Honesty

Honesty is the flower I love most in death. That sounds morbid, but hear me out. The flowers are lovely enough — sprays of simple, four-petalled blooms in magenta-purple that light up the shady corners of the garden in May. But the real magic happens later, when the seed pods mature and dry.

Each pod is a flat, coin-shaped disc. When you carefully peel away the outer casing on each side, what's revealed is a translucent, silvery membrane that catches the light like a tiny moon. A branch of these translucent moons — papery, luminous, almost weightless — is one of the most beautiful things you can put in a winter vase. I have a bunch in a copper jug on the mantelpiece from last autumn and they still look perfect.

The pods have a dozen folk names — pennies, silver dollars, moonwort, money plant — all referring to that remarkable coin-like shape. I love that a plant this common and easy to grow produces something that looks like it was crafted by a jeweller.

She's a biennial, like the foxglove — leaves in year one, flowers and pods in year two — and she self-seeds with the gentle persistence of something that knows it belongs. I have her in the shadiest, most unpromising corner of the garden, and she thrives there, which I respect enormously.

Honesty earns her common name. Everything about her is exactly what it appears — straightforward flowers, honest seed pods, no pretension. In a world of showy hybrids and complicated cultivars, there's something deeply refreshing about a plant that's just quietly, reliably itself.