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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Garden Asparagus

Flower: Bell-shaped, pale green or yellowish flowers. Pollinated by bees. Fruit: A small, red berry, up to 1cm across. The seeds ripen in September and October. Leaves: A perennial herb with an erect, single stem. The shoots are sometimes known as 'spears'.

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Wild Basil

Flower: The lilac, mauve, purple or pink flowers are in whorls and are found mostly at the top of the stems. 2-lipped. 4 or 5 lobed. Insect-pollinated. Fruit: A one-seeded nutlet. The seeds ripen in August and September. Leaves: Pointed, oval and slightly blunt-toothed, apple green leaves with prominent curved veins. Leaves are either stalkless or short-stalked. Square stems. A hairy perennial.

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Birdsfoot

Flower: Pale pink with darker pink streaks. The wings of the flowers are white and the keels are yellow. Fruit: Curved, beaded, roundish and hairless seedpods with up to 9 segments. When 2 or 3 of the seedpods are together the seedpods resemble birds feet which is where Birdsfoot gets its name from. Leaves: An sprawling annual flower with 7 to 13 pairs of oblong leaflets per leaf.

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Black Bog-rush

Flower: Small, dark brown, flattened spikelets. Fruit: An achene surrounded by a hard white coating. Leaves: Thread-like, unbranched, erect and grows in tight clumps straight out of the ground. The leaves have inrolled margins.

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Sea Buckthorn

Flower: Tiny green and without petals, appearing along the stems. Fruit: An abundance of orange berries cover the tree. Leaves: Deciduous. Silvery leaves that are linear and untoothed.

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Viper's Bugloss

Flower: Pink buds which turn into a dense spike of funnel-shaped blue flowers. Downy sepals and 4-5 pink stamens. Fruit: Wrinkled nutlets, mossy in appearance. Leaves: The simple, rough, hairy, entire leaves are long and narrow with a prominent midrib. 1 alternate leaf per node.

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Bugloss

Flower: Light blue, bell-shaped flowers with white honeyguides, measuring approximately 5mm across. The petal-tube is curved. Pollinated by bees. Fruit: 4-parted, netted nutlets, about 3mm long. Single-seeded. Leaves: The stems are hairy and bristly. The narrow, pointed leaves are also hairy and warty. The upper leaves clasp their stems. Leaves alternate along the stems. Basal leaves are stalked but the upper leave...

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Lesser Burdock

Flower: Oval spiky flower heads. A feature worth noting when distinguishing between Greater Burdock and Lesser Burdock is the flower stalks. For Lesser Burdock, the flower stalks are very short, up to 1cm, bu... Fruit: Clusters of round, prickly fruit called 'burs'. The prickles of the burs have small hooks at their ends. The hooks can cause the fruit to stick to clothing and animal fur very easily while brushing pa... Leaves: The alternate stem leaves are large, broad, triangular with wavy edges. The even larger basal rosette leaves can be anything up to 20 inches long. Greater Burdock has solid lower leaf stalks, yet Less...

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Common Centaury

Flower: Dense pink cluster of 5 petalled flowers. Yellow anthers. Fruit: A cylindrical capsule, reaching up to half an inch in length and containing many seeds. Leaves: Leaves are oval, narrow and pointed. They exist opposite one another along their stems. Most of the leaves are often in a basal rosette.

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Bullate Cotoneaster

Flower: Large clusters of pinkish-white flowers, each with 5 petals. Fruit: Clusters of bright red berries frequently bird-sown, 1 cm in size when fully grown. Leaves: A deciduous or sometimes evergreen shrub (garden escape) with leaves of a blistered appearance, hence its alternative name. The Bullate Cotoneaster is difficult to tell apart from the similar-looking ...

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Hollyberry Cotoneaster

Flower: Clusters of small pale pink flowers. Up to 20 flowers per cluster. The flowers may look a deeper shade of pink while still in bud. The flowers have white anthers. Fruit: Clusters of round, stalked, bright red berries appear from August to November (UK). The slightly square-shaped berries reach up to 8mm in diameter and contain 5 seeds (and sometimes but rarely 4). Up ... Leaves: Simple, oval, broadly-lanceolate, pointed leaves, growing alternately along the stems. The dark green leaves turn red and orange in autumn before falling. This plant is similar-looking to Bullate Coto...

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Bloody Cranesbill

Flower: Bright red or purple flowers, but occasionally pink or white. The flowers have 5 dark purple-veined petals and are usually overlapping and unnotched, but occasionally they are shallowly notched. Flowe... Fruit: A drooping seed capsule borne from a nodding flower bud, sometimes turning red in autumn. Leaves: Small, deep and narrowly cut leaves consisting of 5 to 7 lobes. The leaves are hairy but not as hairy as those that appear on the flower buds and stems. The leaves often turn red in autumn.

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Dovesfoot Cranesbill

Flower: 5 notched pinkish-purple petals, up to 1.5cm across. The similar-looking Shining Cranesbill has unnotched petals. All 10 stamens have crimson-coloured anthers. The 5 sepals are shorter than the petals. Fruit: Elongated, slender seed pod, beak-shaped. Leaves: Divided into 5 to 7 wedge-shaped lobes. Borne either singly on the stem, or in opposite pairs. Long-stalked.

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Thale Cress

Flower: Flowers, 2 to 4mm in diameter. Insect-pollinated. Fruit: Cylindrical pods. Shepherd's Purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) is similar in appearance but the pods make them easy to tell apart. Leaves: A hairy annual flower with lanceolate leaves, sometimes toothed. The lower leaves form a basal rosette and the upper leaves are stalkless but do not clasp the stems.

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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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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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Dewberry

Flower: The white flowers are are up to 1 inch in diameter. Pollinated by insects. Fruit: Dull blue, fleshy, waxy berries consisting of many segments known as drupes (or drupelets). Dewberry may be confused with the much more common Blackberry plant, a.k.a. Bramble. The berries of the Dewb... Leaves: Alternate, trefoil and hairy leaves. Stalked and serrated. The branches of the Dewberry plant are more scrambling than those of Blackberry. The Blackberry is taller and more upright.

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Large-flowered Evening Primrose

Flower: Sepals red-striped, styles longer than stamens. Flowers up to 8cm wide, each having 4 large yellow petals. 8 stamens. Fruit: Dry fruit capsule, splitting open when ripe. Up to 4cm long. Leaves: Simple, toothed, alternate, pointed leaves. Crinkly, up to 6 inches long.

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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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Canadian Fleabane

Flower: Many-flowered. Small tubular 4-lobed yellow disc florets, yellow-green bracts that are only slightly downy, very short white rays. Fruit: Seedhead, white and bristly pappus. Cylindrical and elongated but widest above the middle. Leaves: Slender, simple, unstalked, linear leaves. Upper leaves have toothed margins and lower leaves have smooth margins.

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Fox and Cubs

Flower: One of very few orange flowers in our countryside. Flowers are borne in clusters, paler in their centres. Attracts many insects, such as hoverflies. Fruit: An achene, 3mm long and 1mm wide. Leaves: Bluish-green lanceolate basal leaves. Just a few leaves exist along the stems. The leaves are covered in short, dark, bristly hairs. In fact the entire plant is covered in these hairs.

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Goat's Beard

Flower: Yellow dandelion-type flower, opening in the morning and when sunny, up to 3cm. Pointed bracts much longer than florets. Fruit: A head of white seeds, similar-looking to dandelion but larger. Leaves: Alternate, stalkless and linear leaves, tapering to a sharp point. Parallel veins.

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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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Pampas Grass

Flower: Large tufts of silver-white feathery plumes held high above the foliage. Fruit: The fruit of Pampas Grass is white and persists on the stalks. Leaves: Very long, blade-like, linear leaves. The ends taper and the margins are bristly and finely serrated. Feels like sandpaper to touch and can easily cause a wound if care is not taken when touching it.

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