Self-sown plants can be real bargain buy for your garden
but there are also herbaceous perennials, hardy annuals, and herbs on site that we did not introduce.
We’ve been entertained by groups of bluebells (and white) alongside cornflower for years.
They simply appeared and multiplied. Different dispersal agents are responsible for such surprises.
Some are the result of bird activity, others have been brought in on the breeze, yet more the result of amazing plant dispersal mechanisms.
We’ve recently dug up five young holly plants of varying height and put that down to bird activity.
The hard seed is ejected after consuming the flesh. It’s evident they also enjoy fruits of leycesteria (pheasant berry), cotoneaster, roses and berberis. Birds love the bright orange fruits of an attractive cuckoo pint (Arum italicum Marmoratum) with green and white, spear-shaped leaves.
Beloved of flower arrangers, the plant has a darker invasive side, developing a bulbous storage organ well below soil level.
The wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca) offers small, tasty fruits in summer but the birds think so too, and they caused the spread throughout our garden.
I’m occasionally asked to identify a plant out of the ordinary which has just turned up in someone’s garden, and asked “How did it get there?”. Wind dispersal is always a possibility but when it’s a species indigenous to another country, my thoughts turn to migrant birds.
Birds are certainly not responsible for the explosion of blue violets and heartsease violas we’re currently experiencing, that is down to the tiny seed capsule that nature blessed with a special mechanism.
When ripe it projects the seeds away from the parent plant.
Both are so attractive and welcome though.
They’re easily lifted and collected in groups to make statements throughout the garden.