Red Hot Memory

Seeing a small clump of these flowers in the Community Garden on the Prom I was transported back to childhood - my memory is of these flowers growing in the back garden, in the flowering border in front of the more practical vegetable rows. Their proper name is Kniphofia, after a German physicist and botanist Johann Hieronymous Kniphof (1704-1763; meaning he died 200 years before I was born). Looking online I read that they have had something of a renaissance lately, having been rather sneered at since the 1970s. Which all fits, as the garden I remember was at the house we lived in between 1965 and 1974. Apparently there is a current variety called 'Jonathan', as well as a 'Nancy's Red' - me and my mum both in flower names.