Alexanders

Flower: Yellow-green umbel. Fruit: Globular, ridged, turning black on ripening. Leaves: Yellowish-green bluntly toothed, divided and glossy.

[view all information]

Marsh Arrowgrass

Flower: A flower spike. The green flowers have purple edges. Individual flowers are up to 3mm wide. Flowers have 3 petals and 6 stamens. Fruit: Narrow, erect and arrow-like. Leaves: Long and grass-like leaves with deep grooves.

[view all information]

Sea Beet

Flower: Slender green spike of tiny petalless flowers, sometimes turning red. Fruit: The flowers form hard clusters at their bases which then turn into the multi-seeded fruit. Leaves: Dark green, wavy, leathery and shiny. The lower leaves are larger, have very curly edges and are triangular in shape. The upper leaves are narrower than the lower.

[view all information]

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.

[view all information]

Sea Campion

Flower: 5 white overlapping petals with broader sepals and often solitary, up to 2.5cm. Sometimes tinged slightly pink. Fruit: A capsule with down-turned teeth. Leaves: Dark green, smooth and waxy leaves, forming a carpet over the ground. Arranged in opposite pairs along the stem.

[view all information]

Wild Carrot

Flower: Our only white umbellifer with forked bracts emerging from beneath the flower. Umbel up to 7cm, folding inwards while in fruit. Often with a red flower in the centre. Fruit: The fruit is a distinctive cup-shaped, hooked and spiny umbel. The fruit can cling to the fur of passing animals and clothing, thus scattering the seeds far and wide to new locations. Leaves: The leaves are feathery; bi-pinnate or tri-pinnate.

[view all information]

Common Chickweed

Flower: Tiny white flowers with 5 deeply notched petals. 5 green hairy sepals with membranous edges. 3-8 yellowish stamens, later turning reddish brown. Fruit: Green, hairy, oval fruits on long drooping stalks. Leaves: Light green opposite leaves, pointed and hairless. The lower leaves are stalked.

[view all information]

Sea Club-rush

Flower: Unstalked egg-shaped spikelets, reddish-brown, leaf-like bracts much longer than flowerheads. Fruit: Brown 3-angled, oval nutlet. Leaves: Keeled grass-like leaves, often with rough edges.

[view all information]

Coltsfoot

Flower: Solitary with bright yellow disc and ray florets, up to 1.5cm. The flowers are borne on long, scaly stems which rise straight from the ground. The undersides of the flower are covered in white woolly ... Fruit: A conspicuous dandelion-like, white pappus. Leaves: The leaves are round, heart-shaped or polygonal. The flowers die back before the emergence of the first leaves.

[view all information]

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.

[view all information]

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.

[view all information]

Wild Fennel

Flower: Many tiny golden yellow flowers packed tightly together, forming umbels. Umbels are without bracts, up to 8cm across. Fruit: Narrowly egg-shaped, ridged. Fruit does not always ripen. Leaves: Feathery in appearance. 3 to 4 pinnate leaves with thread-like leaflets.

[view all information]

Maidenhair Fern

Flower: Ferns do not have flowers. Fruit: The spores ripen from May to August in the UK. Leaves: The fan-shaped secondary leaflets of this fern make it easily identifiable.

[view all information]

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. Fruit: A 4-parted globular capsule. Leaves: Annual or biennial flower with small oblong leaves in opposite pairs.

[view all information]

Mexican Fleabane

Flower: Very pretty, many-flowered and multicoloured. Daisy-like flowers range from white to pink and purple, all together on the same plant. Underside of rays are often darker coloured. Fruit: Pale brown, oblong achene. The fine seeds are spread by the wind. Leaves: Dark green on the upper surface of the leaves. Paler beneath. The lower leaves are 3-lobed. The linear upper leaves are sometimes toothed slightly. Short-stalked.

[view all information]

Common Glasswort

Flower: Tiny, green, yellow anthers, usually in groups of 3 up the stem, the central one being the largest. Fruit: Succulent, fleshy one-seeded fruit. Leaves: This plant looks a lot like asparagus in my personal opinion. The translucent leaves consist of many succulent, scale-like segments. They are arranged in opposite pairs, fused to envelop the stems. Th...

[view all information]

Common Gorse

Flower: Rich yellow, pea-like. Sepals over half as long as petals, also yellow. Up to 2cm. Fruit: Hairy, black, pea-like pods which loudly pop open to spread their seeds on hot summer days. Leaves: The leaves are green, hard and spiky, ending in sharp points.

[view all information]

Bermuda Grass

Flower: 3-6 spikes up to 5cm long, arranged in a fan shape. Unawned spikelets are one-flowered and purplish. Fruit: A brown seed-like caryopsis. Leaves: Simple, linear, elongated leaf blades, short and flattened. Jointed stems.

[view all information]

Greater Quaking Grass

Flower: Ornamental. Large pale green hanging spikelets reaching 2.5cm long and consisting of up to 12 segmented florets. Later turning gold with maturity. Fruit: One-sided dry seed (caryopsis). Leaves: The flat, linear leaves are clumped together in compact tufts.

[view all information]

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.

[view all information]

Blue-eyed Grass

Flower: Distinctive and striking star-like flowers with 6 pale blue petals and a yellow centre, up to 2cm across. The flowers are short-lived. This is Bermuda's national flower. Fruit: Brown globular capsules, up to 4mm across. The capsules contain black, round seeds. The fruiting stems are pendulous. Leaves: Iris-like leaves. Linear and growing straight out of the ground, almost like grass.

[view all information]

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...

[view all information]

Sea Holly

Flower: Small but impressive powder blue spiny umbels. Fruit: Egg-shaped fruit with hooked spines. Leaves: A clump-forming evergreen perennial with steel blue prickly leaves. The leaves have white veins and margins. Thistle-like in appearance.

[view all information]

Hottentot-fig

Flower: Large and many-petalled daisy-like flower, later fading to pink-purple. Yellow centre but not always. Up to 10cm wide. Fruit: Fig-like fruits but not tasting like fig at all. They rarely ripen in the UK. Leaves: 3-sided succulent leaves with pointed tips, carpeting the surface of the ground if left to grow.

[view all information]

Ray's Knotgrass

Flower: The tiny green, white or pink flowers appear in auxiliary clusters of 2 to 6. Flowers have 5 petals (actually tepals). Fruit: Shiny, 3-sided, chestnut brown nutlets which develop immediately after flowering. The nutlets protrude out of the dead flowers. Leaves: More compact and larger than Common Knotgrass. The narrow leaves have pale, greyish-brown tips. Each leaf is up to 3.5cm in length and has between 3 to 6 unbranched veins.

[view all information]