THE sweet, slightly acrid scent of privet pervades the streets from garden hedges. The same scent can also be detected on sunny, chalky hillsides, where it comes from the wild privet bushes. Wild privet, which is a native plant, has narrower leaves than the garden variety, and loses them in the winter. Garden privet is an evergreen Japanese species.
The first flowers are opening on lime trees. They are small, sparkling, creamy flowers, and they too launch a sweet, powerful scent into town streets. The bees pollinate them, and they very quickly develop into seeds like little drumsticks.
In the woods, foxgloves are in flower. Their pinkish-purple flowers are ranged up the tall stem, with more and more continually opening towards the top. They often grow in extensive swaths, sometimes with white blooms among them.
They are attractive flowers, but very poisonous. The drug digitalin is extracted from their leaves and used as a cardiac stimulant, and as a poison in the Lord Peter Wimsey novel The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Rosebay willow herb, another pinkish-purple flower that grows in spires, is also opening. DJM