This is a niche moment of great excitement to this lifelong amateur botanist.
When I was a little kid, north Yorkshire moors, I loved to find a little plant with tiny green cushions on the stems where flowers would be. You pinched and sniffed and got a lovely scent of what I thought then was fresh apples only better. Locally kids called it chickweed, but it didn't resemble anything you see as chickweed when you look up the word.
I've been longing to identify it, wrote about it in here some time ago, no joy other than being assured whatever it was, it wasn't chickweed, which I already knew.
Then yesterday, wow! Following along one of Atomic Shrimp's YouTube videos, doing a foraging walk, there it is, the very thing!
He says it's pineapple weed, and describes that scent as pineapple. Which would explain why a three year old English kid in wartime with no experience of tropical fruit, didn't recognize the scent.
And it's edible. As a country kid made very much aware of not eating anything a grown-up hadn't passed as edible, I hadn't known this. You can even make tea with it. Well, finding out it's wild chamomile makes that clearer, now that knowing the pineapple weed name has opened up ways to learn about it.
The examples he finds in a field in the South of England are much taller than I remembered though. So I plunged into other websites for more info and found it can grow as small as I remember it, just a few inches, by roadsides and heavily trodden paths, in more northern temperatures.
So my excitement and relief at having sn eighty, that is not a typo, year old question answered was huge.
I told you this was a niche thing. My botanical research is complete.
To quote the divine Louis: what a wonderful world.
Speaking of which, here's the upcoming weather
