I have been very impressed by a large plant growing out of what little ground there is at the bottom of a lamp post, on Chessington Road, somewhere on the south-east-bound carriageway between Ruxley Lane and Horton Lane. A plant which I come across from time to time, and I am sure I have seen one or two over the years in the big herbaceous border at Polesden Lacey. Good that the council shearers, who have clearly been busy on the other side of the road, did not find it necessary to chop it down.
However, I don't know what it is called and neither did BH, although she offered to take a look in her books. I asked Google Image and his first thought was that it was a street. I then cropped the image and his second thought was that it was a plant, possibly evening primrose. Not very clever either.
But in among his similar images, we turned up the right answer, Verbascum Thapsus or common mullein - which also has plenty of other names, some rude, some whimsical. Wikipedia says that the Thapsus bit comes from Linneaus, who took it, for some reason, from the ancient Greek place in Sicily, not to be confused with the other ancient place in Tunisia where Julius Caesar fought and won an important battle in his civil war.
Wikipedia also suggests that these plants likes plenty of light, appropriate given the position of this one. And maybe if I had included a bit more of the lamp post in the snap, Google Image would have said lamp post rather than street.
Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbascum_thapsus.
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