Sium sisarum or skirret is an old-fashioned perennial root vegetable, cooked and eaten in a similar manner to salsify. Predating the potato it was prized in the time of the Tudors for its sweet, aromatic tubers that fall somewhere between the taste of a parsnip and a carrot. Skirret fell out of favour once the potato arrived from South America in the 1580’s, because the potato was easier to prepare and higher yielding, but as a generous contributor to the garden skirret will also flush a lush and edible crop of foliage. This can be eaten early in the season as an addition to leaf salads and has the fresh taste of apple peel. Then later, when most umbels are waning, a late crop of flower is thrown in a great bolt of laciness. As fine and as effervescent as cow parsley, the flowers are a magnet to a host of pollinating and beneficial insects. 

Until last winter, my solitary sium was living down in the stock beds where I test new plants before introducing them into the garden. I acquired it from the Great Dixter Nursery where you often see something you haven’t tried before and have watched these last three years to see how it performed. The stock bed is a pragmatic place and the plants there are lined out in a crowd of apparent misfits with a nod to their cultural needs, but without aesthetic consideration. They are put here to prove themselves and some never make it from the pen, because they may be badly behaved or a weakling or simply feel wrong for the garden. I will sometimes look at my (necessary) plant records to see that I have completely overlooked a plant that never made it, but the sium was a survivor repeatedly, which caught my eye and my imagination.