Monday 8 August 2011

Help Needed to Identify my Mystery Plant

WHAT IS THIS?

Following on from yesterday's post, I have taken a few more photographs of my mystery plant to see if anyone can help identify it. It has now reached a height of 72cm, flowers are in clusters, each flower has 5 petals and a yellow centre. It has grown from seed, not bulb. It is growing in our back garden, here in SW Scotland, first spotted when it appeared in a hanging basket alongside one of my cherry tomato plants. Is it some sort of red stemmed vine? Is it a herb? Is it a shrub? Is it wild? Is it even legal? Help please. :)
It's doing well in a pot of compost at the back door

Brought indoors to photograph it close up

Flowers are in clusters and are pale pink fading to white, 5 petals, yellow centres

Leaves have red veins, a flower cluster develops from each new leaf shoot

The base of the plant, showing the red stems

It doesn't seem to twine around anything, but I've now given it a fan of canes for support

If anyone has any ideas what this might be, please let me know either here or in the forums. Thank you. 

7 comments:

  1. It isn't bindweed and it isn't bryony. It isn't even climbing up anything, it's simply growing.

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  2. could it be soap wort? it looks close to my wild plants pics but web pics are all different

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  3. It isn't soapwort, either. Choclette8 reckons it's buckwheat, so I'm comparing photos now.

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  4. It could be a variety of buckwheat, but I've never seen it with red veined leaves before. If it is Buckwheat it is well worth cultivating, it has lots of healfth giving properties, especially for the liver.

    Sue xx

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  5. Sue, I'll need to wait and see what gets produced after the flowers go. It's still a pretty plant to have at the door and the rabbit seems to ignore it, thankfully. LOL

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  6. It maybe Malabar Spinach

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    Replies
    1. It turned out to be buckwheat and we've had a few more grow over the years since this post was published. :) Thanks for your suggestion.

      Delete

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