Extended Family

For an English gardener 20 years ago the most notable members of the Plantaginaceae family were two weeds of lawns and paving cracks, the plantains: Plantago major with its broad ribbed leaves and spear-like flowers and Plantago lanceolata with its narrower leaves and ‘rat’s tail’ flower spikes.

How things change in the world of botany. Picture the classification of flowering plants as a tree with groups of related species forming each twig and plant families a group of branches. Large sections of that tree have been lopped off and grafted on elsewhere. This has been necessary in the light of evidence from DNA analysis to keep the model accurate and closely related plant taxa grouped family, are now in , which means that today, this family brims with far more interesting and garden-worthy subjects.