Kitchen Garden Forum

I was clearing out an overgrown herb bed today and there are a few plants I can not identify.
This is vaguely potato/tomato like in its leaves (and you can see little fruit very similar to toms or potato fruit) but has these pretty, delicate purple flowers.


Secondly, what this umbelliferous plant.

Hi Stephen,
My guess is that the plant in first photo is Deadly Nightshade(aka Belladonna) and in the second Fennel,gone to seed.

Yes I guess deadly nightshade for the purple flowered Plant - don't try and eat the berries; they are poisonous. Wasn't t sure about the second one. Either seeding fennel or possibly dill, but probably the former. They both self seed and reproduce quite easily.

Definitely Deadly Nightshade, umbel could be Angelica.

Speaking of dill, does anyone know what goes wrong here every year so far? I tried to sow dill but they seem to be very picky and choosy for their conditions. So far all I had coming up was some tiny dill blades before they died off again. Maybe the balcony has too high temperatures for them to grow? What is it?

Not sure about ideal growing conditions for dill Elmigo. i grew some a a few years ago in my fairly light soil and left what I didn't use to go to seed. It just seems to drop and and grow again the following spring and I find it rather amazing that such a delicate herb's seeds can survive in the cold soil all winter and then sprout to life again.

The first year after self seeding it was actually a bit of a nuisance popping up everywhere where I didn,t want it but now I only have occasional plants which appear in late spring (still usually where I don,t necessarily want them!) and grow strongly enough to provide some tasty seasonings for potato salads.

Previous neighbour at lottie grew loads of herbs & all seem to be thriving despite the new people trying to actually grow - sort of! I am still fighting my own lemon balm, bronze fennel & Russian tarragon on my plot popping up despite digging out the herb bed & with the neighbours permission I am allowed to cut the flower heads off the Dill on their side which is desperate to join my nuisance herbs!

Elmigo read & research very carefully before you put herbs on your proper land, my advice would be use the land for crops to make a meal & herbs in pots - total thugs they can be, but still worth growing, just be aware! Parsley & Basil are fine & I tolerate the chive spread because the bees love them!

Thank you all.
Despite the appeal of those purple flowers I'll remove the nightshade.

Dear Stephen,
the purple flower with the berries is in fact Woody Nightshade and will have red berries. The lower on Deadly Nightshade is a bell flower of a much deeper coloured purple. I am afraid that without the leaf pattern showing I cannot identify the othe seedhead.
Sincerely,

Hello Stephen
I think that the second plant is common hogweed but it is difficult to tell without seeing the leaves. This can grow to 1 to 2m high and looks like a coarser version of cow parsley.
It is quite easy to confuse it with giant hogweed which is toxic - even touching this might cause a severe skin reaction. You can get a reaction even from the common variety. Foragers use it but it MUST be boiled before use - best avoided unless you really know what you are doing.
Play on the safe side and get rid of it.
Regards
John

The umbelliferous seed head, could be Angelica?

I'm going with Angelica, too.....

I stand corrected on Woody Nightshade (aka Bittersweet) - good to have the authoritative voice of Johnboy back.

The umbel could be almost anything but I still favour my original thought of Angelica. I regularly walk the dog along a road (called Silly Lane) with big wide verges that are uncut that she loves exploring. Large numbers of wild flowers including orchids. I've been struck the last few weeks by how many slightly different umbelliferous wild flowers there are, looked in my wild flower book and found pages of them. I'm with JB, need more detail.

Thank you all. John, well observed.
The umbellifer:- I looked up Angelica and I'm sure that is correct. See below.

This is rather green against green but shows the regrowth and leaf shapes, which are like the pictures of Angelica in a cookery book I have.