As I've said severeal times - one of the joys of being abroad is to find something that is the same as at home. In these two cases they aren't quite the same but close enough to bring a grin to my face.
First we have purple bindweed - Convolvulus species. This one is a bright purple that you can spot from 50 to 100 yards away. Real bright. The one that I am familiar with in the uK is pure white - parachutes we calle dthem. If you know the plant then you know why. You pluck the plant with stalk and then press at the base of the sepals and the plant pops out and up to float down like a parachute. I used to do this mainly on the chain link fence between Old Clee school (the primary school I attended and ladysmith road at the back of Findus and Christian Salvensens cold store, The cold store is huge - I mean absolutely enormous - size of sevral football fields and used to be the biggest cold store in Northern Europe. I only wenty in once I think but I can't remember if it was while I was working for BirdsEye (QC ing the peas over 2 separate summers) or when I used to work in the coldstore at Grimsby Frozen Foods (while I was at school and over the holidays - best time was to go out on the deliveries and make the road trip round eastern Lincolnshire delivering frozen burgers and chips to restaurants at Cleethorpes, Mabelthorpe and even down as far as Alford - all flat all country - loved it - 7 hours or so driving around talking to Carl about the Brothers Band and stuff.)
Anyhow it wasone big freezer.
Another plant in Libya that is so common in the Uk is ivy. It isn't so common in Grimsby - I don't remember seeing it at all except for a couple of the big old Victorian mansions around Bargate and People's park - certainly not in the marsh areas of Clee and Old Clee where I (and my family) grew up. Now - around Aberdeen and around our place there is loads of ivy - I know because I planted it. Helix hedera. It's growing like billio (what ever that is) and it's going to be a problem according to most of the plant books because once you plant it then it's almost impossible to get rid of it.
But I have never ever seen it flower until now. Chicken's egg sized - This one of the several other species rather than the wee one you get in baskets at the garden centre (hedera helix - english Ivy) possibly cNanary or Moroccan ivy. It i growing over a garden wall so it could be any of the imported big leaves ivy. Now I need to keep an eye on my ivy to see if it flowers and produces ivy berries. (remember that the ivy bears a berry as black as any sloe).
