Can you help me identify gift plants, please?

[Aberdeenshire Quine]

I'm new here, but I've spent all afternoon trying to identify 5 plants given to me by a neighbour who had noticed my efforts to establish a rockery.

(She gave me 7 and I'v worked out 2:()

Is it appropriate for me to post photos and ask for help? Or is that not done?

[mark smyth]

of course you can post photos but keep them under 800 pixels wide

[Maggi Young]

Hello, Aberdeenshire Quine, welcome! Certainly post your photos and we'll do our best for you!! 

[David Nicholson]

What is a 'Quine' please?

[Maggi Young]

David, with my Aberdeenshire born Mother, I am well placed to help you with this one..... a quine is a lass, a girl, a young woman. The male equivalent is a loon..... a lad, youth, young fellow.
A quine who is of buxom build might be referred to as a sonsy deem ........though that is a term that can equally be applied to a woman of more mature years of curvy appearance.......
Hope this helps you.... Cheers,
 Maggi  ( often called a sonsy deem!!)

[David Nicholson]

Ah Maggi. From a loon to a sonsy deem. Thank you very much.

[David Shaw]

David, Aberdonians also have a habit of adding 'ie' to the end of a noun. A young man doesn't have to be ....(y) but may well be refered to as a ....(ie). Hope that helps.
And welcome to the Forum, Quine, we will do our best to help with your photographs.

[Lesley Cox]

My Aberdonian grandfather always called me a "sonsy lass." I always assumed it would be spelled as sonsie. As you see Quine, it doesn't take much to take our minds off plants, but equally little to turn them back again.

[Aberdeenshire Quine]

Thank you for your welcome. Here they are











Thank you in anticipation

[Aberdeenshire Quine]

That was 767 pixels wide. Honest  

Edit by Maggi: AQ, it was 767 Deep, over 1000 wide! I've changed it! 

[Magnar]

David, with my Aberdeenshire born Mother, I am well placed to help you with this one..... a quine is a lass, a girl, a young woman.
 Maggi  ( often called a sonsy deem!!)

Looks very much like the Norwegian word for woman: Kvinne

[Maggi Young]

Hello, AQuine!
 1)  is Houttuynia cordata Chameleon .... quite likes being by a pond, can be a bit rampant.

2) looks like a little spurge of some sort... Euphorbia cyparissias     Does it have a white sap if you break a leaf or stem? The brown bits sticking out look like dead Oxalis leaves.

3) is the golden-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium brachypus can seed about a lot but is easily pulled out from anywhere you don't want it. The flowers don't last long individually , but it makes lots of them.

4) a Campanula..... not sure which
5) a Silene......not sure which
 

[Rodger Whitlock]

I'm new here, but I've spent all afternoon trying to identify 5 plants given to me by a neighbour who had noticed my efforts to establish a rockery.

(She gave me 7 and I'v worked out 2:()

I would be rather cautious about planting these out. Several of them impress me as being plants which tend to grow "over enthusiastically" and may prove to be ineradicable weeds once established.

Perhaps a visit to your neighbor to view her garden, and in the process ascertain just how well these do in your area, is in order.

The campanula presents the risk that it may be the dreaded C. rapunculoides, though the leaves don't look like that to me. Check the roots for thin tuberous swellings. As for the sisyrinchium, I am always very leery of that genus having once had to weed out an infinity of seedlings of the chrome-yellow S. californicum, but that's as much attributable to my climate as it is to some inherent defect in the plant's character.

Afterthought: one good sisrynchium is 'Quaint and Queer', with very strange flowers usually described as "the color of Bourbon creams". Sets NO seed, at least not here. It was long thought to be sterile hybrid, but the botanists have assigned it to a species.

[Aberdeenshire Quine]

Sorry about that. I just tried to resize and upload them again, and they will NOT let me reduce the width. I put the numbers in and they swap sides every time. I need to go and play with my editing programme.

Meantime, thank you for the information and advice. I would give great offence if I did not take these plants and plant them out, but I've done some research and I've only put two of them in the rockery. On is in a "hole" in a brick patio, and the the two have gone into a west facing bank under a very mature hedge, and I will, if it works, plant between them with lavender. The rockery is so bare that if any of them go mad, it will be very easy to spot it and take the necessary action.

It's a wee bit of a shame, since I really wanted native plants for the most part. Still, I can use that as a reason to refuse more.

Thanks again

[Maggi Young]

Always wise to take some precautions with plants that can get over enthusiastic, AQ..... but all are rather attractive, nonetheless..... and, as you say, a gift.... that's always nice, eh?!!

The trouble with the UK flora, attractive though it is, is that it can be somewhat of a struggle to get a goodlooking year -round rockery planted with such things.  I think you will soon be tempted by some of the cute "foreigners" that are available anyway!!