plants got there first : greenhouses

 Very pleased to pick up a curious news story about a vine growing its own greenhouse so it can fruit later in the year. I'm aware this sounds a bit bonkers so let's break it down:

• The "greenhouse" is an enclosure made of leaves that grows around ripening fruit
• The leaves do expand and overlap to form an enclosure though!
• Plants at higher altitudes grow thicker leaves for their enclosure as they need more protection

Curcurbits (this one is called Schizopepon bryoniifolius) have flexible leaves and tendrils, good starting construction materials for imaginative leaf repurposing. The leaves are often very large too, perfect for sunshades or umbrellas.

Like many people this year I decided to try a lockdown Curcurbit, and bought a courgette seedling from a supermarket. The "courgette" turned out to be a very nice cucumber with a knobbly skin and firm, strongly flavoured flesh. But in among 2020's various thrilling plot twists that wasn't a bad one; I'm a fan of dressed cucumber. I planted it up in one of the personal plastic shopping baskets the Coop were selling at the beginning of lockdown. (Didn't see these? Imagine an absolutely basic copy of the Reisenthel Nestbasket with solid sides and plain cut handles.) They were impractical for shopping as the handles sliced through your fingers, but with holes punched through the base they make a great squash planter.

These photos shows about how impressive 2020 harvests got:

  

But I did like the wild tumble of leaves, which indeed often did grow over the tops of fruits, like a tiny rain umbrella. I'm definitely going to try these (or, depending on vagaries of what seedlings are available/germinate, some form of squash, who knows what) again next year.

A throwaway line at the end of the article points me at the rather more impressive (and accordingly described very much earlier) Himalayan Rhubarb Greenhouse (this very good blog post provides a fine tour of the many wonders of Rheum Nobile) and several growers in the UK reveal that you can sometimes buy it! It does look rather fine. Tempted.