Mandrake madness

The mandrakes are waking up. I've given up trying to understand this strange plant and am just going with the flow.

The world's smallest mandrake is living up to his nickname. This is the third year and he is still as tiny as ever! He's now been moved from the kitchen windowsill to see if he is any happier upstairs with the others.

Four of the five planted last year are now up again. They were moved outside for the summer and immediately sulked by becoming dormant.  So back to the windowsill it is.

This is my oldest plant and the first to wake up this year. It has just been transplanted into a piece of old saltglazed sewer pipe to give it sufficient depth for the roots. I'm hoping it might flower for me this year - but probably not.



It was planted centrally but seems to have moved...

The Marvels of Mandrakes

Is this the smallest mandrake ever? Before you say this is only a seedling the plant is actually over a year old!

There were originally 5 seedlings and I was feeling very pleased that I'd managed to germinate all but one of the seeds I'd planted. Unfortunately I was away for a few days during a viscious cold snap last January and when I got back the seedlings were dying off.

Mandrakes have a reputation for going dormant for months on end and then starting to regrow but these seedlings were only a few weeks old and I wasn't expecting them to have the reserves to do that. However I left the pot untouched more in hope than expectation.

Well as you can see I was wrong! One popped up again just after Christmas and is just starting to grow a second leaf. This year's batch of seedlings dwarf it already.