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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Bearberry

Flower: White tinged pink, bell-shaped, up to 8mm. Fruit: Red berries. Leaves: Evergreen. Leathery and dark green, paler underneath. Oval and untoothed.

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Downy Birch

Flower: Male and female catkins appear on the same tree. Erect female catkins are shorter and green. Male catkins hang loosely in groups of 2-4. Often hybridizes with Silver Birch making identification tricky. Fruit: Small dry one-sided winged fruits, called 'achenes'. Leaves: Deciduous. Ovate, pointed and with serrated margins. Light green in spring, darkening and then turning yellow or orange in autumn. Leaves are often hairy underneath.

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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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Wall Cotoneaster

Flower: Pink with white anthers, up to 5mm. Fruit: Orange-red berries. Leaves: Small, pointed leaves that are shiny on both sides. Dark green on the upper surfaces and paler beneath, turning red in autumn. The leaves are positioned tightly together and are close to the branches....

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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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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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Deodar

Flower: Male and female flowers appear on the same tree. Male flowers are erect pale yellowish-green catkins, growing up to 5cm in length. Female cones are reddish-brown and egg-shaped, growing up to 13cm. Fruit: Brown, upright and ovoid cones, either solitary or in pairs, with several fan-shaped scales. Up to 12cm long, rounded at the top. Cones are bluish when young and turn reddish when ripe. A pair of wing... Leaves: Evergreen tree. Foliage is silvery blue. Needles are stiff and have sharp-pointed. The needles are arranged spirally in whorls.

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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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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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New England Hawkweed

Flower: Clusters of yellow dandelion-like flowers, 3cm wide each. Fruit: Not beaked, with a light brown pappus. Leaves: Simple, alternate leaves. Lanceolate, usually toothed, not lobed.

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Common Hawthorn

Flower: 5 white petals and 1 style. Anthers pink or purple. Fruit: The red berries are called 'haws'. Each haw contains a stone, or large seed. Leaves: A deciduous tree or shrub. Each leaf has 3 to 5 deep, round lobes and grows up to 6cm long. Leaves are stalked.

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Herb Robert

Flower: 5 pale to dark pink petals, occasionally white. Orange pollen, hairy calyx. Fruit: Elongated, ovoid, hairy schizocarp, with a beak-like tip. A schizocarp is a type of dry fruit which splits into single-seeded parts at maturity. These parts are called 'mericarps'. Leaves: 3 to 5 deeply lobed palmate leaves on long stalks. The lobes are narrow and sharp-tipped.

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Holly

Flower: 4 white petals in clusters, sometimes tinted purple. Male and female flowers often on different trees. Fruit: Bright red, showy berries. Leaves: A slow growing, compact, evergreen shrub. Smooth, shiny, leathery, hard leaves with prickly edges.

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Common Juniper

Flower: Small male and female yellow flowers which appear on separate shrubs. Fruit: The fruit is a berry, although not a true berry. Strictly speaking, the dark bluish-purple berries are actually cones. The fruit take up to 2 years to ripen and grow up to 8mm in diameter. Leaves: An evergreen shrub. Its stiff, tightly packed needles grow up to 1cm in length. Each needle has a broad silver line running along the inside.

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Common Laburnum

Flower: Pea-like, yellow flowers, up to 2cm long. The flowers are arranged together in loose hanging clusters. Each flower has 5 unequal petals. The upper petal is erect and the side petals overlap and are fu... Fruit: Smooth green pods, up to 6cm long, turning dark brown upon ripening. The pods eventually split open to reveal the poisonous black seeds. The pods persist on the tree after splitting open. Leaves: A deciduous tree. The leaves consist of 3 light green leaflets. They are slightly hairy on their undersides.

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Lady's-mantle

Flower: Tiny petalless flowers clustered together loosely with 4 yellowish-green sepals and yellow anthers. Fruit: A small and insignificant, dry achene. Leaves: The pale green, long-stalked, scallop-shaped leaves are soft and hairy. The size of the leaves vary depending on the exact species.

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Alpine Lady's-mantle

Flower: Tiny petalless flowers clustered together loosely with 4 yellowish-green sepals and yellow anthers. Fruit: A small achene (type of one-seeded dry fruit that doesn't split open to release its fruit). Leaves: The divided leaves have between 5 and 7 leaflets. The leaflets are narrow and well-separated. Their margins have distinctive silvery-white borders. The tips of the leaflets are toothed.

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European Larch

Flower: Male flowers with cream-coloured anthers in globular clusters appear underneath the shoots. Female flowers look like pinkish-red cones and are situated between the young larch needles. Female flowers ... Fruit: The female flowers eventually become the fruit which is a brown cone. The cones have hollow tops and grow as large as 4cm. The scales of the cones open to shed the winged seeds. Leaves: Central Europe's only deciduous coniferous tree. The light green leaves are needle-like, up to 4cm in length. They grow out in clumps from the twigs. At the base of each clump is a woody knob in which...

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Lichen spp.

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Moschatel

Flower: Tiny green flowers in right angles to one another. 4 or 5 petals. Fruit: Green berry-like fruits (drupes) that curve downwards upon ripening. Leaves: The 5 or more lobed leaves is carpet-forming on the ground. The leaves are opposite and toothed.

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Feather Moss

Flower: Flowerless. Mosses reproduces using spores or asexually. Fruit: Long erect stalks with a spore-bearing, drooping, nipple-shaped fruit on top. Leaves: Feathery as the name implies. Carpet-forming.

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Sphagnum Moss

Flower: Flowerless. Mosses reproduces using spores or asexually. Fruit: A globular spore capsule. The spores are black. Leaves: There are several species of Sphagnum Moss. They all are similar in appearance but they can range in colour from red, pink, green and orange. From above, the leaves are star-shaped. The leaves absorb ...

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Sessile Oak

Flower: Male and female catkins are borne on the same trees. Male green hanging catkins. Females are red clusters of bracts which look like flower buds. Fruit: A stalkless acorn, up to 3cm in length. This is perhaps the best way to tell the Sessile Oak apart from English Oak. The English Oak has stalked acorns. Leaves: A deciduous tree. The stalked leaves can help distinguish this tree from English Oak, which has unstalked leaves. The Sessile Oak has 5 to 6 lobes on each side of its leaves.

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Fragrant Orchid

Flower: Anything from pale pink to purple with a 3 lobed lip and long spur. Fruit: A seed capsule. Enclosed in the capsule are numerous tiny dust-like seeds. Leaves: Narrow, linear and unspotted leaves.

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