On three trips this year - to Wales, Norfolk, and Kent - I've been delighted to see and admire this amazing plant growing in the wild.
It is Eryngium maritimum, better known as Sea Holly, which grows on dunes along many of our coasts.
These are just the dried seedheads, but in flower it has electric blue flowers above this most spiky and decorative of ruffs, visited by all sorts of bees and hoverflies.
What added extra interest for me was the close link it has to a plant I've been growing in the garden this year - this beauty:
It is Eryngium planum. It has a simple basal rosette of leaves, above which rises a bare framework of flower stems. The stems then branch many times, and each is topped with small thistle-head flowers above a jagged ruff, and all doused in this strange lilac-blue glow. And bees and hoverflies love it too.
It may be a garden plant to us, but in the wild it is found across much of Europe, where it will be pollinated by many of the same sorts of insects that visit both our native Sea Holly and our gardens.
Growing Sea Holly is difficult in gardens (unless you live on a beach, you lucky thing!), and you won't find it for sale in many places. But I think knowing the relationships between our garden plants and our native flora is so useful - it helps us understand what wildlife they might be beneficial for, and why.
And it helps us realise that many of our garden plants are somebody else's native plants, playing their part in very real ecosystems somewhere in the world
Great point about seeing what is growing naturally in your area, and applying that to what you grow, Wildlife Friendly, a lesson I learnt the hard way many years ago when I tried growing Cuckoo-flower on my chalk. It soon gave up the ghost!
Lucky you being able to grow Sea Holly (Eryngium planum) in your garden, it hates my soil.
I have found by studying the wild flowers which grow in my area I can choose the garden plants which insects love and which will suit my soil. Some native flowers are so attractive that I grow them in my garden alongside their cultivated relations. Wild Scabious and Cuckoo flower (Cardamine pratensis) are two I couldn’t live without.