Jul 4, 2020
Plant of the Day
Saturday 4 July 2020
Flowering in a woodland glade at Cambridge Botanic Garden and creating a yellow splash of colour was Paliurus spina-christi (Christ's thorn, garland thorn, Jerusalem thorn). A native to the Mediterranean region from Morocco and Spain, east to Iran and Tajikistan and central Asia. After the yellow flowers this very spiny, deciduous shrub or small tree has disc-shaped, seed-heads in the autumn. The plant is harvested from the wild for local use as a medicine.
Jill Raggett