Alexanders

Fortunately my stomach pains didn't develop into anything sinister, though I still felt rather delicate this morning. So it was off early for a day of survey round some woodlands in Hertfordshire, Unfortunately I didn't leave quite early enough, and there were horrendous traffic queues on several sections of the A1, meaning it took over two hours to get there.

The woods proved very interesting, particularly one which was full of veteran trees - stag-headed oaks with gnarled trunks and huge sweet chestnuts and beech, with rot holes and seepages.The whole area was an entomologist's paradise, as trees such as these tend to support many rare and interesting species of beetle and fly. I photographed and logged the grid reference of all the larger specimens, which ended up being quite time-consuming!

After my morning experience I decided to leave the site before the main afternoon rush (and anyway was feeling a bit tired after seven hours of walking) and managed to get back to Peterborough in just over an hour.

I took many photographs during the course of the day, but they were functional and I decided I didn't really want to blip my work! The sun was at a fairly low angle when I arrived home, perfect for highlighting many garden flowers. At the moment we have heaps of flowering columbines, Alliums, greater celandine and Alexanders, and each was experimented with. But both boys liked this one best....

Alexanders is an umbellifer native to the Mediterranean, but is able to thrive further north, especially close to the coast. The flowers are yellow-green in colour and its fruits are black. Alexanders is intermediate in flavor between celery and parsleyand was once used in many dishes, but has now been replaced by celery. It was also used as a medicinal herb.

It's a very handsome plant, and we originally introduced it to the garden partly because our second son is named Alexander. It's got a bit out of hand and forms sizeable stands in the wilder parts of the garden, growing up to four or five feet tall. But the flowers are rich in nectar, and it attracts many different sorts of fly.

I'm sure parts of our garden would have most gardeners tearing their hair out as we have lots of cow parsley, hogweed and wild parsnip too, all introduced to attract insects - you can tell we have an entomologist in the house!!