When we visited Balmoral a couple of weeks ago we then went on past balmoral to the linn of Dee - the end off the road. It's at the South East of the Cairngorms and one of the coldest (and coolest) places in Britain. While my companions (Jiurie and the Graduate) did their thing I did mine and went looking for interesting plants - and there were several that I had never seen before.
This plant is Alchemilla alpina the Alpine Lady's Mantle. This may be faintly familar to some of you because it is closely related to a well known garden perennial - the Lady's mantle - Alchemilla mollis. It is well known because it is rabbit resistant, tough (difficult to kill) and always recommended as a foliage plants for cut flower gardens.
Fortunately there was one small plant in the garden when we moved in to Tipperty right next to the meadowseet plants and close to where I began the rockery. We haven't cared for it beyond not pulling it up, and it has started to self seed around the rest of the garden. The weird thing is that it has self seeded in the back garden on the other siude of the house from the front garden (no suprise there then) and well away from the rockery. I'm wondering if it has done this vegetatively when we've been carrying gardenrefuse from front to the compost at the back but I can't see anyway that it would have got to the front of the stalag from the rockery apart from by seed.
So this year we have at least three definite new patches of Lady's mantle. I'm not sure if we should leave it as it is definitely invaisive but it is also a usefuyl plant. I think we'll leave it for the next few months /years until we decide that something else deserves the room more.
