Freaky foxgloves

I've just been leafing through the latest edition of Gardens Illustrated, as you do, over a screenbreak in the Guardian canteen. I got to the readers' questions page, a stalwart of any gardening publication, and had to double-take over the picture of an odd-looking foxglove.

I'd seen this somewhere before - twice. In a weird coincidence, THREE gardening mags - GI, plus BBC Gardeners' World magazine and Organic Gardening (I think - I don't have a copy of the latter on me to check) - have featured a question about foxglove flowers that have fused together, like this.

GI's John Cushnie says the distortion has been caused by damage from a sucking insect like a capsid bug or aphid, wheres BBCGW says it's "a naturally occuring abnormality, known as fasciation". Can't remember what OG thought it was, but I hope Bob Flowerdew or someone thinks it's down to a lack of zinc or somesuch.

But what are the chances of a weird foxglove triple-whammy, particularly when two of the mags in question are produced by the BBC? Are our foxgloves at risk? The nation's gardeners need to know.

Comments

[emmat]

Ha ha not chance at all. People always send off their letters to more than one mag at once to try to get all the prizes, and those suckers fell for it!

I too thought - weird, but wasn't as brainy as you and just thought that I'd been reading too many mags at once! I blamed my brain for the deja vu...

[Jane Perrone]

Well, they're being very crafty if that's the case, because one mag has them down as a reader from Berks and the other as a reader from Wirral. I prefer the conspiracy theory ...