17 JANUARY 1941, Page 12

Wild Daphne The first stars of pink on the mezereon

bush (daphne• mezereum) set me wondering if the plant ever had any just claim as a native plant. Books tie on to it the vague label " garden escape " without elaboration. As a garden plant it grows prodigious bushes on midland clay, and was once, with madonna lilies and maiden's blush, one of the three indispens- able graces of all gardens. Yet the most magnificent display of it I ever saw, making a dwarf avenue of most fragrant pink, was high up in Surrey chalk, and my only authentic record of it growing wild was in Kent, up in the chalk again. Does it still grow wild, and if so would Spectator readers care to give me instances of it? Or is it one more of those capricious things, bird-sown, that masquerade in wild places? H. E. BATES.