Sorry, I don't own any cameras(!) so I can't supply a photo, but the plant
is quite unusual so if anyone has any ideas of what it *might* be, I may be
able to track it down by websearching etc. Any help would be gratefully
appreciated as I've no idea what it might be at all, as I'm a gardening n00b


I found it in the long-abandoned garden next door, which is supposed to be
the garden of somebody in a council flat who isn't interested (it's not
outside their flat for a start) so they've never tended it, so it was a
dense overgrown thicket. Then the council chopped the thicket down to make
room for scaffolding for some building work some time ago, and now it's a
sort of no-mans land with weeds and trees growing back, which everyone dumps
their organic garden waste in (leaves and twigs etc). So it's all just
weeds, except I spotted this nice-looking thing which appears to be a real
plant that has survived or seeded from when it was a garden.

There is a main stem with a couple of much smaller ones branching off near
the bottom, so it looks like it could if looked after have many stems. The
stem is a medium, clear mauve at the top (not mauvish-green I mean, mauve
from a paintbox) fading to very red at the bottom. The leaves are long and
thin, arranged in pairs up the stem, on the stem, alternating quadrants (a
North/South pair then an East/West pair). They stand out horizontally. The
leaves are a medium green, with a paler vein in the middle. They get a bit
lighter green towards the top of the plant. Where each leaf joins the main
stem (this isn't happening on the two small branched off stems) there is
something poking out of the join that look like buds, as if it's going to
flower all the way up.

At the top is a rosette of five leaves, breaking the symmetry, which are a
bit broader (the couple of pairs of leaves below are broader than average
too) and emanating from the same point are five slim mauve stems with
clusters of leaves at the end (which have a red vein on the underside) which
look suspiciously like developing flowers although they are green and, I've
just looked again and there are a pair of "buds" on little stalks coming
from the joints of the top pair of leaves below as well.

The root system when I dug it up seemed to be one sort of tap root with
finer roots off that and was not particularly extensive. The whole thing is
somewhere over a foot tall and the longest leaves are about 3 1/2" long, and
the thin leaves are under 1/2" wide.

It looks too nice to be a weed to me, and not native British, but I know
very little and could be wrong. Or maybe a wise head here will say, "Egads,
that's Japanese Toxic Spikeweed, burn it with fire!"

Anyway, I've transplanted it to a nice spot in my garden with some home-made
compost and a bit of organic chicken poo fertiliser to see what happens.
There are a few more smaller ones to be rescued if they are "real plants".
Any ideas anyone? Help will be most appreciated!


Ian