Two-spined Acaena

Flower: Globular flowerheads. Flowers are without petals. Each flower has 2 spines. White stamens. Fruit: The fruit is globular and spiny. The spines are purplish-red. Fruits measure up to 3cm in diameter. Leaves: A mat-forming perennial with bright green, pinnate leaves, up to 12cm long. The toothed leaflets are in 6 to 8 opposite pairs, plus a terminal leaflet. The young stems are hairy and often tinged red. ...

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Alkanet

Flower: Tight clusters of purplish-blue flowers. Roundish petals. Densely hairy. 5 stamens. Pollinated by bees. Fruit: Brown, 4-parted fruit, about 4mm long. The seeds ripen from July to October. Leaves: The leaves and stems are very hairy. The leaves are elliptic and wavy-edged. Not toothed. The leaves are alternate along both sides of the stems. Biennial or perennial.

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Allseed

Flower: The small white flowers are short-stalked and appear inside branched clusters. The 4 petals are about as long as the toothed sepals. Fruit: The fruit is a globular seed capsule. Leaves: A well-branched annual with very small, pointed oval leaves. The leaves are in opposite pairs along the stems. Greyish-green, stiff, thread-like, forked, reddish stems.

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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 Asparagus

Flower: Minute greenish-white or yellowish-white tubular flowers, appearing in 1's or 2's along the stems. Fruit: The fruit is a small red berry. Leaves: A long-lived perennial plant with no true leaves. Bluish-green, needle-like leaves in whorls along the stems. Leaves usually measure no longer than 2cm long.

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Mrs Wilson's Barberry

Flower: Clusters of yellow flowers. Possibly could be confused with Darwin's Barberry (Berberis darwinii) but that has orange flowers. Pollinated by insects. Fruit: Small red berries. The berries appear from August to November. Leaves: Mrs Wilson's Barberry is a very spiny shrub with arching branches. The leaves are narrow and pear-shaped. They are silvery green at first but by autumn the leaves have matured into a shade of red or d...

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Yellow Bartsia

Flower: The inflorescence is a leafy spike of flowers. Each flower has got a long 3-lobed lower lip. Fruit: A hairy, egg-shaped capsule. About 1cm long. Leaves: An annual stiff plant covered in sticky, glandular hairs. The broadly lanceolate leaves appear together in opposite pairs. The hairy leaves are toothed and unstalked.

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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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Northern Bedstraw

Flower: Numerous small white flowers in branched, dense leafy clusters. Each flower is about 3mm in diameter. Flowers are pointed at the tip. The 4 stamens are creamy white. 2 styles. Pollinated by flies and ... Fruit: A brown, 2-sectioned fruit with hooked hairs. Leaves: The leaves are stalkless, dark green and with rough edges. They appear in whorls of 4 up the stem. Each opposite pair of leaves are of differing lengths. This is the only white bedstraw in Great Brita...

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Clustered Bellflower

Flower: A compact clustered flowerhead of violet-blue, unstalked, bell-shaped or star-shaped flowers. The petals are blunt-tipped and curve outwards. A faint dark violet vein runs through the centre of each p... Fruit: The fruit is a many-seeded capsule. Leaves: Dark green, narrow, lance-shaped leaves (or slightly heart-shaped), half clasping the stem. The leaves alternate along the stems on both sides. The lower leaves are triangular and stalked. Occasionall...

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Peach-leaved Bellflower

Flower: Large, mid-blue (sometimes white), bell-shaped or star-shaped flowers. The 5 petals are slightly pointed. Similar to Clustered Bellflower but Clustered Bellflower has unstalked flowers which are deepe... Fruit: A heavily veined capsule with numerous tiny seeds. Leaves: Long narrow, toothed, evergreen, pointed leaves.

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Creeping Bent

Flower: Clusters of flower spikelets, usually awned. Spikelets have only one floret. Often purplish. Similar in appearance to Common Bent (Agrostis capillaris) but its flowerheads are less open. Wind pollinat... Fruit: A brown caryopsis (a type of dry one-seeded fruit). Leaves: A perennial grass with creeping runners. Flat leaves with long pointed ligules. Abundant all over the British Isles.

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Sea Bindweed

Flower: The pink flowers are trumpet-shaped with 5 white stripes. The centre of the flowers are yellowish. Flowers are between 3.5 and 5cm across. Insect pollinated. Fruit: A smooth, globular capsule, up to 2cm across. Leaves: Sea Bindweed is a trailing perennial plant with fleshy kidney-shaped leaves.

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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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Yellow Birdsnest

Flower: A nodding spike of 1 to 11 tubular flowers, 4 or 5 petalled. Short-stalked and about 1cm long. The flowers hang downwards when young. Fruit: The fruit is a capsule. Leaves: The entire plant is pale yellow and tinged red. Perennial. Resembles a Broomrape. Variable in hairiness and colour. Most commonly found in the leaf litter of damp Beech and Hazel woods (or occasionall...

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Cut-leaved Blackberry

Flower: Flowers can be white or pink. The petals are deeply cut into 3 lobes at their ends. Fruit: The fruit is a black berry. The fruits are similar in appearance to blackberry. Leaves: A scrambling, half-evergreen shrub with very easy to distinguish leaves. The leaves are deeply cut. Prickly stems. A garden escape species.

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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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Virgin's Bower

Flower: Star-shaped white flowers. Fruit: The fruit is a green achene which is a kind of dry, one-seeded fruit. The fluffy seedheads ripen from October to January. Pollinated by flies and bees. Leaves: A deciduous climber with dark green 2-pinnate leaves, similar in appearance to Traveller's Joy (Clematis vitalba). In leaf from March to November.

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Stone Bramble

Flower: Small clusters of whitish flowers with narrow petals. 5 green sepals. Insect pollinated, in particular bees and flies. Fruit: Bright red, shiny, aggregated fruit (a drupe), 15mm across. The fruit is globular and contains large seeds. The seeds ripen between July and September. Leaves: Leaves alternate along the stems and have double-serrated margins. They are long-stalked with 3 leaflets. The leaflets are hairy beneath. The stems are either slightly prickly or not prickly at all. S...

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Common Broomrape

Flower: Papery-looking, creamy yellow and usually with dark reddish-purple veins. Flowers are each up to 16mm long. Yellow stigma, sometimes purple. Fruit: An egg-shaped capsule. Leaves: Broomrapes do not have leaves. They are parasitic; numerous hosts, in particular Black Medick and Wild Carrot. The stems of Common Broomrape are reddish-brown and occasionally creamy yellow. Most comm...

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Bedstraw Broomrape

Flower: The flowers are yellowish and tinged purple. Purple, 2-lobed stigma. Downy stamens. Fruit: The fruit is an egg-shaped capsule, 1.2cm long. Leaves: Ovate to lance-shaped leaves, up to 2.5cm (1 inch) in length. Parasitic on Hedge Bedstraw (Galium album).

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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.

Video: Viper's Bugloss filmed at Orford, Suffolk on the 28th June 2022.

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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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