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Out Of Place Plants

This is totally unexotic and not strictly out of place but I was sat in my parent's garden last night...found a bounty of goodies springing up in totally random places, growing up from cracks in the patio mainly...flat parsley, rocket, coriander...picked a fair bit and whipped up a tomato salad with it :)
 
This from the report quoted.

If this is the first time it's been seen since it arrived, how do they know when it arrived? It checked through passport control? It left graffiti throughout Cornwall saying Serapias parviflora was here?
Because as it states... "it arrived in Cornwall in 1989."
 
Another rare orchid emerges due to localised rewilding.

A rare Irish orchid has been discovered in the Front Square of Trinity College Dublin after the university stopped cutting the grass on a number of its formal lawns to attract pollinating insects as part of an international initiative.

The broad-leaved helleborine was spotted in the lawns immediately inside the front arch of the college by Prof Jenny McElwain, Trinity’s chair of botany, and has since grown to about two feet tall following a decision not to resume mowing.

More usually found in woodlands, the wild plant has tiny purple flowers around 10 times smaller than those on a cultivated tropical orchid. There are around 16 to 20 flower heads per plant. It has been identified throughout the country, but usually only a single plant is found. However, three plants have sprung since mowing stopped in Trinity under the No Mow May initiative.

“This is super exciting, it is a rare native Irish orchid,” Prof McElwain said. “If you looked you would find it in most counties in Ireland but you’d probably only find one, and it would pop up so infrequently. It might pop up once and you wouldn’t see it again for 10 years, and three of them have popped up in the lawn.”

She said one of the reasons for the rarity of the helleborine is that it requires very specific conditions to grow.

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The rare broad-leaved helleborine which grew in the grounds of Trinity College. Photograph: Barry Croninf

“Like all orchids it can’t germinate unless it has a fungal partner. This one needs a perfect set of circumstances. If it finds the exact right fungal partner it forms fungi around its roots. It’s most likely that this little orchid that’s popped up is connected by threads of fungus to the birch tree it’s under,” she added.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/...-trinity-college-after-lawn-mowing-is-halted/
 
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