Sweet Alyssum

Flower: White, occasionally pale purple, 5-6mm, 4 petals. Fruit: Flattened, oval seed pods bearing two seeds each. Leaves: Narrow, greyish-green, untoothed and lanceolate, usually having many whitish-silvery hairs.

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Sea Beet

Flower: Slender green spike of tiny petalless flowers, sometimes turning red. Fruit: The flowers form hard clusters at their bases which then turn into the multi-seeded fruit. Leaves: Dark green, wavy, leathery and shiny. The lower leaves are larger, have very curly edges and are triangular in shape. The upper leaves are narrower than the lower.

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Sea Bindweed

Flower: The pink flowers are trumpet-shaped with 5 white stripes. The centre of the flowers are yellowish. Flowers are between 3.5 and 5cm across. Insect pollinated. Fruit: A smooth, globular capsule, up to 2cm across. Leaves: Sea Bindweed is a trailing perennial plant with fleshy kidney-shaped leaves.

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Isle of Man Cabbage

Flower: Bright yellow flowers with pale brown veins, 2 to 2.5cm in size. Pollinated by insects. Fruit: The fruit is a cylindrical pod, waisted and beaked. The seeds form a single row within the beak of the fruit. Leaves: The glossy, pinnate leaves are dark green to greyish and form a basal rosette at the base of the plant. Stem leaves are absent. Isle of Man Cabbage is difficult to identify by the flower alone. Howeve...

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Seaside Daisy

Flower: Pale purple solitary flowers with yellow centres growing up to 4cm wide. Fruit: Insignificant. Leaves: Fleshy, evergreen, spoon-shaped leaves, narrowing towards the top of the plant. Occasionally toothed.

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Intermediate Evening Primrose

Flower: The flowers are bright yellow and cup-shaped. Flowers each measure 4 to 5cm across. The sepals are bent backwards and striped red. Flower buds are red with 8 thin vertical green stripes. The long flow... Fruit: Seed capsules, 2 or 3cm in length. Leaves: The crinkled leaves are simple, broadly lance-shaped and pointed. Leaves alternate along the stems on both sides. Each of the stem hairs have a red blotch at their base. Intermediate Evening Primrose ...

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Common Glasswort

Flower: Tiny, green, yellow anthers, usually in groups of 3 up the stem, the central one being the largest. Fruit: Succulent, fleshy one-seeded fruit. Leaves: This plant looks a lot like asparagus in my personal opinion. The translucent leaves consist of many succulent, scale-like segments. They are arranged in opposite pairs, fused to envelop the stems. Th...

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Marram Grass

Flower: Long one-flowered dense flower spikes, straw-coloured. Fruit: A single-seeded dry fruit (caryopsis). Leaves: Sharp-pointed leaf blades at their tips. The leaves are also tightly rolled inwards and bluish green in colour. The upper surfaces are hairy but lower surfaces are glabrous.

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Blue-eyed Grass

Flower: Distinctive and striking star-like flowers with 6 pale blue petals and a yellow centre, up to 2cm across. The flowers are short-lived. This is Bermuda's national flower. Fruit: Brown globular capsules, up to 4mm across. The capsules contain black, round seeds. The fruiting stems are pendulous. Leaves: Iris-like leaves. Linear and growing straight out of the ground, almost like grass.

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Lyme Grass

Flower: Bluish spikelets in pairs going up the stem. The flowers fade to straw-coloured over time. Wind pollinated. Fruit: The fruit is a caryopsis which is common to all grass species. A caryopsis is a kind of dry, one-seeded fruit. The seeds ripen in September and October. Leaves: A perennial grass species with stout, silvery bluish-grey foliage. The leaves are broad but linear.

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Lavender-cotton

Flower: Yellow, button-like flowerheads. The disc florets are tubular. There are no ray florets. Pollinated by insects. Fruit: The fruit is an achene (seed). The seeds ripen in August and September. Leaves: A dwarf evergreen shrub with silvery-grey, woolly foliage. The leaves are dense and deeply dissected. Can be found in West Cornwall.

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Common Orache

Flower: Slender, open, leafy, greenish, spike-like panicles. Fruit: A seed fused inside two diamond-shaped to triangular bracteoles. Leaves: Opposite, alternate leaves. Narrow, untoothed or almost toothless. Not hairy.

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Babington's Orache

Flower: A slender, open, leafy, green spike. 5 stamens. Fruit: The fruit is a seed (achene) which is enclosed by two triangular, fused bracteoles. Leaves: A prostrate growing annual plant with triangular, opposite leaves. The upper leaves are narrower than the lower leaves. It's angular stems are usually red and in the autumn the entire plant often turn...

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Wild Pansy

Flower: Either violet-coloured or violet and yellow, rarely entirely yellow, up to 2.5cm. Spur is longer than sepals. Fruit: A 3-valved capsule, splitting open when ripe to release the seeds. Leaves: Alternate, short stalks, stipules present. The leaves are broadly lanceolate in shape and have round-toothed margins. The stipules are pinnate and leafy and the lobes are lanceolate with toothed margi...

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Knotted Pearlwort

Flower: 5 unnotched white petals reaching up to 1cm across. Our largest flowered Pearlwort in the UK. Fruit: Dull yellow, egg-shaped capsule. 4 or 5 valves, usually 5. Leaves: Basal rosette and stem leaves are both present. The stalkless stem leaves are positioned in opposite pairs and get smaller towards the top. The linear leaves are untoothed and thread-like, smooth and ...

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Scarlet Pimpernel

Flower: 5 petals fringed with hairs. Despite the name, the flowers are orange and not scarlet red. Fruit: A brown, round fruit capsule which contains many seeds. Ripens from August to October. Up to 6mm across. Leaves: The leaves are stalkless and grow in opposite pairs along the stems. They are oval-elliptical with pointed tips. The leaf margins are not toothed. The undersides of the leaves are black-dotted and hav...

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Buck's-horn Plantain

Flower: 2-4cm dense unbranched greenish-brown spikes. Yellow anthers. Fruit: A membranous fruit capsule, containing anything up to 5 seeds. Leaves: The name of this plant is derived from the shape of its leaves. They are said to resemble deer's antlers. The leaves are pale green, lance-shaped, up to 25cm long and 2.5cm wide. The leaf veins (3 to ...

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Yellow-horned Poppy

Flower: Yellow flower, up to 9cm. Fruit: A distinctive narrow, curving, horn-shaped seed capsule, up to 3cm long. The surfaces of the capsules are warty in appearance and each capsule contains hundreds of seeds. The Yellow-horned Poppy is sa... Leaves: Thick and leathery, silvery or bluish-grey leaves. Covered in many fine, short hairs. Deeply divided with wavy margins.

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Sea Purslane

Flower: Slender flower spikes with flowers arranged inside small, dense clusters. Yellow stamens. Wind pollinated. Fruit: 3-lobed triangular fruit, up to 4 centimetres long. Seeds are dark brown. Leaves: A sprawling perennial undershrub. Fleshy, succulent, oblong and greyish leaves. The leaves taper at their bases and rarely have teeth.

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Sea Radish

Flower: The flowers are a rich yellow colour but occasionally a white form exists. Darker yellow veins can be noticed upon a closer inspection of the flowers. Each flower has 4 yellow stamens. The flowers gro... Fruit: Long cylindrical fruit pods with spherical, beaded swellings. Each swelling contains a seed. Leaves: A biennial / perennial plant of the cabbage family. In the first year Sea Radish is usually just basal rosette of leaves. In the second year, Sea Radish grows taller and produces an upright main stem....

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Sea Rocket

Flower: Mauve or pale to dark lilac flowers borne in clusters, having 4 petals each. Fruit: Flattish, fleshy seed pods, containing 2 seeds each. Leaves: The leaves are alternately arranged along the stems. The succulent leaves are pinnately lobed with sparsely toothed edges. The lobes are linear in shape. Leaf surfaces are smooth and not hairy.

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Prickly Saltwort

Flower: Tiny white petals, tinged pink. The flowers usually appear solitary inside a tuft of leaf-like bracts at the bases of the leaves. Flowers each measure between 5 and 9mm across. Wind pollinated. Fruit: A brown, cup-shaped, single-seeded fruit (an achene). The seeds mature from August to October. Leaves: A bushy, half-prostrate annual flower found on beaches just above the drift-line. Prickly Saltwort is a stiff, hairy, prickly plant. The fleshy, bluish-green leaves are short and linear (or hair-like)...

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Rock Samphire

Flower: Yellowish-green umbels with lobed lower bracts, up to 5cm wide. Fruit: A cylindrical capsule. Leaves: The succulent, fleshy leaves are pinnately divided into 2 or 3 linear lobes. The leaves are arranged alternately along the stems.

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Sea Sandwort

Flower: 5 small white unnotched petals and pale green narrow sepals which are shorter on the female flowers. Fruit: A green, 3-valved, globular capsule, up to 1cm long. Leaves: The opposite and stalkless, smooth and glossy leaves are untoothed, oval and pointed. Not hairy.

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Danish Scurvygrass

Flower: Clustered. White with 4 petals and 6 yellow stamens. Fruit: A broad, ovoid seed pod. Leaves: Simple, stalked leaves which alternate along the stem. The leaves are ivy-like but with heart-shaped bases.

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