I would not be surprised if it were Solanum, but I can’t make any of them fit. Maybe it’s an exotic hybrid that’s not in my Grey’s?
Such things happen. She’s now looking at the Royal Hort. Soc. encyclopedia.
Ha ha. We know what it is, but we’re not saying!
Yes, give others a chance: you cheated by consulting The Mother Ship.
It’s a seagull.
‘I always associate Easter with the resurrection’
So do many others.
My dear Charles, you are too quick for this humble wordsmith.
Apparently it is this! (_Solanum crispum_ ‘Glasnevin’ or Chilean potato tree)
Many thanks to Richard’s mum for clearing that up with her hefty horticultural encyclopedia. I’ve transplanted one we hacked up out of the front garden but it’s not too happy. Good to know I can buy one if needs be.
I like the ‘eventual height and spread’ graphic in that link. I’ll pass on your thanks (and she could probably get you one cheaper than the 8.99 one you found).