Lemon fresh

I bought another lemon verbena. (I’ve killed two so far but I’m going to keep at it). The leaves have a lovely lemony scent that is often used in the kitchen, and I really like brushing past fragrant foliage as I garden. There are lots of lemony scented plants out there and they are mostly unrelated to each other or to lemons! The lemon scent that is common across them is from a chemical compound called citral. This compound is present in varying percentages across all of your lemony plants - think lemon basil, lemon thyme, lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon scented tea tree, actual lemons and our native lemon myrtle. Lemon myrtle is actually regarded as one of the best sources of citral as it contains such a high percentage. Lemongrass also has a really high percentage, both it and lemon myrtle have much much higher concentrations of citral than true lemons.

Despite it being a good insect repellent, there are some insects (including Pieris napi - the small white cabbage moth) that use citral in their pheremones to attract their opposite sex! Citral is also part of the Nasonov pheremone that worker bees use to attract lost bees back home and guide their swarms when they are relocating.

Citral is often synthetically made for lots of industry uses like perfumes and flavourings, but you can extract it from plants as well. Obviously a lot of the time this is in the form of steeping in hot water to make herbal teas, but you can also place a few leaves at the bottom of a cake tin, pour your vanilla batter on top and let the scent cook through; add them to marinades; pop some inside a fish or make a simple syrup (boil down your leaves and some sugar and water) and add to all sorts of desserts and cocktails! Any of the leaves will work so experiment to find the flavours you like best.

Worms

The Big Pineapple