IT'S long and it's succulent and you bite the end off it and it tastes lovely. Asparagus, that prince of vegetables, is enjoying its prime season.

Which should be a good one this summer, following the warm, sunny weather in April.

Certainly you can buy imported asparagus, probably all year round, but nothing beats the best Worcestershire produce straight from the fields.

Next weekend, the British Asparagus Festival starts and runs from Sunday, May 27, to Sunday, June 3, in the Vale of Evesham, its traditional home.

Based at the historic Fleece Inn in the village of Bretforton, the festival has grown out of the historic asparagus auctions which have taken place in the area for generations and promises to be a week-long celebration and promotion of all things asparagus.

As a taster, there was an asparagus brunch put on by Worcestershire Farmstay Group - the organisation of bed and breakfast and self-catering county farms - at the home of one of its members, Mandy Davenport, of Home Farmhouse, Upper Strensham.

Guest speaker was Martin Haines, an asparagus farmer from Chipping Campden and a member of the British Asparagus Growers Association, who was able to reassure that this year's crop should be top quality.

"In the sunshine it has been growing well," he said. "Some days we have cut twice."

Good news indeed for asparagus lovers everywhere.

"English asparagus has much more flavour than the bland stuff from abroad," Martin added. "We are still using old varieties especially for taste."

Although these may not be quite as old as the Romans used, for there is a recipe for cooking asparagus in the oldest surviving book of recipes, Apicius's 3rd Century AD De Re Conuinaria Volume III.

The first two volumes obviously ended up in the Roman version of the rubbish skip.

The Romans and ancient Greeks both used asparagus as a food and medicine, because it is claimed to be a treatment for urinary tract infections, as well as kidney and bladder stones.

The Asparagus Festival at the Fleece officially opens with the traditional auction on Sunday, May 27, but the main focus of the week will be Festival Day, Bank Holiday Monday, when there will be cookery demonstrations by Rachel Green, TV's Flying Chef, a craft fair, a farmers' market, silver band and a session of tutored asparagus tasting.

Hotels and restaurants across the Vale will also be getting in on the act, offering a range of delicious asparagus menus for all times of the day.

The festival will be brought to a close at Bretforton church on Sunday, June 3, with the annual asparagus service.

ASPARAGUS FACTSThe British asparagus season lasts for around seven weeks in early summer, usually during May and June, although this year harvesting began in late April due to the warm weather. Nearly 3,000 tonnes of British asparagus is harvested each year, but three times that amount is imported.Peru is currently the world's leading asparagus exporter, followed by China and Mexico. The top asparagus importers are the United States, followed by the European Union and Japan. America is the world's largest producer and consumer when import quantities are factored in. The English word asparagus derives from classical Latin, but the plant was once known in English as sperage, from the mediaeval Latin sparagus. This term itself derives from the Greek aspharagos or asparagos, and the Greek term originates from the Persian asparag, meaning sprout or shoot.Asparagus was also corrupted in some places to sparrow grass. In 1791, John Walker said: "Sparrow-grass is so general that asparagus has an air of stiffness and pedantry."