Better safe than sorrel

Thanks to a visiting elephant, Toby has a problem with a feisty pink sorrel. Luckily, he’s found a way to deal with it

- Toby Buckland

ACCORDING to my uncle Jim, the indestructible pink sorrel that grows in almost every garden in our town arrived in the 1950s hidden inside an elephant. ‘Nelly’, as the locals unimaginatively called her, was the main attraction of a travelling circus and the weed seed, according to sleuths on the allotment, was in her feed.

Weighing in at 4½ tons, Nel consumed a lot of food – dozens of bales a day – and produced almost as much manure. It made her both a cultural attraction and a serendipitous source of soil improver, which the town’s resourceful gardeners collected by the barrowload and spread on their veg plots. But what a mistake that turned out to be. Just as the memory of the circus was fading, a souvenir of Nel’s contributions started to sprout.