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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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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Japanese Cedar

Flower: Flowers are green and inconspicuous. The yellow pollen of Japanese Cedar is often responsible for sneezing and hay fever. Fruit: Green cones at the tips of the branches, later turning brown. 2cm in diameter. In fruit from October to March. Leaves: Dense, tiny, awl-shaped leaves which spiral around the branches.

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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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Greater Cuckooflower

Flower: Clusters of pink flowers with purple veins. Insect-pollinated. Fruit: Pods. Leaves: A perennial with pinnate leaves, divided into pairs. The end leaflet is large.

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Poet's Daffodil

Flower: Large white or off-white, raggedy-looking petals. The petals have gaps between them. The flower has a yellow centre with a red corona around the outside. Fruit: A capsule with many seeds. Leaves: Long, linear greyish-green leaves. A bulbous perennial of ash and oak woodland.

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Yellow Day-lily

Flower: Lemon yellow trumpet-shaped flowers, appearing in clusters. Up to 9cm across. Pollinated by insects. Fruit: The fruit is a capsule. Leaves: A clump-forming perennial. The mid-green leaves are narrow, up to 6.5cm long and 1.5cm wide. All leaves are basal leaves.

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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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Hard Shield Fern

Flower: Ferns produce spores to reproduce and so ferns are flowerless. Fruit: The spores ripen between July and February. Leaves: Hard Shield Fern is an evergreen tufted fern with overwintering, glossy, dark green leaves (fronds). The leaves emerge from the surface of the ground in a rosette formation. They branches are erect an...

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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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Parsley Fern

Flower: A fairly common fern found mainly in Wales, Cumbria and Scotland. Ferns do not have flowers. They reproduce by means of spores instead. Leaves: An evergreen, alpine fern with pale green fronds. As the name implies, this fern has fronds which resemble parsley. It is a bushy plant which grows in clusters.

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Blue Fleabane

Flower: Loose clusters of erect flowers with small pink or lilac-coloured rays and yellow centres. Flowers measure up to 18mm tall. The flowers are named because they often look blue from a distance away. Fruit: Off-white (pinkish) pappus. Leaves: Long, slender, untoothed leaves which half-clasp their stems. The leaves alternate along their stems. Annual or biennial.

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Spanish Gorse

Flower: Golden yellow pea-like flowers appearing in rounded clusters of about 12. Flowers are usually abundant. Pollinated by bees. Fruit: Flattish, oval, green pods which bear between 1 and 4 seeds. Leaves: A deciduous shrub with spiny green stems. The leaves are of two types. They are either spiny with a very sharp point, or dark greyish-green, oval and hairy. The plant is very softly hairy all over.

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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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Grey-headed Hawkweed

Flower: Yellow dandelion-like flowers. Fruit: Unbeaked fruit with a feathery light brown pappus. Leaves: Alternate leaves with distinctive, large-toothed edges. Each forward-pointing tooth is widely spaced and ends in a sharp point.

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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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