Gardening’s king of trivia and brain-teasers, Graham Clarke
It’s all about June!
Flaming June is a classic painting by Sir Frederic Leighton (1895); this title has become a synonym for hot days during the month – or more often spoken sarcastically when June days are cool and cloudy! But there are plenty of gardening references to June:
■ ‘June drop’ is the name given to the natural phenomenon of apple trees shedding some of their young fruitlets. It is perfectly normal for maybe a third of all fruit to fall, meaning that there is reduced overcrowding, and the apples can develop unhindered.
■ ‘Juneberry’ is one of the common names for Amelanchier lamarckii – it is a large, deciduous shrub or small tree in the rose family. It is also known as the snowy mespilus, shadbush or serviceberry. It has white, star-shaped flowers in spring followed by small, plum-like berries. It also produces good autumn colour.
■ ‘June grass’ is also known as smooth meadow grass (Poa pratensis); it’s a perennial grass species. Thriving on well-drained, fertile soil, it is used widely as grass in parks and gardens. In the US it is called Kentucky bluegrass. On Canada’s native grasslands it’s considered an unwelcome ‘exotic’, and is said to ‘disturb’ and ‘degrade’ the landscape.
Wow! I didn’t know that…
■ Junellia is an old name once applied to members of the verbena genus.
■ ‘June’ is a variegated cultivar of hosta, with a blue-green outer edge to the leaves and a bright yellow centre.
■ In 1995, Harkness Roses launched an orange hybrid tea rose called ‘June Whitfield’, a
