When I made a guest appearance at my mum's gardening group I came away with some attractive stripey sticks.
At the time the planters by the decking were empty, after the pathetic black bamboo had been wrenched out, so since the sticks looked like bamboo I shoved them in. For months they remained inert, but now they are beginning to bud.
Which is good of course.
However, some active Googling reveals they are not bamboo but horsetails (Equisetum japonicum), they of the 'weeds you don't want in your garden' variety. Marvellous.
To be honest, and less dramatic, they are not the weedy horsetail but a more cultivated type which should really be planted in a pond.
Their days are numbered, one way or another.
