This time of year, at home in Derbyshire, the hedges are covered in white hawthorn blossom but driving back from our Spring Bank holidays in Pembrokeshire I've discovered a different hedgerow blossom - laburnum flowers. 
Not just one or two in gardens, but almost everywhere along the roads
from Aberystwyth down to Cardigan the hedgerows are filled with bright
sunshiny yellow.
I wonder why there are so many here but none that I've seen elsewhere. Does anyone know?
However they arrived, they're the most beautiful hedges I've seen
The local (medieval) garden centre ordered a batch of 1,000 laburnum saplings because of the attractive flowers, but when it was discovered the seeds are poisonous he was left with 900 unsold plants so he flogged them off cheap as gorse bushes.
ReplyDeleteReally? Did no one notice the lack of prickly thorns? Though perhaps they were sold at such a bargain price that no one queried the plants :)
DeleteAha ... but this would have been in the early 1800's and they were sold as the 'new thornless variety'.
DeleteIn north Pembrokeshire I was told that balast on sailing ships from Ireland was dumped as the ships came ashore and this balast was laburnum wood.
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