Himalayan Balsam

They say that the sense of smell triggers some of the most powerful childhood memories...

Much of my childhood was spent walking and playing in close proximity to the last few kilometers of the Grand Union Canal above its junction with the tidal River Thames at Brentford, Middlesex.

Most of the lower reaches of the canal are re-engineered sections of the River Brent, but for short stretches the canal and the river part company, the old river flowing over a weir which the canal bypasses by means of a lock.

And it is on these islands between canal and river that I recall the lush summer growth of Himalayan Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera, with its characteristic sickly sweet smell.

Today I found the same plant growing beside the River Don, a few hundred metres above its confluence with the River Ury - and the smell immediately carried me back some 45 years to those childhood summers away 'Down South'.