From Newsgroup: uk.rec.gardening

A time-waster ...

In the thread about bindweed, Jeff said :

the cotoneaster (or did you mean privet?)

I meant cotoneaster, because I know it's not privet! (Or maybe you will surprise me!).

We have this plant in several places in our hedges (*I* didn't plant it! So it's been there for about 50 years I'd guess.). It makes a good hedge - dense and strong - but is a nuisance because it soon gets untidy after trimming, so needs trimming often; and it's hard to prevent it growing taller and taller without its becoming gross, beause you have to hack off the top, leaving the dry, twiggy, *very* straggly sticks of the underlying growth (beneath the nice dense top).

I call it cotoneaster because someone said that name to me, eons ago, and sure enough it bears a strong resemblance, in leaf flower and berry, to some of he cotoneasters listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotoneaster

Except that: there are *hundreds* of varieties, some of them trees, some of them ground-hugging slow growers. I could never decide what our hedge actually is. The leaves flowers and berries most closely resemble Cotoneaster
conspicuus ... or maybe Cotoneaster atropurpureus ... BUT: I have hedges, not specimen plants, so I don't see much of the flowers, or the berries (because
of frequent. trimming).

And in any case it might not be a cotoneaster at all!

And after all that: I should be actually working at something else, but this was a more entertaining thing to do ... and I'm sure that you all, also, have better things to do as well!

Cheers
John
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