Fen Bedstraw

Flower: Loose clusters of white flowers. Each flower is up to 3mm across. Yellow anthers. Fruit: The fruits are low-domed warts. Leaves: Whorls of leaves in groups of 6 to 10. Leaves are one-veined. The linear leaves have prickly edges. Similar to Marsh Bedstraw (Galium palustre) but Fen Bedstraw often has rougher, purplish leaves. Fen...

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Common Bent

Flower: Each plant has hundreds of tiny spikelets with only one flower per spikelet. Fruit: Seed heads are in open, loose clusters. Leaves: Very short grass despite often being called the tallest of the Bent species. Very flat, thin and ribbed leaves which taper to a point. Hairless.

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Creeping Buttercup

Flower: 5 glossy yellow petals on furrowed stalks, up to 3cm wide and with spreading sepals. Fruit: A cluster of achenes, no larger than half a centimetre across. Leaves: Dark green and triangular-shaped with 3 deeply cut lobes, the end lobe being long-stalked.

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Hairy Buttercup

Flower: Shiny, pale yellow flowers, paler than the very similar Bulbous Buttercup (Ranunculus bulbosus). Just like Bulbous Buttercup, the green sepals of Hairy Buttercup are bent backwards and press against t... Fruit: A short-beaked nutlet. The beak curves upwards. Leaves: An annual flower with palmate leaves. Similar to Bulbous Buttercup but hairier. Both the stems and leaves are very hairy. Bulbous Buttercup has a bulbous stem base at ground level. Hairy Buttercup doe...

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Common Cat's-ear

Flower: Yellow dandelion-like solitary flowers, up to 4cm. Underside has green-greyish florets. Leafless, unbranched flower stalk contains scale-like bracts at the top. Flowers similar-looking to Autum Hawkbi...

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Lesser Celandine

Flower: 7-12 glossy yellow petals up to 3cm wide, sometimes fading to white. Flowers only opening in sunshine. Fruit: Pale and globular. Leaves: The leaves are dark green, heart-shaped and long stalked. The leaves often contain light patches on them.

Video: Lesser Celandine's filmed in Adlington, Lancashire, on the 3rd April 2022.

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Roman Chamomile

Flower: The flowers resemble large white daisies. Flowers measure between 1.8 and 2.5cm across. White-edged, green bracts. Pollinated by flies, bees and beetles. Fruit: An oblong, seed-like fruit. The seeds ripen from June to October. Leaves: A hairy, mat-forming perennial plant with finely divided leaves and thread-like leaflets.

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Lesser Chickweed

Flower: Deeply notched, white petals. The petals are usually absent but when not, they are minute. Flowers measure 3 to 6mm across. Sepals are hairless, unlike the downy sepals of the similar looking Common C... Fruit: Green, oval fruits on long stalks. Unlike Common Chickweed the fruit stalks are not drooping. Pale yellowish-brown seeds. Leaves: Small, pale, yellowish-green leaves. The oval to oblong, pointed leaves are short-stalked and in opposite pairs up the stems. Untoothed. A prostrate annual.

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Creeping Cinquefoil

Flower: Yellow, 5 petals, buttercup-like with a notch at the end of each petal. Fruit: A head of dry greyish-brown tiny nutlets, or achenes. Leaves: Long-stalked, alternate, compound leaves, with stipules. 3 to 5 toothed leaflets. The leaves look very similar in appearance to those of Strawberry and Creeping Cinquefoil is often misidentified as St...

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Red Clover

Flower: Pinkish-purple egg-shaped flowers with very short stalks. Sometimes unstalked. Up to 3cm wide. Fruit: Egg-shaped pod, not hairy. Leaves: Each leaf has 3 finely toothed leaflets, the lower ones being stalked and upper unstalked. Leaflets often have a white crescent in their centres. Leaflets are variable in shape from round to linear an...

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White Clover

Flower: Dull white becoming brown with age, egg-shaped, up to 2cm wide. Fruit: A linear pea-like pod which contains 3 or 4 heart-shaped yellow-brown seeds. Leaves: The leaves are trifoliate which means that they are divided into 3. The leaves are long-stalked and individual leaflets are circular with fine teeth along the margins. The leaves often have pale green...

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Strawberry Clover

Flower: Flowerheads are densely packed with pink or light red, stalkless pea-shaped flowers. The flowers turn darker throughout the growing season. Fruit: Seedpod containing either 1 or 2 brown seeds. The seeds are similar shaped to kidney beans. Leaves: A perennial herb with compound serrated leaves. 3 leaflets. Similar to White Clover but smaller and with thicker bent back veins. The leaves are long-stalked and leaf tips are notched.

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Birdsfoot Clover

Flower: Short-stalked pale pink or white flowers in clusters of 1 to 4. Individual flowers are 6 to 8mm across. Fruit: The fruit are pea-like pods. Leaves: A prostrate hairy annual flower that has trefoil leaves. Birdsfoot Clover is similar to Burrowing Clover (Trifolium subterraneum) but is not hairy.

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Common Daisy

Flower: Solitary on leafless stalks, sometimes the white petals are red-tipped, up to 2.5cm. The eye of the daisy is yellow. The word Daisy is derived from the fact that the flower opens in the morning and sh... Fruit: Minute light brown seeds. Leaves: Round, simple and finely toothed, up to 4cm.

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Common Dandelion

Flower: Leafless flower stalks contain a milky sap. Yellow flowers, often reddish underneath, up to 6cm wide. Fruit: The fruit is a pappus. A spherical head of white seeds, often known as a 'clock'. The seeds are called 'achenes'. Leaves: Variable in shape and having basal leaves only. They have deep lobed, long leaves, up to 30cm. The word 'dandelion' comes from the French for 'Lion's tooth'. This is referring to the shape of the le...

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Red-seeded Dandelion

Flower: Solitary pale yellow flowers, about 1 inch (2.5cm) across. Flowerheads are composed entirely of ray florets. Flowers have between 150 and 200 ray florets. The flowers of Red-seeded Dandelion are small... Fruit: The fruit of Dandelions are known as achenes. It consists of a single oblong seed tipped by a feathery ring of hairs. The Red-seeded Dandelion can be easily distinguished from Common Dandelion in that... Leaves: All leaves are basal. They measure up to 10 inches (25cm) long and 1.5 inches (4cm wide). Deeply pinnate, backward-pointing, triangular but narrow leaf lobes. The lobes are pointed at the tips. Perenn...

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Henbit Dead-nettle

Flower: Purplish-pink flowers with a white face and purple spots. Up to 2cm in length. Pollinated by bees. Fruit: A 4-parted nutlet. Leaves: The well-toothed leaves are in opposite pairs along the 4-angled stems. The leaves under the flowers are unstalked. The leaf margins have large blunt teeth. Henbit Dead-nettle is a hairy annual flower.

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Crested Dog's-tail

Flower: One-sided stalked green spikelet, shortly awned. Fruit: Seeds, up to 4mm long. Leaves: Stiff green, wiry grass blades, long and narrow.

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Feverfew

Flower: Clusters of daisy-like flowers on leafy stems, short wide rays. Individual flowers up to 2.5cm wide. Fruit: Seeds, ripening in August and September. Leaves: Feathery 1 to 2-pinnate leaves, often yellowish-green.

Video: Feverfew filmed in Orford, Suffolk on the 26th June 2022.

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Argentine Fleabane

Flower: Clusters of small pale yellow flowers. Flower bracts are long-branched and red or purple-tipped. The bracts are 3 to 5mm long. Fruit: The fruit is a seed with a plume of cream-coloured hairs attached at one end. The seeds are wind dispersed. Leaves: The bluish-green, lance-shaped leaves (2-6cm long) are covered in stiff hairs. Argentine Fleabane is shorter-growing than the similar looking Canadian Fleabane (Conyza canadensis). An erect, hairy per...

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Bermuda Grass

Flower: 3-6 spikes up to 5cm long, arranged in a fan shape. Unawned spikelets are one-flowered and purplish. Fruit: A brown seed-like caryopsis. Leaves: Simple, linear, elongated leaf blades, short and flattened. Jointed stems.

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Perennial Rye Grass

Flower: Unstalked slender spikelet, unawned. Green flowers alternating up the stem. Fruit: A dry, one-seeded fruit, ripening in 4 to 5 weeks. Leaves: Dark green, smooth. Glossy on the undersides of the leaves.

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Sweet Vernal Grass

Flower: Yellowish-green spikelet with a bent awn. Fruit: A single-seeded dry fruit (caryopsis). Leaves: Flat but pointed leaf blades, forming in loose clumps.

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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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Autumn Hawkbit

Flower: Small yellow dandelion-like flowers, similar to Common Cat's-ear but flowers being smaller and without the scale-like bracts at the top of the stem. Flowers up to 3.5cm. Fruit: Glossy brown achene with feathery white hairs. Not beaked. Leaves: Dandelion-like leaves in a basal rosette. The long, narrow leaf lobes are distinctively sharp-tipped.

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