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to Desperate Dan.At this time of year all is perfect with tightly furled funnels of foliage poking their heads through the ground. The problem begins when the leaves unravel to reveal, not flawless quilted duvets of perfection, but something moth eaten

, for kidney problems, blood pressure and in Chinese medicine it is a digestive aid. It also provides food for many moths including the Mottled Pug, Scalloped Hazel and Brimstone.Most of us see them woven through field hedges all over the countryside in late

going a step too far.Blackthorn is a bit more straightforward and a bit short on folklore. It is, however, really important as it provides food for a lot of moths including the delightfully named mottled pug and lesser broad-bordered yellow underwing

by Northwest, when Cary Grant was pursued by a menacing yellow aeroplane). In Britain, arsenate of lead was mostly used to control codling moths on fruit trees, although it was doubtless very tempting to any gardeners stricken with homicidal yearnings

. The first is relatively straightforward: the mullein moth caterpillar. These are stripy chaps that start quite skinny, but rapidly become as fat as witchity grubs by eating verbascum leaves at a terrifying rate. I grow the gorgeous Verbascum bombyciferum

problem: the hazel (unlike many plants) cannot fertilise itself, so needs to find another tree. How to disseminate pollen from one tree to another? Many plants use insects — bees, wasps, moths, butterflies or ants — while others draw on the services