One of my favourite plants in the garden, this Bear’s Breeches brings back memories of visiting the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK at the tail end of our second Greek sailing trip in 2009. We decided to tack on about four days in the UK on our way home, and met, in-person, a bunch of people that we’d connected with on Flickr in the first few years I was on the social platform.
We spent a night in Marlborough and met up with a friend on his narrowboat, moored at the side of a canal in a location he sent me a map to. We also met another crew in Poole Harbour, went for a harbour cruise with the group, had lunch t a pub, and then visited a castle.
It was wonderful, we were even invited to spend a night at another Flickr friend’s home near to the most amazing botanical gardens and we met up with several others who lived relatively nearby the eco-attraction.
One plant that had a lasting impression on me was the Acanthus mollis, commonly called Bear’s Breeches. They are native to the Mediterranean, but have apparently spread into western Europe, certain parts of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. It forms a large clumps and can apparently survive for several decades, and is said to aggressively spread.
When we returned from that trip, I saw the plant for sale at a local nursery. I tried several, in several locations, and was sadly unsuccessful. All but one miserable looking thing disappeared. I took that one miserable looking tiny plant that had about two leaves left and stuffed it into the ground at the edge of our back deck and forgot about it.
Ten years on and it gets more impressive every year. The plant seems to have stabilized in size when it returns each spring, but the flower spikes are increasing in number annually. I think the first year it put up flowers there may have been two relatively small ones.
Two years ago there were 17.
Last year there were 19.
So far I have counted 23 this year.
Why the title, the Hooded Fang?
Because when I squatted down to take the photo I felt like I was looking into a hooded figure and, for whatever reason, the title of a long-ago written children’s book tumbled out of the back of my mind. Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, written by Mordecai Richler in 1975.
Add to that the fact that the flowers are extremely spiny…and the ‘fang’ part seems apt.
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