We have just spent a mini-break in Copenhagen, and as usual landed up in a botanic garden!

It’s a lovely walk up from the city centre through pleached crab apple hedges and on to a  park containing some lovely specimens of  Cornelian cherries. This tree bears edible fruit, many of which were on the floor, though they are reputedly rather astringent, and also used from Greece to Russia for distilling or for making liqueurs. The yellow flowers in spring are a delight in gardens in the UK too. I can’t recall ever seeing the fruit  on the trees here though.  Maybe this warm summer induced some fruiting?

In through some buildings and out into the botanics,  one of the first things you come across is a marvellous series of beds laid out with hops and other plants used in the beer industry in Scandinavia. I’m not going to list all the plants of interest here, go and see for yourself!

As well as a few remaining hop plants, there are many different herbs and grains here including this Rye plant, which i wouldn’t have recognised.

Next to the Beer garden is a good display of European native plants, to the untrained eye it looks like a big patch of weeds! Which actually many of them are!

Beyond this we came across a group of quinces, upon which the smell from  masses of  ripening fruits was almost overpowering!

The final lasting impression I had was of the many Mistletoe plants on the trees in the surrounding woodland area, giving an impression almost of a tropical forest of Bromeliads.