Hmm. That's no flower. But nor, exactly, is it a leaf. It's a leaflower. A flowerleaf. Something got twisted, mutated, grew a bit wrong there. The effect is weirdly organic and fleshy, with those veinous reds twisting back into the verdant green - a dryadic flower fairy emanating malformed and startled from the green.
It's not the only mutant about this spring. Conditions have been hard; hot, then cold, dry then drenched. Flowers have come on early, leaves have turned up late, and things have not been as they usually are. Check out this beautiful white Camellia, shocked with a flash of red; and this round wallflower stem somehow ribboned into something thick and thin.
I've always been a fan of the plants that have drifted from their varietal path, grown too big, too small, differently coloured, weirdly leaved or startled by pests or pressures into bizarre new forms. But you can't keep them all. The fuschia can stick around (apart from anything else I want to see what becomes of the leaflower) and the camellia was never mine to start with (although I am SO tempted to nip off a cutting next time I go by) but there have been wallflowers gowing out of that crack in the concrete foir about four years now, and they're not supposed to be good for much more than two. Away it goes, to make way for new pretty mutants.
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