The World of Weeds...

Serendipity is a wonderful things. In the post this morning arrived some photocopies of British gardening magazines from the beginning of last century, provided by a kind friend as research material for a piece I'm writing. Among them was an article on Tresco by A.W. Hill, later Director of Kew. (The article was partly devoted to agitating for a trained Kew botanist to be funded as part of the permanent Tresco staff; I strongly suspect he had a certain A.W. Hill in mind for the job; good try, Arthur...)
 
Towards the end, though, he discusses Tresco's exotic 'weeds.' The discussion includes the following:
 
'In addition to Freesias, Cinerarias come up everywhere, several species of Oxalis, Allium triquetrum and Nothoscordium are pest with which it is almost impossible to cope effectively. The latter plant introduced by some lover of plants as an interesting addition has proved to be a curve from which the gardens can hardly hope ever to be freed.'
 
You have been warned...!
 
Interesting indication of the limits which climate imposes: in my own heavy wet soil, Nothoscordium struggles even to survive. For which I'm duly thankful. I wonder which freesias were weeds on Tresco? Are we dealing once again with the many-named Anomatheca/Lapeirousia/Freesia laxa, perhaps? Which even self-seeds here...
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