A rare "sheep-eating" plant has started to flower for the first time since it was planted outdoors in Hampshire around 10 years ago.
The Puya Chilensis, which is usually found in the Andes region in Chile, has sent up a nearly three-metre spike ready to flower imminently in an award-winning school garden at Wicor Primary School in Portchester, who open for the National Garden Scheme.
The Puya Chilensis, which is usually found in the Andes region in Chile, has sent up a nearly three-metre spike ready to flower imminently in an award-winning school garden at Wicor Primary School in Portchester, who open for the National Garden Scheme.
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NewsTranscript
00:00So my name is Louise Morton and I'm the Horticulturist here at Wycker Primary School in Port Chester.
00:06So tell me what we're doing here today. Well we're extremely excited because we've got a very rare
00:12occurrence in the UK of a plant named as Puya chalensis also known as sheep catcher which is
00:20about to bloom in front of us and it only flowers for a very short period of time maybe a couple of
00:26days. Fabulous. How do you feel about discovering this? Extremely lucky and exciting I mean it's taken
00:3610 years it can take up to 20 years to flower and apparently the flower only the plant only blooms
00:41once in its lifetime and the I mean the places it usually would bloom would be inside in the UK we've
00:48had a few occurrences of it blooming outside as ours is about two one of which was at RHS Wisley.
00:56So tell me a little bit about um you know the children here and and the horticultural um sort of uh
01:06education. Yeah so essentially for the 16 years the children have been um engaged in the natural
01:13world here as part of their curriculum which horticulture has paid a huge amount in and they're
01:18able to propagate from seed cutting division planting and also caring and nurturing for the
01:25finer points of horticulture it's not just planted and left so they're very much involved in caring
01:30for their environment and they have a real natural curiosity um for what's involved with that and
01:36then also creating habitats for wildlife by doing the growing essentially and another strand of our
01:43horticulture is food production which we're all really passionate about because we obviously love
01:48the growing of it but also the eating and the tasting and cooking as well. So um girls can you introduce yourselves?
01:55I'm Bella Rae um my last name right now and I'm one of the students for from Wicca Primary School and I think it's really cool that we have this plant in our in our gardens.
02:09I'm Margaret Castro and I'm Margaret Castro and I'm one of the students at Wicca Primary School and I think
02:14it's really incredible that we have a very a plant that we wouldn't see it much in our school grounds.
02:23Hello I'm Ivy Wright and I'm one of the students of Wicca Primary School. I'm really excited to see the
02:30flower roots here. I'm Sky Cabin and I'm one of the students at Wicca Primary School and I think it's great that we have a quite rare flower and like a plant that's going to flower in our grounds.
02:45So the garden that we're stood in front of is where our Bria Chilensis is about to flower and it's our
02:51Jurassic garden which is also quite unusual for a school. It's um landscaped using um stone from Hamhill and
02:58Somerset so actual Jurassic rock and we've got huge um uh Daconesia Antarctica which is better known as a
03:04tree fern behind it and essentially it's just a wonderful learning environment for children to go
03:10in and sit, study, sketch, research and also appreciate.