Mystery Plant: Solved!

I have a habit of rescuing plants from Plant Sale leftovers or from people's garden "thinnings" and divisions or even the trash can at one of the RBG greenhouses!

Well, the latter happened as I stopped by to see what the volunteers do at the Potting Shed for the annuals (plants) as opposed to the perennials where I volunteered at the beginning of the year. Annual seedlings were being potted but as a certain number is reached, the rest of the seedlings are discarded. That's when I came to the scene.

A handful of seedlings with 2-3 leaves as long as half my thumb, they grew rather mysteriously as the picture collage shows. They didn't look anything I've ever grown in my garden. In fact, they look absolutely alien to me: the wavy leaves, the winged, hairy stems, the flower buds. All these parts developed painstakingly slow. Making an identification wasn't apparent to me until the flowers blossomed into these papery clusters of purple flowers, spotted with white flowers.

These plants are called statice (Limonium sinuatum): the same flowers the Mennonites sold at the St. Jacob's Farmers' Market and that's how I recognized them. They make great cutting flowers and dried flowers.

This was a fun project . It was fortuitous that I had known the flower from previous exposure so the identification was not too difficult at the end. With the use of the internet, confirmation and learning the botanical name was a cinch.