On Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:17:17 -0700 (PDT), bobharvey
wrote in :
On 26 July, 16:51, "Dr Ivan D. Reid" wrote:

* * * * While we're playing this game, does anyone recognise this plant
that sprang up next to my cheery tree last year. *It's very thorny...
It's already as tall as me[165cm] and must have flowered when I wasn't
looking as it's now developing several berries which are turning red;
I opened one up today and it was filled with lots of mm-ish sized seeds.

http://cmsdoc.cern.ch/~ireid/waitawhile/-- ...

Looks like it could be Rosa Rugosa, a popular hedging plant with a lot
of varieties. massive crops of hips are popular with various types of
finches leading t widespread seed distribution.

I get very few birds besides sparrows and starlings in my garden
(the wood pigeons and crested doves don't call much since I stopped feeding
them with my Pringles bird-feeder (q.v.) and I haven't had a resident
robin since the unfortunate accident with the rat-trap). I saw a couple
of great tits once...

After the Great Elder-bush Infestation a couple of years ago, I
was ready to blame the sparrows for passing elder seeds in my raspberry
patch this year, there being lots of tall straight shoots amongs them
(despite never having seen a sparrow amongst the raspberries) but today
when I pruned all this year's fruiting canes I realised that they were
indeed raspberry canes, they'd just not grown that tall and straight
before (a quick comparison with a real elder reminded me that the leaves
are very dissimilar).

Snag is, the thorns and the stems look nothing like the couple of
hundred of them I have in my garding. Mine are almost hairy with much
smaller bristly thorns. But there are varieties, as I say.

Urglers are good at this sort of thing.

They are also good at getting Adny Woodwrad banned from Usenet, IIRC,
but we shall see. Thanks.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. ] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:34:07 +0100, Tahi
wrote in :
While we're playing this game, does anyone recognise this plant
that sprang up next to my cheery tree last year. It's very thorny...
It's already as tall as me[165cm] and must have flowered when I wasn't
looking as it's now developing several berries which are turning red;
I opened one up today and it was filled with lots of mm-ish sized seeds.

http://cmsdoc.cern.ch/~ireid/waitawhile/-- ...

Snag is, the thorns and the stems look nothing like the couple of
hundred of them I have in my garding. Mine are almost hairy with much
smaller bristly thorns. But there are varieties, as I say.

Urglers are good at this sort of thing.

Wild rose of some sort, certainly. It looks just like the suckers growing
from the roots of my supposedly cultivated varieties. They have pathetic
little white flowers, quite pretty in quantity, so I am not surprised you
missed them. Does/did your neighbour beyond the wall have a nearby rose bush
whose roots spread to your side? Decide quickly if you want to keep it as
mine get larger and taller very quickly!

Thanks. I'll let it stay for a while. The other side of the wall
is the forecourt to two blocks of four Council lockup garages, and my only
neighbour is maybe twenty feet away along the wall.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. ] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".