On 15/01/2024 17:15, N_Cook wrote:
> I was aware that IoW giant echiums started flowering in May, but it
> looks as though they start their flower spike as early as mid Jan.
> This is my oldest surviving one, 2 years from seed in March this year,
> curved already, pic taken today. Hundreds of pics of charmingly wonky
> full flower spikes on Google but none of their very early stage, that I
> could find.
>
> http://diverse.4mg.com/echium_flower_15jan24r.jpg
>
> Hope its not tempting fate, they've all survived the frosts so far with
> gauze protection on frosty nights.
> The ones left to their own devices, buried in amongst brambles etc, if
> they were large enough by the end of their first summer, seem to have
> survived so far.
>

Ignore the pic, in the next 2 days it opened into a cluster of leaves.
Despite being mid feb my most mature plants have put on 6cm per week.
Unless the caterpillars get the advantage, also despite mid feb, one on
each plant. I thought they were more of these leaf buds but they were
inch long green caterpillars of exactly the same shade of lime green as
the new leaves, laying along a leaf each.

--
Global sea level rise to 2100 from curve-fitted existing altimetry data
<http://diverse.4mg.com/slr.htm>

The main plant has grown near enough 1 foot higher in the last week,
still only March

--
Global sea level rise to 2100 from curve-fitted existing altimetry data
<http://diverse.4mg.com/slr.htm>

On 20/03/2024 08:53, N_Cook wrote:
> The main plant has grown near enough 1 foot higher in the last week,
> still only March
>

Still growing an inch a day, standing 2.33m today.
Someone else's local echium is planted in a small kids 3 or 4 foot long
plastic dinghy as a container. At midnight in the recent flood from
Storm Pierrick it went on its own voyage for 50 yards

--
Global sea level rise to 2100 from curve-fitted existing altimetry data
<http://diverse.4mg.com/slr.htm>

A flush of pink at some of the flower buds last week.
Today a more convincing blue-purple to some of the buds today and a bee
sniffing around already.

On 10/04/2024 21:19, N_Cook wrote:

--
Global sea level rise to 2100 from curve-fitted existing altimetry data
<http://diverse.4mg.com/slr.htm>

On 14/04/2024 11:30, N_Cook wrote:
> A flush of pink at some of the flower buds last week.
> Today a more convincing blue-purple to some of the buds today and a bee
> sniffing around already.
>
> On 10/04/2024 21:19, N_Cook wrote:
>
>

First flower today 19 Apr 2024, pic taken, on the echium 2.62m high
today and rising 8 inches in the last week, that was seed from Porters
Garden , Portsmouth Historic dockyard year before last

--
Global sea level rise to 2100 from curve-fitted existing altimetry data
<http://diverse.4mg.com/slr.htm>