A winter specimen for Asteraceae collectors

I ventured out into the gloom yesterday for a little walk and found lots of Petasites fragrans (Winter Heliotrope) in flower. I realised that for years I have been ignorantly calling this 'butterbur', but that species (Petasites hybridus) is much much bigger. You'll be able to collect the latter in the spring.

CC image by Phil Sellens

It seems a funny time to flower, but Winter Heliotrope compensates for this by having a strong vanilla-y scent. I suppose if you're one of the only flowers around and you advertise well, any nectar-hungry insects still out and about are going to find you. So perhaps it's a good, if rather alternative strategy.

However, for the poor Winter Heliotrope in the UK, it's apparently all in vain. I read that it's a garden escape and actually native to Southern Europe, and only in the wild here since the 1830s - and that (curiously) it is dioecious and only male plants exist in this country.

How, in that case, can it have spread through the country, as there can't be any seeds? Apparently the plant is a perennial and has rhizomes, and a tiny piece of detached rhizome can sprout to form new plants. So the species is said to have spread through the dumping of garden waste, and spreads along water courses by the adventurous floating of rhizomey bits. It likes damp places so this is ideal (mine were in a damp uncut meadow under a big tree... suspiciously near the back of someone's garden).

The leaves are distinctively kidney-shaped and you'll normally find many plants in the same spot, smothering the ground.

CC image by Rosser1954