False Acacia

Flower: Cream-white, pea-like flowers. Fruit: Brown pea-like pods, up to 4 inches long. Leaves: Deciduous. Dark green, pinnate leaves. 3 to 9 pairs of blunt, oval leaflets.

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Winter Aconite

Flower: Cup-shaped flowers, up to 3cm wide. The flowers have large, deeply cut, leafy bracts at their bases. Fruit: Follicles which contain the seeds. Leaves: A perennial with deeply cut, glossy, hairless basal leaves. Throughout the British Isles, Winter Aconite is most common in the east of England and Scotland.

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Crab Apple

Flower: Pinkish white in small clusters, 5 petals. Fruit: Fruit is long stalked, small and round, no larger than 2 inches in diameter but usually much smaller. Colour is very variable. Leaves: Deciduous. Stalked, oval with serrated edges.

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Cultivated Apple

Flower: Pinkish white in small clusters, 5 petals. Fruit: Large, fleshy and round. Can be green, yellow, pink, red or purple. Leaves: Deciduous, simple leaves growing alternate along the branches, serrated margins.

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Wood Avens

Flower: The long stalked, star-shaped flowers appear in loose clusters and are up to 2 cm across in diameter. The sepals turn downwards as the fruit forms. The flowers are similar in appearance to those of St... Fruit: Hooked fruit forming a bur-like head, bronze-tipped. Leaves: The leaves are unstalked. The lower ones are pinnate with the terminal leaflet being much the largest. Stem leaves are smaller and trefoil.

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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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Bearsbreech

Flower: Tall spike of white flowers with purple veins. Fruit: An ovoid capsule which contains 2-4 black seeds. Leaves: Glossy green leaves, growing up to 60cm in length. The leaves are also pinnate with deep lobes, pointed but not spiny. A similar species called Spiny Bearsbreech (Acanthus spinosus) exists but is more...

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Nettle-leaved Bellflower

Flower: Mid-blue, bell-shaped. Individual flowers up to 3.5cm in size. 1-3 flowers appear together on a stalked spike, the top ones opening first. Fruit: A dry, hairy nodding capsule that splits open upon ripening. Leaves: Rough, irregularly toothed, pointed leaves which are paler beneath. The plant earns its name from the leaves, as they resemble, or at least look similar to the leaves of Nettles.

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Peach-leaved Bellflower

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

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Blackthorn

Flower: White, 5 petals, numerous stamens containing gold pollen. Flowers appear before the leaves emerge. Fruit: Like a diminutive plum with a bluish-black waxy coating. Contains a large stone in the centre. The fruit are called 'sloes'. Leaves: Short-stalked, small and slender, pointed oval leaves, alternate and finely toothed. Greyish green beneath with hairy veins.

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English Bluebell

Flower: Azure blue and bell-shaped, forming one-sided spikes that droop at the tip. Each flower consists of 6 down-turned lobes. Sometimes the flowers are white. Fruit: Round seed pods develop after the flowers, eventually drying out and becoming brown. Inside the seed pods are many tiny black seeds. Leaves: Long, narrow leaves, no more than half an inch wide. The Spanish Bluebell (Hyacinthoides hispanica) has broader leaves than the English Bluebell.

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Common Box

Flower: Male and female flowers exist on separate plants. No petals. Male flowers have 4 greenish-white sepals and yellow stamens. Females are greenish and without sepals. Fruit: The flower turns into a green capsule and then into a solid brown woody seed case. Leaves: Evergreen shrub. Small, short stalks, dark green, oval, shiny and leathery.

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Bramble

Flower: 5 petals of white or pink, sepals down-turned in fruit, 3cm wide. Fruit: The berries are commonly known as 'blackberries'. Dark purple to black aggregated seeded drupelets. The less frequent Dewberry is similar-looking to Bramble but the fruit of Dewberry is purplish-blue,... Leaves: Compound leaves, 3 -7 toothed leaflets.

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Black Bryony

Flower: 6 small yellowish-green petals. Male and female flowers appearing on the same plant. Fruit: Shiny, red poisonous berries. Leaves: Stalked, dark green and shiny, glossy, heart-shaped leaves.

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Purging Buckthorn

Flower: Greenish-yellow tiny flowers, unstalked, appearing in dense clusters. 4 petals. Male and female flowers appear on separate trees. Fruit: The female flowers turn into green berries, later turning purplish-black. Leaves: Deciduous. Oval, pointed and finely toothed. In autumn, the leaves turn yellow and brown.

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Bird Cherry

Flower: Flowers very different than Wild Cherry. Cream-white, 5 petals, up to 1.5cm. Fruit: Very dark red cherries appear on some trees during autumn in the UK. Leaves: Deciduous tree. The oval and hairless, pointed leaves have serrated margins. Bird Cherry can be distinguished from Wild Cherry by the fine, sharp serrations on its leaf margins and the 2 nectar glands...

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Climbing Corydalis

Flower: Pale yellow clusters. Individual flowers up to 6mm long. Fruit: An ovate, or cylindrical capsule. Leaves: Small greyish-green leaves with tendrils attached to the ends of leaf stems. The long-stalked leaves have 3 to 5 leaflets.

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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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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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Cowslip

Flower: Deep yellow bell-shaped drooping flower, hanging to one side of the stem. Orange at the base, up to 1.5cm. Fruit: A capsule which contains a warty seed. Leaves: The leaves are all undivided and appear from the base of the plant. They are similar to Primrose leaves but smaller and with a narrowed base. The leaves are oval and wrinkly with toothed margins.

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Dutch Crocus

Flower: Golden yellow, cup-shaped, up to 4cm wide. Outer petals often marked with brown stripes. Leaves: Very linear with a pale stripe through the centre. The grass-like leaves emerge out from the surface of the ground.

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Crosswort

Flower: Minute pale yellow flowers that are borne in clusters around the base of the leaves. 4 petals. Fruit: Tiny, round nutlets. Black when ripe. Leaves: Leaves are pale green, hairy, simple, entire and elliptical. They are in whorls of 4 going along the stems. In fact, only 2 out of the 4 of those leaves are real leaves; the other two are stipules.

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Flowering Currant

Flower: 5 pink-to-red petals, hanging in loose clusters. Individual flowers up to 1cm. In spring, the flowers appear before the leaves. Fruit: Purplish black oval berries containing numerous seeds. Leaves: Deciduous. Leaves are stalked and palmate. Each leaf has 5 blunt lobes and serrated margins. The undersides of the leaves are downy.

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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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Common Dogwood

Flower: A flat-topped head of creamy-white flowers. 4 petals. Insect pollinated. Fruit: The flowers develop into small black berries, sometimes called 'dogberries'. Each dogberry is up to 8mm in diameter and contains a single seed. Leaves: Deciduous shrub. Its opposite leaves are slightly paler underneath. Up to 8cm in length. Oval leaves but with pointed tips. Each leaf has between 3 and 5 veins.

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