fivemack | Of loss and botany

By the main entrance to the building where I work was placed, at its building, a patch of bare earth; brownish clay, baked to dust on top, once planted with grass out of hope rather than gardening wisdom.

On it grew a vibrant mass of weeds, including, in great profusion, one I've never seen anywhere else; thick juicy stems of an almost-yellowly-verdant implausible green, large white flowers beginning to come out, and, as I particularly noticed as I wandered down to the pub for lunch today, the most amazing fruit.

(the colour balance is correct for the image on the white paper, but the lighting of the one on the wood - my current desktop backdrop - is perhaps prettier).

When I came back from the pub, a man with a ride-on mower had almost finished mowing the verge into oblivion. I walked along, tears in my eyes, and found one mown-off stem on which a fruit still stood intact; to the joshing of my friends, I pulled the fruit from the stem and took it to the office, thence home.

My best bet, from the stems and the way the fruit attached to them, is that it's some sort of wild relative of the courgette, with a fruit fortified by millenia of evolution against the grinding molars of the woolly rhinoceros and the delicate tongue of the wild Pleistocene horse; sadly not fortified against the motor mower. It's not as if the verge was not rendered vastly more ugly by the efforts of the mower.

At least I know, whatever they were, that they grow splendidly in this climate on the poor soil of this area; I imagine my fruit is not matured enough to grow if I plant it, but someone, somewhere among the gardeners of this vast and varied planet, will probably have seeds.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is it edible?

Courgette is French for zucchini, but if this a wild relation it might not be very interesting to eat.

Ah - this implies it might be rather bitter

http://www.cookzucchini.com/gardening/Bitterness.html

If it's what I think it is, the answer is a very firm 'no' (unless you have a perverse fondness for tropane alkaloids).

Cheers and best wishes --
jon

Don't go to sleep with it near your bed...

Day Of The Triffids (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055894/) was on TV last night ;P

That mower was working to SAVE humanity, you fool!

"FEED ME SEYMOUR -- FEED ME NOW!"

Need more info -- size & shape of the leaves; whether they were fuzzy or plain or waxy, thin or thick; whether they were opposite or alternate or whorled or in a rosette at the base; long stalks or short; whether it was a vine (especially with tendrils); how tall the plants were; how big the flowers were & how many petals they had; shape of petals; shape and size of sepals (if any) &c.... Anything you remember could help.

Please email me -- info on my user ID page, at least for now...

Cheers --
jon

Hi. Don't worry about more info -- I think I've got it nailed.

If this photo is it (or very like it), then we know what it is. Please
get in touch.

Cheers --
jon

Ah. Umm. Yes.

Jimsonweed; Datura Stromonium; "Devil's Trumpet". Dangerous levels of atropine and scopolamine. Toxic, hallucinogenic, treatment for serious ingestion involves administration of a mild nerve agent to re-inhibit the acetylcholestrinease.

I've disposed of the seed-pod appropriately, and am feeling slightly glad that I locked myself out of the house last night so didn't sleep too long in a room containing so famed a noisome thing.

"Oops" is probably the word, though I can't deny the thing was pretty.

Ah, the smoldering splinters under his nails worked - Jon posts once more!

Of loss and botany

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Re: Edibility (or lack thereof) --

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Tears in your eyes?

Trying to identify the plant --

Ignore my previous comment --

Re: Ignore my previous comment --

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