Hands up if you know your Schizostylisfrom your Watsonia
Have you been paying attention during the year? If so, then you already know the answers to a good few of the questions in our annual gardening quiz. Get all the answers right and you could be the lucky recipient of our first prize, which is a gift voucher for €300 to spend at Mr Middleton Garden Shop (on Mary Street in Dublin, online at www.mrmiddleton.com or by mail-order catalogue, available from 01-8603674). Mr Middleton stocks thousands of garden products, including plants, seeds, bulbs, wildlife supplies, plant houses, tools, propagators and other garden essentials.
We also have three runners-up prizes of a year's subscription to the Irish Garden magazine (10 issues, worth €46) for yourself or, if you're already a subscriber, for a friend.
If we have more correct entries than prizes, we will draw lots from a hat. Even if you don't get all the answers, enter anyway: you could still be a winner. One entry per household, please.
Post your answers to Christmas Gardening Quiz, The Irish Times Building, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2; or them to jpowers@ irish-times.ie (no attachments, please). They must arrive by Friday, January 4th. The answers and winners' names will appear on January 26th.
1. Which seasonal plant, according to the Christmas carol, bears variously "a blossom as white as lily flower", a "berry as red as any blood" and "a prickle as sharp as any thorn"?
2. Pigeons are considered a pest by some vegetable gardeners. Is
this because they
a) dig up potato crops
b) strip the leaves off brassicas
c) jump up and down on top of the carrots?
3. What is the name of the river that flows through the National Botanic Gardens, in Glasnevin?
4. The maincrop potatoes Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Axona were introduced recently from Hungary. What is their special merit?
5. What is a picotee?
6. What is the name of the famous French vegetable potager in our photograph?
7. In which country would you find the greatest number of species of the Erica or heather genus?
8. Which plant parts could you describe as being opposite, alternate or perfoliate?
9. Which famous physician and botanist was born 300 years ago in Sweden?
10. The name of the 18th-century German botanist and professor of medicine Johann Hieronymus Kniphof is commemorated in which plant?
11. Female aphids do not have to mate in order to reproduce. True or false?
12. What was the name of the Irish garden festival that took place in the Phoenix Park last June?
13. Which family of plants is well known for producing nitrogen-fixing nodules among its roots?
14. "Thy elves oil my toil" is an anagram of which seasonal plants?
15. What is the best way of propagating parsnips: from woody cuttings, by seed or by air-layering?
16. Which Scotsman, born in 1850, wrote the poem of which the first stanza is: "The gardener does not love to talk/ He makes me keep the gravel walk/ And when he puts his tools away/ He locks the door and takes the key."
17. The name of which fragrant herb is derived from the Latin word meaning "to wash"?
18. To which genus do the stripy leaves in the photograph belong?
19. If you had Phoma clematidina in your garden, would you be pleased or otherwise?
20. Which one of these plant disorders is fictitious: tulip fire, daisy ash, anemone smut, narcissus smoulder?
21. Which well-known gardening personality was born in Ilkley, Yorkshire, in 1949 and has published several novels?
22. On which plants would you find the fungal disease chocolate spot?
23. Relatively speaking, what do cardoon, dandelion, artichoke and chrysanthemum have in common?
24. Which plant is sometimes known by the name virgin's bower?
25. "Standards" and "falls" are terms used to describe the flowers of which plant?
26. Schizostylis, Tulbaghia and Watsonia are all bulbous plants native to which country?
27. The name of which class of garden creatures means "stomach foot" in Greek?
28. What is an aril?
29. The photograph shows the rhododendron walk at the National Botanic Gardens' arboretum in Co Wicklow. What is the name of the garden?
30. The fruits of which one of the following plants are poisonous: Solanum tuberosum, Malus domestica and Pyrus communis?
31. What does the epithet sylvestris mean in a Latin plant name?
32. What do Malus 'Golden Hornet', Pyracantha 'Soleil d'Or' and Sorbus 'Joseph Rock' have in common?
33. In native American agriculture, which three plants were traditionally grown together and known as the three sisters?
34. Which plant was described by William Wordsworth in the lines "Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they/ But hardier far, once more I see thee bend/ Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend/ Like an unbidden guest"?
35. Jasmine, olive, lilac and privet are all members of the same plant family. True or false?
36. To which genus do the flowers in the photograph belong?
37. 'Black Russian', 'Yellow Pear' and 'Brandywine' are varieties of which plant?
38. Rabbit, hedgehog, deer, squirrel: which one of these animals is most likely to include snails in its diet?
39. Name three food crops in the Solanaceae family.
40. Name the designer whose garden won the Best Show Garden award at this year's Chelsea Flower Show.