Skip to main content

All very umbel

While Ted, the pup, was asleep and unaware of our absence, Tilly and I had a walk along a short section of the John Muir Way this morning.  The cow parsley has gone over now, but the hedgerows are still full of lovely things.  At the moment, there are three other members of the Apiaceae or Umbelliferae family in flower - hogweed, pignut and ground elder.  This is the same family as carrot, parsley and fennel.  The word umbel comes from the Latin umbella "parasol, sunshade".  Wikipedia gives a good description of an umbel as an "inflorescence which consists of a number of short flower stalks (called pedicels) which spread from a common point, somewhat like umbrella ribs". The website does not mention that the young leaves are also edible, and apparently very delicious.  I haven't tried them, and not sure I am inclined to - well, maybe!

 Hogweed curls its flowerhead up inside a sort of packet which bursts open to allow its lovely lacy umbel to unfurl.
In the photo below the flowerhead on the left is pignut, and elderflower on the right.
 This one is the flower of ground elder.
We passed some delicious wild honeysuckle, one of my favourite flowers in the June hedgerow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In a vase on Monday - colour

The intense colours in my vase this week come from nasturtiums, sweetpeas and a single glorious zinnia! Their beauty and love of life speak for themselves and need no further words from me! Enjoy!
8 comments
Read more

Coastal walk from Gullane to North Berwick

By the time I have walked about four miles, my toes are screaming at me - it's the arthritis, you see.  One of the joys of being that little bit older than I was.  However, for a long time, I have been keen to walk along the beaches, and follow the coastal path, between Gullane and North Berwick. So, having worked out the tide times, I decided today was the day, and off we went. Below is our starting point, the bay at Gullane.  It's a lovely beach, very popular with dog walkers. This is looking east, the direction Tilly and I were going to take. Looking back, up the Forth, the unmistakable bulk of Arthur's Seat, and Edinburgh's skyline, just clear enough to see. For most of the walk, there is the choice between wandering along a series of beaches, or following a path along the top of each. There's no denying it, at heart I am a shell-seeker.  I have loads of shells at home.  We lived on one of the out islands in the Bahamas for a just over a year, ...
7 comments
Read more

Possibly the last post and a sizzlingly hot vase on Monday

The border in our tiny garden is in an in-between phase at the moment and not very colourful, but elsewhere there are pops of high summer colour and I have brought them together in my vase today. The running wave uses Blogger as it's vehicle and they are changing the way a post is created but unfortunately I cannot make the new format work. I can't progress beyond the title! I cannot navigate to the main body of the post to create text. The new template has no prompts for adding photos, weblinks, to format the text, change font etc. It may be my old MacBook that's as fault but I can't do anything about that!! Are any other IAVOM bloggers who use Blogger having the same problems? I have tried, three times, to contact Blogger through their 'Help' prompt and received no feedback or contact whatsoever. This post is using the old 'Legacy' format, which no longer permits any kind of formatting of text, and so after four attempts I have finally manage...
15 comments
Read more