Meadow Clary, Salvia pratensis, is a common plant in the horticultural community but is also found as a garden escape. In the south of the UK it is considered native in the wild. It grows in the verges around our house but here is a rather magnificent specimen growing in front of the Parliament buildings in Budapest.
It differs from Wild Clary in having less deeply toothed leaves and long projecting styles.
This poor tree was nearly dead on the slopes beneath the Fishermen's Bastion in Budapest. It is desperately flowering again despite being in fruit.
Aesculus hippocastanum is from round these parts, relatively speaking: the Caucasian Mountains. Its natural habitat is the sides of gorges or cliffs. I prefer to call it a conker tree.
This is Spindle, Euonymus europaeus, growing in secondary woodland above the Danube in Budapest. (Very nice thank you. I can recommend it.)
It has very hard wood which made it great for making spindles. Turner was the first to call it a Spindle tree but borrowed from the Dutch. The flowers and fruit are much more spectacular than these photos suggest. I clearly remember the first time I came across it on the edge of a ride in some ancient woodland near where we were living in Sussex back in 2007; it was so garish I concluded that it couldn't possibly be native. I was shocked when I discovered I was wrong.
