Candytuft

A new-to-me plant appeared in our front verge this afternoon, that is to say I noticed it for the first time when walking my afternoon bricks, although it must have been around for a while, unnoticed. Rather carelessly, I decided that the feathery fronds - of which there were quite a lot round about - belonged to the large white flower, so when Google Images, focussing just on the white flower head top centre, announced that it was candytuft, probably perennial candytuft (Iberis sempervirens), I was not convinced: probably neither evergreen nor perennial and leaves all wrong. But then BH explained that there was lots of 'Love in the mist' (Nigella damascena) in this bed and I went to take a closer look. Feathery fronds did not belong to the white flowers at all, which I might have worked out before had I looked more carefully.

But took another snap anyway. Google Images continued to restrict its attention to the flower head and did not change its opinion. But were the flowers all the same? Were the three rings - white with purple inside, white with yellow inside and purple - just three stages of development? Were we talking about the rocket candytuft of references 3 and 4? With the picture of the flower head at reference 4 looking closer than anything else on offer. And there was a good deal on offer, plenty of subspecies and varieties on offer from various garden websites.

Perhaps yet another area where precise identification is a bit tricky. Where the taxonomy is a bit confused. However my money is on Google Images first choice, perennial candytuft. Having now examined the right leaves, perennial looks like a viable option.

Interesting that Google Images concentrated on the flower head and appeared to be paying no attention to the leaves. Maybe flowers are a better guide to identification than leaves - which is not case with our big native trees - where leaves are good - but then there are very few of those.

Once again, I dare say I have enough to go on already, but I am going to wait and see. Do it the easy way.

PS 1: Friday morning,: some six days late, the Microsoft advertisement generator has got onto the case, with Microsoft's Start sticking an advertisement from eBay right in front of me when I fire up Edge. I might add that I think Microsoft is rather abusing its ownership of my desktop and is getting more and more intrusive. Some of this is dressed up as trying to be helpful, as Copilot trying to be helpful. But I much prefer Google's approach with Gemini in that it waits to be asked and stays contained within its own window. Perhaps Google would be just as bad if it owned the desktop, in which case the lesson is not to give any one corporation too much power: they will only abuse it. Worse than most governments as far as that goes.

PS 2: I notice too that Google has just started paying dividends. While Microsoft has been paying steady if modest dividends for years. Amazon was not last time I looked, with most of the profits going to fund the various Bezos hobbies. Don't know about Meta of Facebook fame.

PS 3: I occurs to me now that were I a proper geek, I could probably keep Microsoft in check by tuning my copy of Windows. The sort of thing we used to do in the world of work, when we had proper IT departments with enough muscle to control the corporate desktop. Out in the wide world, I have elected to just let Microsoft get on with it, updating my desktop whenever they feel like it, rather than attempting to interfere or fiddle with settings. But I am, I might say, reasonably wary about allowing anyone else in, anyone other than Microsoft.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberis.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberis_sempervirens.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberis_amara.

Reference 4: https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:324660-2.