Mountain Ash

Flower: White with cream-coloured anthers. Fruit: Tight clusters of red berries. Leaves: Deciduous. Similar to Common Ash leaves. Pinnate with toothed leaflets.

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Yellow Azalea

Flower: Funnel-shaped, bright yellow flowers, up to 5cm across. Flowers appear together in dense clusters of 5 to 25. Pollinated by insects. Fruit: A dry, woody seed capsule, containing several minute seeds. Leaves: A bushy deciduous shrub whose leaves are oblong and turn red, purple or orange in autumn. Commonly seen as a garden plant in the British Isles but sometimes seen bird-sown in woods and on moorland. Th...

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Heath Bedstraw

Flower: Tiny, white, forming dense clusters, 4 petals. Fruit: Nutlets are brown and ovoid, hairless and with tiny dome-shaped warts. Leaves: Sharply pointed. Edges have minute forward pointing prickles. In whorls of 5-8 along the main stem.

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Bilberry

Flower: One or two reddish-pink bell-shaped flowers on short stalks at leaf bases. Fruit: Small, round, dark blue, flat-topped berries. No larger than 1cm in diameter. Leaves: Small, light green and short-stalked oval to elliptical leaves with netted veins. Leaf margins are finely serrated.

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Bracken

Flower: Bracken is a fern so does not have flowers. Instead, it reproduces using spores. Fruit: Spores. Leaves: Large triangular fronds, divided into 3 parts. Each part is bipinnately subdivided. The leaves when young look like 'shepherd's crooks', or 'croziers'. In autumn, the leaves turn yellow-brown and pers...

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Common Butterwort

Flower: Violet, on long stalks and up to 2cm. Diverging lower lip and a pointed spur. Fruit: Brownish-yellow capsule, ovate, with numerous small brown seeds. Leaves: Yellow-green star-shaped basal rosette with margins curled upwards. 3 to 6 succulent leaves, each up to 8cm long. Butterwort is an insectivorous plant. The leaves feel sticky to touch because the leaf...

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Common Cotton-grass

Flower: Fluffy white flowers resembling balls of cotton wool which give the plant its name. Multiple flowers emanating from the sides of the stem, unlike the Hare's-tail Cotton-grass which has a single flower... Fruit: Brown seeds, or 'achenes', up to 3mm long. They are flat, 3-sided, elliptical and widest above the middle. Leaves: Dark green, linear leaves.

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Hare's-tail Cotton-grass

Flower: Fluffy white flowers resembling balls of cotton wool which give the plant its name. Each plant bears a single flower emanating from the top of the stem, unlike Common Cotton-grass which has a multiple... Fruit: A brown seed called an achene, up to 3mm long. Leaves: Thin and spiky dark green grass-like leaves, growing up from around the base of the plant.

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Common Cow-wheat

Flower: Annual. Flowers in pairs with leaf-like bracts at the bottom, pale to deep yellow, sometimes tinged pink, up to 2cm. Fruit: Elliptical, oval, flattened capsule, carrying 4 seeds, later splitting on one side. Seeds are dispersed by ants. The botanical name of 'Melampyrum' is derived from the Greek 'melas' (black) and 'pyros... Leaves: Opposite, linear-lanceolate leaves which are nearly stalkless. Leaf bracts have long teeth at the base.

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French Cranesbill

Flower: 5 petals, either not notched or slightly notched, up to 3cm wide. Deep salmon pink with dark red or maroon veins. Fruit: The fruits resemble long beaks like crane's bills after which Cranesbills are named. Leaves: Heavily lobed leaves, covering the ground. Each leaf is up to 8cm across.

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Deergrass

Flower: Egg-shaped spikelets which grow solitary at the top of the stem. Fruit: 3 sided nuts. Leaves: Tussock-forming, dense, erect, stiff leaves with unbranched stems. Basal leaves only.

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Hard Fern

Flower: Ferns have spores, flowers are therefore absent. Fruit: The spores on the underside of the fronds can be either yellow, green, brown or black. Leaves: The fronds can either be sterile or fertile. The evergreen, narrow, sterile fronds often lie horizontally across the ground, and the even narrower, taller, fertile fronds are more erect, withering tow...

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Broad Buckler Fern

Flower: Ferns do not produce flowers. They reproduce by means of spores. Fruit: Spores ripen in July and August. Leaves: The scales on the stalks are dark, or dark-centred. The dark centred scales are a good feature for identifying this fern. Dark green, spreading 3-pinnate fronds (leaves) which are broadly triangular i...

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Fairy Flax

Flower: Flowers have 5 unnotched, white, ovate petals, up to 1cm across. The centres of the flowers are yellow. Their stalks are long and thread-like. The flowers nod when in bud. 5 stamens. Similar looking t... Fruit: A 4-parted globular capsule. Leaves: Annual or biennial flower with small oblong leaves in opposite pairs. The leaves are typically green.

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Foxglove

Flower: Tubular purple flowers appearing on tall unbranched stalked spikes. Flowers sometimes white and oftentimes speckled dark purple. Fruit: A capsule containing many tiny seeds, 15mm long. Leaves: Simple, toothed, ovoid, leaves with serrated margins. The basal leaves which form in the first year are large with long stalks. The older stem leaves are smaller and shorter stalked. The stem leaves a...

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Common Gorse

Flower: Rich yellow, pea-like. Sepals over half as long as petals, also yellow. Up to 2cm. Fruit: Hairy, black, pea-like pods which loudly pop open to spread their seeds on hot summer days. Leaves: The leaves are green, hard and spiky, ending in sharp points.

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Western Gorse

Flower: Clusters of yellow pea-like flowers. Smaller and narrower than Common Gorse flowers, up to 2cm long. Fruit: Dark brown oval, pointed seed pods, bursting open in spring. Leaves: An evergreen prickly shrub. The spiny leaves are a darker green and less furrowed than the similar looking Common Gorse.

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Soft Brome Grass

Flower: In erect or drooping clusters. The normally hairy clusters are roundish and short-awned. The lemmas (outer scales of the seed head) have pale narrow margins. Fruit: Pale green seeds. Bromus (see Latin name) is derived from the Greek word for Oat, and 'Soft' refers to the seed head meaning that it feels soft to touch. Leaves: Long, dull green leaf blades with parallel veins. The leaf blades are hairy. Soft Brome is an annual grass.

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Mat Grass

Flower: One-sided, one-flowered flower spike. Fruit: A caryopsis (a type of dry, one seeded fruit, typical of grasses and cereals). Leaves: Tufted, forming dense tussocks. The leaves are simple with entire margins, linear in shape and alternate.

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Quaking Grass

Flower: Distinctive and sparse-looking spikelets, purplish. Flowers oval to triangular that quiver in the wind. Fruit: Broad, ellipsoid caryopsis (a dry, one-seeded fruit). Leaves: Dull green, linear, upright leaves. Smooth and flat.

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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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Harebell

Flower: Nodding pale blue bell-shaped flowers on long stalks. Individual flowers up to 2cm in length. Fruit: A small nodding capsule, filled with minute seeds, up to 8mm long. Leaves: The long-stalked basal leaves are roundish, or kidney-shaped and have large rounded teeth which have normally wilted by flowering time. The leaves become shorter stalked as they go up the stem. The al...

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Lesser Hawkbit

Flower: Solitary bright yellow flowers, up to 2cm wide. The outer florets are violet-tinted beneath. The flowers of the similar looking Rough Hawkbit (Leontodon hispidus) are reddish beneath. Fruit: There are 2 types of fruit. The first is the outer achene - a cylindrical, non-beaked, pale brown achene with a pappus of scales. Up to 4mm in length. The second type is the inner achene - this is sho... Leaves: A short-lived perennial plant with bluntly lobed, oblong leaves in a basal rosette. The leaves can be either hairy or hairless. The hairs are forked. The similar looking Autumn Hawkbit (Leontodon autu...

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Cross-leaved Heath

Flower: Light pink bell-shaped flowers clustering at the end of the stems. Fruit: A hairy capsule. Leaves: Needle-like leaves appearing in whorls of 4 up the stems. These whorls of 4 are cross-shaped and give the plant its name. The leaves are stalkless, toothless, greyish-green and parallel to the stems.

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Bell Heather

Flower: Red to purple spikes consisting of bell-shaped flowers. Fruit: A capsule, or berry. Not often seen in fruit. Leaves: Evergreen, tiny, needle-like, dark green leaves, in whorls of 3 up the stem.

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