Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
General Subjects => General Forum => Topic started by: Aberdeenshire Quine on July 11, 2009, 07:37:23 PM
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I'm new here, but I've spent all afternoon trying to identify 5 plants given to me by a neighbour who had noticed my efforts to establish a rockery.
(She gave me 7 and I'v worked out 2:()
Is it appropriate for me to post photos and ask for help? Or is that not done?
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of course you can post photos but keep them under 800 pixels wide
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Hello, Aberdeenshire Quine, welcome! Certainly post your photos and we'll do our best for you!! ;)
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What is a 'Quine' please?
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David, with my Aberdeenshire born Mother, I am well placed to help you with this one..... a quine is a lass, a girl, a young woman. The male equivalent is a loon..... a lad, youth, young fellow.
A quine who is of buxom build might be referred to as a sonsy deem ........though that is a term that can equally be applied to a woman of more mature years of curvy appearance.......
Hope this helps you.... Cheers,
Maggi ( often called a sonsy deem!!)
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Ah Maggi. From a loon to a sonsy deem. Thank you very much.
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David, Aberdonians also have a habit of adding 'ie' to the end of a noun. A young man doesn't have to be ....(y) but may well be refered to as a ....(ie). Hope that helps.
And welcome to the Forum, Quine, we will do our best to help with your photographs.
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My Aberdonian grandfather always called me a "sonsy lass." :) I always assumed it would be spelled as sonsie. As you see Quine, it doesn't take much to take our minds off plants, but equally little to turn them back again.
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Thank you for your welcome. Here they are
(http://i30.tinypic.com/2ahcvx0.jpg)
(http://i25.tinypic.com/5wjxiu.jpg)
(http://i28.tinypic.com/2vim4xt.jpg)
(http://i29.tinypic.com/ifcwzn.jpg)
(http://i32.tinypic.com/2uiitki.jpg)
Thank you in anticipation
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That was 767 pixels wide. Honest ???
Edit by Maggi: AQ, it was 767 Deep, over 1000 wide! I've changed it! ;)
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David, with my Aberdeenshire born Mother, I am well placed to help you with this one..... a quine is a lass, a girl, a young woman.
Maggi ( often called a sonsy deem!!)
Looks very much like the Norwegian word for woman: Kvinne :)
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Hello, AQuine!
1) is Houttuynia cordata Chameleon .... quite likes being by a pond, can be a bit rampant.
2) looks like a little spurge of some sort... Euphorbia cyparissias Does it have a white sap if you break a leaf or stem? The brown bits sticking out look like dead Oxalis leaves.
3) is the golden-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium brachypus can seed about a lot but is easily pulled out from anywhere you don't want it. The flowers don't last long individually , but it makes lots of them.
4) a Campanula..... not sure which
5) a Silene......not sure which
:)
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I'm new here, but I've spent all afternoon trying to identify 5 plants given to me by a neighbour who had noticed my efforts to establish a rockery.
(She gave me 7 and I'v worked out 2:()
I would be rather cautious about planting these out. Several of them impress me as being plants which tend to grow "over enthusiastically" and may prove to be ineradicable weeds once established.
Perhaps a visit to your neighbor to view her garden, and in the process ascertain just how well these do in your area, is in order.
The campanula presents the risk that it may be the dreaded C. rapunculoides, though the leaves don't look like that to me. Check the roots for thin tuberous swellings. As for the sisyrinchium, I am always very leery of that genus having once had to weed out an infinity of seedlings of the chrome-yellow S. californicum, but that's as much attributable to my climate as it is to some inherent defect in the plant's character.
Afterthought: one good sisrynchium is 'Quaint and Queer', with very strange flowers usually described as "the color of Bourbon creams". Sets NO seed, at least not here. It was long thought to be sterile hybrid, but the botanists have assigned it to a species.
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Sorry about that. I just tried to resize and upload them again, and they will NOT let me reduce the width. I put the numbers in and they swap sides every time. I need to go and play with my editing programme.
Meantime, thank you for the information and advice. I would give great offence if I did not take these plants and plant them out, but I've done some research and I've only put two of them in the rockery. On is in a "hole" in a brick patio, and the the two have gone into a west facing bank under a very mature hedge, and I will, if it works, plant between them with lavender. The rockery is so bare that if any of them go mad, it will be very easy to spot it and take the necessary action.
It's a wee bit of a shame, since I really wanted native plants for the most part. Still, I can use that as a reason to refuse more.
Thanks again
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Always wise to take some precautions with plants that can get over enthusiastic, AQ..... but all are rather attractive, nonetheless..... and, as you say, a gift.... that's always nice, eh?!!
The trouble with the UK flora, attractive though it is, is that it can be somewhat of a struggle to get a goodlooking year -round rockery planted with such things. I think you will soon be tempted by some of the cute "foreigners" that are available anyway!! ;D ;)
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I'm with Maggi and Rodger. Plant in haste and repent forever is the misquote that comes to mind ;) I was once given a piece of a 'new' tropeaolum by a friend who worked for a big nursery. 15 years on and it is still one of my worst ineradicable weeds :(
Some of the 'foreigners' that Maggi refers to have the possibility of looking like they might be native without the risks attached to some 'easy' plants. Good luck with your rockery, look around the pages of this forum and you will find infinite possibilities :)
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I managed to stop the spread of a Houttuynia cordata Chameleon that
I planted - it was moving fast even in my dry garden. I saw it sited
cleverly in another garden - in a pot on a rock in a pond. It looked
gorgeous but couldn't escape.
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If you have the space is there anything too wrong with 'enthusiastic' alpines. At the moment parts of our garden are a wonderful sea of blue and white with campanula and that white stonecrop thingy. We have yellow and blue sisyrinchium in season and earlier the yellow draba makes a wonderful impression - not to mention the Fairy Foxglove. When any of these get to be just too much we go round with a bucket and haul loads of it out quite easily.
I suppose main 'pain' in our garden is the yellow Meconopsis cambrica that we inherited. Even then the lovely yellow flowers are worth the effort of keeping it under control.
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David, with my Aberdeenshire born Mother, I am well placed to help you with this one..... a quine is a lass, a girl, a young woman.
Maggi ( often called a sonsy deem!!)
Looks very much like the Norwegian word for woman: Kvinne :)
It is an interesting word quean imeaning "young, robust woman," it is from the Old English cwene "woman," [also "female serf, hussy, prostitute" ]. It is related to the word queen, from Old English cwen "queen, female ruler of a state, woman, wife." The modern use of the word has become more specialised, but is still used in its original sense in the Doric dialect of Aberdeenshire.
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Simon, I assume that the words in the square brackets are there for technical correctness rather than personal popularity?
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In all my time in Aberdeen, I never heard it used in those ways- though presumably it was at some point in time. ;)
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David, with my Aberdeenshire born Mother, I am well placed to help you with this one..... a quine is a lass, a girl, a young woman.
Maggi ( often called a sonsy deem!!)
Looks very much like the Norwegian word for woman: Kvinne :)
It is an interesting word quean imeaning "young, robust woman," it is from the Old English cwene "woman," [also "female serf, hussy, prostitute" ]. It is related to the word queen, from Old English cwen "queen, female ruler of a state, woman, wife." The modern use of the word has become more specialised, but is still used in its original sense in the Doric dialect of Aberdeenshire.
I find the source of words fascinating (should I get a life!) Further research suggests that "cwene" was derived from the Proto-Germanic (pre-cursor of all the Germanic derived languages) "kweni" (with a 'twiddle above the e) meaning woman/wife along with Old Norse "kvaen" with the ae forming a dipthong and Saxon "qvan" (with a twiddle above the a) Well, it is raining! ;D
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If you have the space is there anything too wrong with 'enthusiastic' alpines?
*if* you have unlimited space, no, there's not a thing wrong with the thugs, but most of us do not have unlimited space. And as our interests grow, we want to plant less robust things in the space occupied by thugs. I understand your point, but to any beginner I'd say avoid the thugs because sooner or later they *will* be in the way or they will start to choke out more delicate things.
The smaller the garden, the more careful you have to be about this matter.
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David, with my Aberdeenshire born Mother, I am well placed to help you with this one..... a quine is a lass, a girl, a young woman.
Maggi ( often called a sonsy deem!!)
Looks very much like the Norwegian word for woman: Kvinne :)
It is an interesting word quean imeaning "young, robust woman," it is from the Old English cwene "woman," [also "female serf, hussy, prostitute" ]. It is related to the word queen, from Old English cwen "queen, female ruler of a state, woman, wife." The modern use of the word has become more specialised, but is still used in its original sense in the Doric dialect of Aberdeenshire.
I find the source of words fascinating (should I get a life!) Further research suggests that "cwene" was derived from the Proto-Germanic (pre-cursor of all the Germanic derived languages) "kweni" (with a 'twiddle above the e) meaning woman/wife along with Old Norse "kvaen" with the ae forming a dipthong and Saxon "qvan" (with a twiddle above the a) Well, it is raining! ;D
Don't worry, David. You are not alone- this kind of thing gets me through a snowy winter.
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Simon, anything's better than watching British TV ;D
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You should try Bulgarian TV- American, Spanish, Brazilian or Italian tragi-coms dubbed into Bulgarian- enough to make you lose the will...
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Hmmm.... I think I might get to like it here :-\
Thank you for all the advice (seriously). I have taken it all to heart. I will be careful.
Now, about the cats.....
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Now, about the cats.....
Oh, crikey..... yes, you almost certainly WILL get to like it here!! ;D ;D
M
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I can recommend. and after that I'll keep my head down :-[