Herb Robert North Fife

Herb Robert, Geranium robertianum, (syn. Robertiella robertiana) commonly known as Herb Robert, Red Robin, Death come quickly, Storksbill, Dove's Foot, Crow's Foot, or (in North America) Robert Geranium, is a common species of cranesbill in Europe, Asia, North America, and North Africa.

Herb Robert is known to medical herbalists as a good all-rounder and preventative tonic because of germanium.
Germanium’s remarkable effects on the immune system are well known in medical fields. It has a good reputation as an energy giver, immune builder, and as a powerful therapeutic and preventative, and also as a vigorous adaptogen, acting to rebalance minor or major health imbalances in the body.
Germanium provides antibiotic, antiviral and antioxidant help which is all the more important nowadays when our bodies are having to cope with so many different kinds of pollution from different sources.
So why not look out for it? It’s very pretty, with its purpley stems, and hard to miss with its crane bill, furry buds and delicate pink flowers. And the leaves are like tiny ferns, which you can chop up and put in your salad.
It seems to thrive in poor soil, gravel paths and edges. In manicured gardens it is eradicated as an unwanted weed. A waste, given its powerful medicinal remedies. Feeling under the weather? Give it a try, it might just produce that extra zest to life.

Convolvulus Hawk Moth

Convolvulus Hawk Moth Agrius convolvuli. A few years ago I came across this wonderful specimen at my front door feeding on Honeysuckle, a female in perfect condition. I captured her for a few days in the hope of finding bindweed, should she had started to lay eggs. A forlorn hope. The plants were dying off but I do now know where to find small stands of bindweed all over North Fife.

A large species, with a wingspan of over 10cm, this is a migrant in Britain, appearing sometimes in fairly good numbers.
It most often occurs in late summer and autumn, usually with influxes of other migrant species, when it turns up in light traps and feeding at garden flowers, especially those of the tobacco plant (Nicotiana)
Although larvae are sometimes found in Britain, usually on bindweed (Convolvulus), it does not regularly breed.

Bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis (Field Bindweed) is a species of bindweed, native to Europe and Asia. It is a climbing or creeping herbaceous perennial plant found occasionally in north Fife where it is not invasive. It has beautiful soft white trumpet flowers, a joy to see on the roadside passing at this time of the year and will continue to flower right through September. A relative of Morning Glory which is rich blue with five radiating magenta petal markings.

Bindweed.
One of the weeds discussed in the Weed Book below.

Weeds: How vagabond plants gatecrashed civilisation and changed the way we think about nature [Hardcover]
A lively and lyrical cultural history of plants in the wrong place, by one of Britain’s best and most admired nature writers.
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