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I bought these plants from T&M last year and I am so glad that I did. They are beautiful

They are lovely Shirl.

Lovely. Just planted mine I've raised from seeds, brilliant plant once they get going  ;D

Watch out for the verbasum moth caterpillar, they will strp them overnight, give them a spray now with something horrible. Are they the cotswold queen variety of verbascum?

I

Quote from: ACE on May 30, 2012, 17:34:39
Watch out for the verbasum moth caterpillar, they will strp them overnight, give them a spray now with something horrible. Are they the cotswold queen variety of verbascum?

Verbascum Clementine Ace

It's active now... I've picked some off a self set mullein...  :-\

Mine is incredibly slow, its struggling to put leaves out....let alone flower. Mind you I only planted it this year,maybe Im expecting too much in the first season ::)

Thes are the little bug***rs on the verbascum. they don'y touch teh orange celmentine variety only the common pink/white and purple ones

Those are mullein moth caterpillars. There haven't been so many around since we had those two very wet summers, but most years they eat Great Mullein into lacework, then pupate, and the plant recovers and flowers.

I've got a common yellow verbascum, not one of the posh ones like Shirl has. The caterpillars eat it every year but I just let them get on with it.  They are such beautiful things and don't eat anything else apart from verbascum so I suppose I grow it especially for them.

I know it's a bit mad. If they were a plain dull colour and ate things I really liked I probably wouldn't be so happy.

If you had enough of them on the plain yellow verbascum then they would probably look more attractive than the plant itself

Quote from: shirlton on June 14, 2012, 08:51:10
If you had enough of them on the plain yellow verbascum then they would probably look more attractive than the plant itself

True!   ;D

Cinnibar moths (red) and caterpillars (black and yellow hoops) are equally pretty and hang out on Ragwort...  :)

I'd rather not have the ragwort though. I grew up in Oxford, where it grew all over the place - both common ragwort and the introduced Oxford ragwort. It got covered with the things, but here I only get a few ragworts, and only see the occasional caterpillar.