plants | Edible Swansea

As I walked through the neighbouring park the other evening I stumbled into a cloud of Paulownia perfume. It was at the end of one of the blessedly hot days we having now and the evening air was gently infused with the molecules of its aroma.

Paulownia Fargesii (?) bloom. Photo: Mr Edible.

A belly-flopped Paulownia fargesii (?) flower. Photo: Mr Edible.

The one or two Paulownia specimens in our local parks have to be pointed out to people here – not least as the blooms of one are about 25 feet in the air. Although I am aware that it can be a ‘tree weed’ in other parts of the world, but in temperate Wales single specimens are objects to savour. As I found out in a recent discussion about the bird of paradise (Strelitzia) plant with my fellow blogger, the friendly (and always hungry!) Vittle Monster, familiarity can make what is extraordinary for one not special to another, and no doubt vice versa. During a trip to China at Paulownia blossom time our guides could never quite understand my inexhaustible interest in the flower-crammed hybrids found in temple yards.

Paulownia blossom time at Wuzhen West. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Paulownia flowers against damp temple wall. Somewhere in China. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Paulownia flowers against a temple wall. Wuzhen West. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Fish-shaped temple gong of the type traditionally made from Paulownia wood. Beijing. Photo: Mr. Edible.

My first acquaintance with the ‘foxglove tree’ was through two specimens that I used to point out to visitors in a small London botanic garden. Like many plants that humanity have shared a long history with, the visitors from around the globe told me many stories from their own history and experience: the wood is made into trousseau boxes in Japan – the wood is light and porous and can be drenched with water to protect its contents if the house is in danger of burning down – the wood is so valued that its poached in the US with the help of helicopters (when the tree is in bloom) – whole avenues of trees disappear overnight…

Paulonia Blossom Time outside the Musée Delacroix, Rue de Furstenberg. Paris. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Paulownia blossom time in front of the Musée Delacroix, Rue de Furstenberg. Paris. (Thanks to Prof. Edible for reminding me of this.) Photo: Mr. Edible.

The large Swansea public parks that the city has inherited from the ‘industrial barons’ of another era are remarkable places. Their landscaping has come into its own with the now mature trees giving these man-made landscapes a more natural look than they have perhaps ever had previously; nowadays conceivably overshadowing their original grand houses. These parks have remarkable collections of rhododendrons and azaleas – so familiar to us every springtime that they are hardly special – we’re pleased to see them but their ‘hundreds and thousands’ colours are easily under appreciated. However, this year our winter has been so long and cold that the riot of gaudy colour is positively hilarious. Particularly as our recent cool wet summers have had hardly two seasonal days together as our presiding jet stream performed a bucking bronco across the North Atlantic.

This was my first experience of the fleeting sweet violet/vanilla of Paulownia fragrance and, together with the balmy weather, I thought the moment was worth marking. So here is a mosaic of current blooms from the ornamental gardens at Singleton Park, my unheeding pursuit of which was only brought to an end by the delivery of an unexpected caution – a well-aimed deposit of warm goo on my camera-holding hand. I had crossed an invisible boundary of nature that was marked, if I had heeded the sign, by a delicate hatched pigeon egg in front of me.

Photo: Mr Edible.

The fruit of the common quince (Cydonia oblonga) is quite a piece of work; it fascinates by being never quite what you would expect:

It is a part of both our gardens and culture (think of Peter Quince, and also The Owl and the Pussy Cat) but it clearly comes from the land of warmer, longer days. It appearance is sensual and appealing, its colour is famously that of the sunset in the west of the Classical World, but this is covered by an obstructing patina of grey down and (in at least in this country) the flesh is susceptible to sites of rot and disease.

Quince’s grey down. Swansea harvest 2007. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Its aroma is light, fragrant and penetrating but its raw flesh is unpalatable, the promised flavour appearing only after careful cooking. In past autumns I have hoarded quinces from many different sources. Waitrose used to stock a box or two in season. Clearly a ‘loss leader’ it helped define the image of the store for me, now the staff at the branches I have access to just shrug at the name. Like hearing a classroom language used in its native home for the first time, I always had a thrill of authenticity of seeing the tree in bloom or the fruit in local markets in southern Europe.

Ohrid Market, Macedonia, 2009. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Best, and most recently, I was given the nod to collect the fallen fruit from a mature tree in the local park; so started the strange phenomenon of short, localised tornadoes that gently ‘shook’ the quince tree when no one was looking.

Here is a pictorial celebration of quince past as there is no fruit on the park tree this year. In fact there are no leaves either, this wet summer has left it open to the diseases that its flesh is heir to.

The most immaculate Swansea crop, 2010. The golden apples of the Welsh Hesperides! Photo: Mr. Edible.

A large quince tree in flower, Thassos, Greece. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Quince at the Chelsea Physic Garden, London.

Quince at the Chelsea Physic Garden, 2008, London. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Consolation of the quince-less years: quince vodka 2011. Photo: Mr. Edible.

Quince vodka and quince jelly. Another contradiction quince flesh is amber, cooked it is crimson. Photo: Mr. Edible.

The quince suggest a once glamorous dowager full of interesting stories accompanied by an persistent aura of old-fashioned fragrance from Floris. Maybe, more accurately, a Continental grande dame; The Queen of Spades or Emilia Marty – The Makropoulos Case).