GARDENER’S DIARY

Press, 8 May 1980, Page 16

GARDENER’S DIARY

By

Derrick Rooney

Mention a few weeks ago of the Japanese “angelica tree,” Aralia spinosa, prompted an inquiry about angelica from a Rolleston reader, who wanted to know if the angelica in her garden was the right type for candying. The plant she described — about a metre high, with deep green glossy leaves, magnificent green flowers and many seeds — is almost certainly the ornamental Angelica pacy carpa and with the true herb of the angels (Angelica archpangelica); the herb angelica grows as tall as a man, and the leaves are dull lettuce green. They have no gloss. Thus the question was an easy one to answer. But the answer poses some more questions about the dangers, and the disappointments that can arisd from confusion over the names of common plants. Here, for example, we have three “angelicas” — two herbs and a tree. Will the real angelica please stand up?

Neither of the two herbaceous angelicas is in any way related to the “angelica tree.” They belong to the carrot fam-