Guardian 24090, Brendan: botanical females

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A particularly appropriate one for an inaugural blog by a female gardener, being themed around women and plant names. Quite a mix of clues — mostly pretty easy, but one or two more challenging ones, and two I don’t quite understand.

Across
1 CHERRY — HER in CRY. An easy one to start with.
6 PATIENCE. Were I a G&S enthusiast, I would have spotted the double definition immediately. As I’m not, I wasted a bit of time trying to make something out of wordplay.
9 DAPHNE — simple anagram, plus a reference to 23ac
10 VERONICA — consistent with the theme of women’s names/plant names, and fairly straightforward wordplay — ‘one caught’ in VERONA. But a very tricky definition — ‘way to avoid charge’. I would not have known without a dictionary that a veronica is a movement in bullfighting.
11 FLOWER GIRLS. Rather a weak clue, I thought, relying entirely on references to other answers for the wordplay.
15 EATABLE — EA = each (abbrev) plus TABLE = food.
17 GRANADA — GRAN plus ADA. Fairly straightforward.
18 PLANTSWOMEN — a word in common usage in horticultural circles, but maybe less familiar to non-gardeners. A bit of a red herring in the wordplay — ‘providing several answers here’ could suggest the answer is a location rather than a reference to the puzzle.
22 VIRGINIA. I like this clue — ’I’ twice in an anagram of RAVING.
23 LAUREL — straightforward, ‘laurels’ being honours.
24 ROSEMARY — two names in one making a shrub which is also a herb.
25 VIOLET — simple anagram for a colour at the end of the visible spectrum.
Down
1 ORANGE — Double definition. The only featured plant which isn’t (as far as I know) used as a woman’s name.
2 TAKE FRIGHT — anagram of FREAK in TIGHT. Nice concise clue.
3 TIMOR SEA — I spotted this anagram of ‘it’s a more’ straight away, then found that it is not marked as such in my atlas.
4 CODIFIED — ‘company’ plus IF in DIED (‘bought it’).
5 EXPLOITS — EX-PILOTS with the I moved.
7 NAIL — A in NIL. ‘Digital component’ is a nice definition.
8 EXAM (presumably). Why does ‘fire up’ give this?
12 GRENADIERS — simple anagram.
13 BALMORAL — BAL (French dance) plus MORAL.
14 GAUNTLET — another one I don’t understand. A gauntlet is a challenge, but why is this the location of a punishing run?
16 BAPTISMS — B IS and MS around APT.
19 WHAT IF — F following an anagram of ‘with a’.
20 OVER — double definition — ‘no longer affected by’ and the hardy perennial (while we’re on the plant theme) cricket reference.
21 IRIS — one more botanical female to finish. SIR and I backwards, using the double meaning of ‘pupil’.

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