Alexanders

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

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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Wild Leek

Flower: Large globular lilac, purplish or whitish flowerheads with yellow anthers, up to 10cm wide. Fruit: A globular to ovoid capsule containing anything up to 6 seeds, reaching 4mm across. Leaves: Long, tightly wrapped, linear leaves.

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Marsh Lousewort

Flower: Deep pink-purple flower with 2 lower lips and upper lip 5-toothed. Fruit: Brown elliptical capsule which splits open only on one side. Leaves: Alternate, feathery leaves. Basal leaves are long-stalked.

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Common Mallow

Flower: Pinkish-purple with dark veins, up to 4cm. 5 notched petals. Flower stalks are slender. Fruit: Round, flat, cheese-like wedges (nutlets) in 10 to 20 sections. This flower is sometimes called 'cheeseweed' because of the shape of its fruit. The fruit are also net-veined and sharp-edged. Leaves: The leaves are palmately lobed, toothed and stalked.

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Sea Mayweed

Flower: Large daisy-like flowers with greenish-white sepal-like bracts. Very similar looking to Scentless Mayweed. Bracts are also brown-edged. Fruit: A flat, ridged, light brown achene (seed). Leaves: Alternate, feathery leaves. The leaflets are thread-like. Basal leaves are stalkless and stem leaves, almost stalkless.

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Evergreen Oak

Flower: Flowers have narrow, pointed perianth lobes. Wind pollinated. Fruit: The female flowers develop into acorns. The tip of the acorns are more pointed and smaller than those of the English and Sessile Oaks. The acorns become brown later in the year. Leaves: The only British evergreen oak tree. Dark green, leathery leaves with their edges concaved inwards. The young leaves have spiny edges, just like Holly leaves. As the leaves mature, their edges become ...

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