Can someone remind me how to post a photo from my desktop to here? Please and thanks.

Kate P wrote:

Can someone remind me how to post a photo from my desktop to here? Please and thanks.

Yes.

Use the host an image button which is the green screen with the floppy in front of it.



Use browse to find your photo and change the size to 640 because it fits better and then press 'upload'. You can then copy the address in the 'image url' box


and then you can post it with the 'image' button - the other little green screen.

Let's see your flowers...

I got rescued earlier by Ard T - thanks though. Will post the flowers in the morning when they're back out. Some of them had closed up by the time I got to it this evening.

Kate P wrote:

Noxious weed that is growing wildly in the gravel outside my back door is no 4 and 5 (spreads like wildfire but very easy to pull up by the roots).
.

It's Herb Robert.

Vetch



Honeysuckle



Common Hogweed



Bramble

That one you've named Honeysuckle Lestat, I thought that was woodbine ??

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

That one you've named Honeysuckle Lestat, I thought that was woodbine ??

Same thing. Or to appear edumicated it's Lonicera periclymenum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_periclymenum

Lestat wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

That one you've named Honeysuckle Lestat, I thought that was woodbine ??

Same thing. Or to appear edumicated it's Lonicera periclymenum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_periclymenum

Ohhhh. So what's that thing I've been calling Honeysuckle all these years.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Ohhhh. So what's that thing I've been calling Honeysuckle all these years.

What's it look like?

Unidentified Weeds from the hedgerows of Tipperary



I like the way this one looks very like the nettles it's growing through.

Smashing weeds there Lestat. That first pic has stinger and non stinger (with the flowers) nettles.

The last one has some 'sticky back' weed.

The thing I call honey suckle is a small redish bell shape flower with purplish stamen hanging down. Its a flowering bush I think. You can pull the stamen out and suck the ends for a sweet taste.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Smashing weeds there Lestat. That first pic has stinger and non stinger (with the flowers) nettles.

The last one has some 'sticky back' weed. .

Sticky Backs. A blast from the past.

Turns out it's Galium Aparine. Interesting medicinal uses too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goosegrass

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

The thing I call honey suckle is a small redish bell shape flower with purplish stamen hanging down. Its a flowering bush I think. You can pull the stamen out and suck the ends for a sweet taste.

sounds like a fuschia.

You lot don't know the meaning of weeds, I'm up against natures commandos, the ones that dig in for the long haul.

The weeds around squire hall in order of pestilence;
Toping the charts
1 Sycamore trees. I don't want to be a lumber jack. They even seed into the gutters and that is only the start of it.
2 Japanese knotweed Hateful. (Tip deprive it of daylight and you weaken it eventually but it will even try to grow through concrete paths)
3 Mares tails. Really tough. You need systemic weed killer mixed with turps so it can get into the cells. Not very green but there is no other way of killing this stuff and even then it keeps trying to regain a foot hold.
4 Convolvulus yes the dreaded bind weed. More systemic weed killer.
5 Ground elder. Yes another one where killing the roots is essential.
6 Rhododendron Ponticum
7 couch grass.

Sycamore trees and the cursed Rhododendron seed everywhere and seed in from outside. Japanese knotweed one devil to kill. Mares tail were around long before the dinosaurs so can take just about anything thrown at them and recover.

I have lots of brambles but they are not in the way and are good for wildlife. Easy enough to get rid of if they spread or seed in to where they are not wanted.

If there are children watch the hogweed and particularly giant hogweed . The hairs on the stems contain poisonous sap, which causes blistering and severe skin irritation. If a child decided the hollow stem was something to blow down it could kill them.

I lost the same post twice here. Must be that Japanese knotweed...

Squire, Jap knotweed was a feature in Jeffrey Archer's book I read last week while getting baked and sloshed in the Riveira.

Yeh Lestat, it's Fuschia I was thinking of, always called it honeysuckle for some reason..

Great stuff on the sticky backs. I never knew the were edible and capable of coffeelike goop. You're the Weed Meister.

If you see any young shots like this kill them quick before it gets established.

Here is a link to the Japanese Knotweed Alliance. Yes it really is that serious a problem, forget Afghanistan and Iraq we have a real war on our hands back home.

http://www.cabi-bioscience.org

Those shoots look like serpent's tails. I don't think I've ever seen it before.

It grows to about 3m on long stems and thick clumps and flowers like this.



It takes over and the roots go down to hades, so it is impractical to dig it out without heavy machinery. It will even go under foundations and come up in the house. I have tried poison, home made napalm, salt and covering with old carpet and black polythene. It is a war of attrition. You need to be right on top of this one. If shoots appear anywhere get them up imediately. Like all plants it needs sunlight but can sit dormant for a very long time as far as I can gauge.


In the UK they really take it seriously

Legal issues

A variety of laws have been put in place to regulate Japanese knotweed growth in the UK.

According to the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) 1990 controlled waste, must be disposed of at appropriately licensed landfills. Japanese knotweed plant material and/or any knotweed contaminated soil which you discard, intend to discard or are required to discharge is likely to be classified as controlled waste.

Japanese Knotweed was a new one on me, Squire. But there was one single stalk growing in the field across the road so I pulled it up this morning and hope that does the trick. Thanks for the picture.

Here's some of your Bindweed which has been domesticated as Morning Glory.








Rosebay Willowherb aka Fireweed. This one was introduced from North America in the 19th C.



Ragwort. You can be summonsed for allowing this one grow as it is poisonous to cattle and horses. The plants contain alkaloids which damage the liver in small doses and are fatal in large amounts. 23kg of ragwort will kill a cow. The poison survives in the plants that are harvested with hay and silage. Sheep and goats are immune. Ragwort is also harmful to humans. The Cinabar Moth caterpillars love it though (below).

Lestat

Believe me you don't want Japanese knotweed! When the UK regard it and the soil it grows in as controlled waste you know you are in for a battle!

Bindweed; you have my sympathy, it grows in with plants you want to keep and you just can't dig it out. So if you have the patience of Job try to remove all new shoots above ground, perhaps practical in a small garden but not elsewhere NO! You need a weedkiller that kills the roots, if among other plants paint it on to the leaves in dry weather (if there ever is any). Eventually you kill it. Not very Green but how else?

I quite like Rosebay willow herb, it seeds into disturbed ground, but it is easy enough to remove. Not much Ragwort around these parts, as you say a disaster for grazing and the farmland generally in these parts is well managed. If any of it appears I pull it up.

There are a couple of old manky ponds (need work, yet more work) and a bit of a stream but fortunately none of the pond weed or similar, nothing worse than trying to clear out a water course. Himalayan balsam along the banks but life is too short for that one just now. I regard that area with its brambles as my nature reserve or put another way, up to now, nature has beaten me just.


Himalayan Balsam


The seed pods pop when you touch them, children love it.

Stuff that grows on walls.



Stonecrop



Ribwort



Maidenhair Spleenwort



Hart's Tongue Fern

Im plagued with bindweed. Nice pictures Lestat - good clean air if the lichen is anything to go by.

I have left some Rosebay Willow Herb growing amongst the roses. Its a pretty pink. I didnt know it was a Yankie visitor.

We have some pink Nepalese stuff at the bottom of the garden. I forget its name. It comes every other year.

cactus flower wrote:

. Nice pictures Lestat - good clean air if the lichen is anything to go by..

Out in horse country. Couldn't get better.

cactus flower wrote:

I have left some Rosebay Willow Herb growing amongst the roses. Its a pretty pink. I didnt know it was a Yankie visitor.

It looks really dramatic in a big stand. Hard to believe it's a weed.

This is a wonderful thread - thanks to you all for the pics and the wisdom; Lestat, you're a revelation.

It's nice to see a Buachallán again - the name I've always known for Ragwort.

When I was a girleen my grandfather would go out with a billhook to slash them in the field next to our house. We used to jump over them, our own Buachallán Olympic High Jump. I see very few of them anywhere in the country nowadays.

Em, so "Hart's Tongue Fern " looks suspiciously like a cutting I stole from a National Trust cottage holiday in Cornwall a couple of years ago ... now thriving in a corner of my garden at the moment and I love the look of it, yet am I now suddenly supposed to worry about it??!

Am still an enthusiastic learner in all matters horticultural.
Was staying in a National Trust property, a converted pig sty (what would my South Ulster grandparents on both sides have said?!) and thought I was being really crafty taking a "cutting" of the fern in the pig sty wall!!!

I'm delighted to be able to bring ye all some more rare wild flowers of the Burren again.

It is an honour to educate you all on this wonderful region with its magnificent flora, scenery and fauna (used to constitute crusty types in their bus but they seem to have headed off to Connemara)


A daisy.


Bluebells.


Ivy.


A weird thistle (my favourite!)



A different species of bluebells.


A nice yellow flower.


Very small pink flowers ...


See !? (no image-meddling was done to achieve the incredibly nano-scale of the pink flowers)



A mint-like plant like the one I had on my dessert about an hour earlier in Liscannor.


A lovely white flower. A posy probably.


A green fern in a hole in a rock.


Apologies for the orientation but this is the only one I'm not sure about but I think it's the seeds of a "dockleaf" plant which has extraordinary curative properties when you are stung severely by nettles.

ah the good old dockleaf, made use of it manys the time at the age of 10-ish, ... see, do kids these days learn these things?