The walk home from work is a dull one. For all the grandeur Edinburgh has in her city centre, there are as many outlying areas of anonymous suburbia. My walk passes through some of these areas, with little of interest save a small section of the Water of Leith. There on the banks, last week, I spotted a tall plant showing off its purple flowers. I didn’t recognise it and without having my plant book to hand, a quick text to my mum tells me it’s Honesty (thanks mum!).

Excuse the terrible quality of the photo; with thanks to Wikimedia for a better quality one…

Despite Honesty’s apparent ubiquity I don’t recall noticing it before. It’s the first flower I’ve seen in bloom this year, with only the earliest of blossoming trees being out so far. As I always do, I looked it up, intrigued by any other names it goes by. I found a solitary reference to it called gealach-lus in Gaelic, meaning ‘moon plant’. I can’t find any other reference to it by that name so I presume it’s simply to correspond with the latin name, Lunaria annua. Either way, I’m quite taken by it and am looking forward, as the seasons progress, to do as my mum says: collect the dried seedheads and decorate the house with those little moons.