The wild garlic looks, shall we say jumbled, the pink azalea makes for a busy background, and the sunlight isn’t helping… unless you can see it all as a natural, floral patchwork impression of colours, angles and attitudes. An outdoor tea party of sorts was taking place just around the corner – if the azalea flowers were people, their floral dresses and sociability would have suited the event perfectly.
I don’t often see a Davidia involucrata in flower. Folk names include the handkerchief tree, the dove tree and the ghost tree and when you see the bracts turning and fluttering, it’s easy to see why. Even a still picture is quite hypnotic.
Susan Rushton 
Hi Susan, have you heard the name Ransomes for Wild Garlic? I seem to think it was an alternative name although it could have been a local to Cheshire name.
I have heard of that, dimly, yes.
I googled it and apparently it’s spelled Ramsons.
We seem to favour the wild onion (three-cornered leek) to the ransom (wild garlic) in this part of the country. It’s everywhere along the roadside! I do like the handkerchief tree – they really do look like hankies floating in the breeze 🙂
I have been noticing the wild garlic more than usual this year. Are the wild onions purple or white?
They are also white, and edible, though I haven’t used them. I should! I have pulled armfuls out of my car park bit of the garden!
Lovely no matter how you look at it.
Everything was looking bright and beautiful last Sunday.
Beautiful photos!
Thanks, Cindy.
I was not familiar with the “handkerchief” tree (although I am drawn to the ghost tree name). Lovely.
It does look like it is covered in small ghosts, all going ‘Woo!’
Beautiful 😀
Thanks, Cee. 🙂
Angles and attitudes! I like it! It’s exactly the way some garden parts strike the admirer. Of course I’ve never heard of the handkerchief tree by any name, and so I am very pleased to know of it. Another plant that sharpens our imaginations. Lovely portraits, both!
It was in a garden I thought I knew well, but it turns out there’s a whole hillside I’d never explored. Rather wild, with paths and lots of bluebells.
I can think of few surprises as good as that!
Love the handkerchief tree – and ‘ghost tree’ is a great name! (Hadn’t heard that one before.)
Folk names can be wonderfully apt.
The thing I find interesting about the photo of the Davidia involucrata tree how it shapes the negative spaces. The bits of brilliant blue sky look sort of like puzzle pieces.
You’re right. The lime green leaves really catch my eye. I tried to get better close ups of the bracts, but it was too breezy.
Yes it is so easy to walk passed a handkerchief tree in flower. I’ve been doing it for how ever long … until your post!! Thanks
Those waving white bracts do their best to get us looking up 🙂
Love the Davidia – it’s entirely new to me. As for the garlic, I don’t think I have ever met an Allium I didn’t like.
It’s a lovely plant to have in the garden because it is so kinetic, like a living mobile. I suppose all trees are like that, but the effect is pronounced and a touch mysterious with the handkerchief tree, even in a light breeze.
This is the second handkerchief tree I saw today. I grew quite a few of them, but never saw a mature one. They are not the easiest to grow in cans, but the clients assured me that they would grow into small trees.
I’m not sure how long they keep their bracts and was surprised to see this one in flower so early. There is another one in another part of the garden that was still green. It’s the time of year when Chelsea Flower Show is on TV (it is really well covered here) and you see images of large trees in leaf being moved in with their roots wrapped in burlap. That always seems a very risky manoeuvre.
We see them only on television, or in pictures from other regions. I sort of wonder if we will be seeing a few of them locally over the next few decades, as those they we ‘grew’ and sold mature. (It was not a crop that we produced. We just brought them in bare root, and canned them because some of our clients wanted them.)