26 OCTOBER 1945, Page 14

Strange Seedlings The surprising presence of Buddleia shrubs amid the

ruined houses of London has astonished many. When at an earlier date I recorded this, a naval officer wrote to ask if the Buddleia was a species of Willow- herb! It is an alien bush, and one would hardly expect it to seed itself in such places ; but it seems that it has appeared also in other bombed places, Southampton among them The varieties seem to vary greatly in their readiness to multiply by seed, and I fancy the original Veitchiana variabilis heads the list. I have never found a seedling in my garden, but in a neighbour's, where the seedheads were pruned just as the seeds were ripe and were left lying, the ground became so thick with Buddleias that they made a carpet. Few bushes take so readily from cuttings, and this quality is shared with the amusing hybrid between B. Globosa and Variabilis, It both strikes and grows quickly.