Wondered what this was?

It just popped up and flowered! Quite tall with short lived purple flowers.

 

Salsify. I grow a great big bed of it and use the leaves as greenstuff for hens during winter and spring as it's hardier than leaf beet. Be careful as those flowers will set seed in no time at all. The seeds have parachutes and will drift all over your garden (unless you actually want them). They look rather like young leeks at first, which explains why I always seem to have some escapees amongst my rows of leeks prior to transplanting.

I let a few plants go to seed and save them for sowing the next batch.

 

...also known as Tragopogon porrifolius, (for us flower gardeners who don't necessarily eat everything) Pretty plant, but as Scrungee says it does seed about the place if you let it.

 

Thanks!

It was a stowaway I think in a plant I got from the garden centre. Not sure or maybe it just arrived...

Good advice thank you!

 

Here's mine (and what your garden will look like if it seeds everywhere!).:



And some seedlings:



The flowers open when it's sunny and I've often wondered if they were picked and put in a vase indoors whether they would close up - I'm conducting a trial right now.

EDIT: Brought a flower home, stuck it in a vase and several hours later it had closed right up, so as I expected these aren't suitable for cut flowers!

 

Thanks scrungee

Wow - great pics... it's a shame the flowers don't last as they're so pretty open. I shall dead head it as I don't want that many! :D

Kate