There are some plants that are quiet and unassuming and they do very little that you could call exciting. Their flowers are insignificant and they don’t show any spectacular colours or anything else for that matter. But sometimes they shine.

Alchemilla mollis is one such. It’s not classically beautiful but it comes into its own when it rains. As the drops of rain fall, the plant’s leaf hairs catch the droplets and hang onto them with a tenacity that belies the rest of their being. Then they shine – I’m not sure that there is much that’s nicer in the garden after a shower.

Even though they are beautiful, they are not universally loved – in fact the housekeeper in the holiday let business where I used to work as a gardener hated them so much she asked me to pull them out as though they were weeds and to be fair they do seed themselves liberally round here – must be something in the soil. I did as she asked, thinking she’d got the authority to make such a decision and then got taken to task by the owner of the site for “pulling out useful plants”. A guest had seen what I was doing and complained to him! I was bloody furious really, especially given that I’d questioned the decision right from the start explaining how useful the plant was. Still, never mind, their loss not mine.

I’ve just spotted this one looking fantastic in a pot outside the lounge door and thought “that’ll make a lovely photo” so here it is. One of the “little guys” of the plant world but a giant in the rain.