Hello everybody I know this is, perhaps, a little bit of a strange request, but I am looking to identify the plants displayed on the packaging of a certain item (the image attached is the best quality I have, I'm afraid). I'm esepcially interested to know if these plants grow near water. If it's helpful, the image is most likely form the English countryside. Any help would be hugely welcomed. Thanks in advance!
Could be purple loosestrife. It is an absolute pest in Ontario and is crowding out the native plants and also the animals which used to live in the march areas. It looks very pretty though. Margaret
Looks more like a species of heather to me (likely species include Calluna vulgaris, Erica tetralix, Erica cinerea). Purple Loosestrife isn't very common here at all, as a native plant it has a whole set of natural pests and diseases which eat it and keep the population fairly low.
I'd agree with Ron. It certainly looks to me like the Lavender farm in Norfolk, UK. Far too regular to be loostrife. In answer to the question, no,itisn't a marsh plant, quite the opposite in fact.
Hadn't thought about lavender because of the redish tint but then there isn't a lot of detail to go on. My husband visits the lavender farm in Norfolk and brings their lovely hand cream back each year. Perhaps Jake can look on the web page for Norfolk Lavender Ltd at Caley Mill and compare. The purple loosestrife in Canada are definately water lovers spread both through their root systems and by destributing seeds by water. Beaver etc cannot eat them and as they outgrow our native plants they are having a major impact so much so that loosestrife eating insects have been introduced from Europe (lots of concern re whether the "cure" will in turn become a problem) and large groups of humans are now involved in trying to get rid of it by targeting areas and attempting to destroy every little bit of it in the absence of natural preditors. We lived on the Yorkshire Moors prior to coming to Canada and I too cannot remember it being a pest in the UK. We were surrounded by lots of heather though. Margaret
LOL we don't get too many beavers in the UK, although I do seem to remember hearing something about them being re-introduced to Scotland,but in a controlled way. The problem plants in most of the UK are Himalayan balsalm now, which is spread by water too. In the South West our problem plants are Japanese knotweed, and it's cousin Russian Vine, which some unscrupulous nurseries sell to the unsuspecting gardener!
What would be the point of bringing beavers in Scotland, there aren't enough trees there to begin with.
Well to start off with it's a reintroduction, not bringing a completely alien species in. The beaver endemic to Europe (Castor fiber), an not the North American/Canadian Beaver (Castor canadensis). They became extint in Scotland about 400 years ago mainly because of being hunted for their fur and meat, not because there was a lack of decent habitat. There are plenty of trees in lowland Scotland which would be their natutral habitat rather than the mountain areas that many people associate with Scotland.
