Archiangelic

I am not at all sure my wildflower patch is going at all well. There is quite a bit of grass on it now, but I suspect with regret that this is not the 'nurse grasses' which will shelter the wildflowers that will emerge next year, but just the same coarse grasses that were there before.

This is why it is gratifying to welcome the occasional new plant that appears in the garden, quite without me doing anything at all. I can't tell whether the bugle will appear this year, but instead I have had an entirely unexpected patch of yellow archangel emerge. Lion's Snap was its name in Somerset once upon a time, Snuff Candle in Wiltshire, and Weasel's Nose in Dorset, a title apparently taken up into its scientific name of lamium galeobdolon, the second part of which means 'weasel stink'. A slander: it resembles the weasel in neither scent nor appearance, which my photograph does no justice.