#leycesteria

Plant of the Day

Wednesday 21 June 2023

The deciduous shrub Leycesteria formosa (Himalayan honeysuckle, flowering nutmeg, pheasant berry) grows vigorously in moist but well-drained soil in full sun or partial shade. It can be pruned back hard like an herbaceous perennial. The flowers are popular with bees and the berries attract birds, including blackbirds and pheasants.

Leycesteria formosa, the Himalayan honeysuckle，鬼吹箫。

Nord, Flandres françaises: Cassel, Jardin du Mont des Récollets.

Achillée, ???, érable

AKA, at least in English, as pheasant berry, pheasant-eye, spiderwort, whistle stick,  granny's curls, partridge berry, chocolate berry, shrimp plant/flower, treacle tree/berry,  flowering nutmeg, Himalaya nutmeg, Elisha's tears, Cape fuchsia, and Symphoricarpos rivularis. I’ll cover one of the local names in its home range below.

Those last few common names are particularly egregious nonsense - the plant is completely unrelated to nutmeg or to the fuchsia, and the entire family is unknown to Sub-Sharan Africa. And ‘Eilsha’s Tears is a corruption of Leycesteria. which was coined by the one-time director of Calcutta’s Royal Botanic Garden Nathaniel Wallich in honour of his friend William Leycester, a noted amateur horticulturist, in about 1820. ‘Formosa’ doesn’t help, since the plant doesn’t grow in Taiwan, and is simply the Latin for beautiful. 

Native to Pakistan, India, Nepal, both East and West Himalaya, Southwestern China, Tibet and Myanmar. A noxious invasive species in New Zealand, Australia, the neighbouring islands of Micronesia, and elsewhere. The berries are unpleasantly bitter when unripe, and possibly poisonous if reports from Australia and New Zealand are confirmed, but once soft and deep purple-brown in colour are edible and sweet, having a mild flavour reminiscent of caramel or toffee.

The plant was first cultivated in the UK in 1824, although reports at the time were a little disappointed - expectations had been raised by a plate in Wallich's Plantae Asiaticae Rariores, and while they might not have had Photoshop back then they certainly had artists who were a bit heavy handed with the coloured inks. After that they discovered that it grows well in cool dappled shade, readily colonising walls and cliffs (and the trunks of treeferns in New Zealand), and providing excellent food for pheasants. It’s also surprisingly resistant to pollution. 

Broadstone Gardening Tips for February 2016

seed potatoes Well, I can’t remember another winter as wet as this one has been. I hope it isn’t followed up by a very cold spell which will damage plants especially since everything is shooting early due to the mild weather. It is possible to sow seeds of some vegetables and hardy flowers in pots in a greenhouse. Some half hardy flowers such as lobelia, geranium and begonias can also be started…