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Anthoxanthum oderatum
Thin, wiry grass with short leaves and a spike of flowers at the top of the stem. Where the leaf meets the stem, there is a fringe of hairs which look like eyelashes.
On old meadows and grasslands that are often rich in wild flowers. Here, it’s one of the first meadow grasses to come into flower in the spring.
Red Fescue – another grass with a narrow stem and pointy flower spikes, but which is bigger and lacks the scent.
It gives out a scent that is THE distinctive smell of a hay meadow – somewhere between vanilla and almond. Some people like to chew the grass to get the taste of the scent.
Sanguisorba officinalis
Great Burnet is a member of the rose family, although at first glance it does not appear very similar.
The rose family actually contains a large number of different plant species, including familiar members such as apples, pears, and raspberries.
Great Burnet has distinctive deep red flowers that sit on a tall, single stem. Each flower head is made of a tight cluster of individual flowers, which attract pollinating insects. The plant flowers in summer and early autumn. It can grow tall, up to a metre high. Its leaves are divided into oval leaflets.
Great Burnet grows in grasslands and damp environments. It can be found in wetlands, such as floodplains, and wet meadows. It is also available as a cultivated plant for gardens. Great Burnet is a perennial plant that can live for many years.
Great Burnet can be found throughout England and Wales, and some parts of Scotland. It is rare in Ireland. Many of the wetter environments that Great Burnet favours are threatened or declining habitats.
The practice of improving farmland pastures by fertilising, or sowing nitrogen-fixing plants, has caused the species to decline in these habitats.
Viola arvensis
Field Pansy is a delicate flower from the Violet family, and is the wild relative of the Garden Pansy. It’s a small low-growing perennial which can be easily confused with the Wild Pansy, however it has much smaller flowers. It is self-fertile and attracts butterflies such as the Queen of Spain Fritillary which will lay its eggs on the plant.
The flowers of Field Pansy are solitary and 15mm across. They have creamy yellow petals which are sometimes bluish-violet. Its sepals are pointed, and often longer than or the same length as the petals. Its stipules look like lobed leaves, and the leaves are oblong in shape. The plant grows up to 20cm tall.
While Field Pansy can be found throughout the UK, it is more common in the East half of the UK and SE Ireland. It’s most commonly found in dry arable field margins and waste spaces.
Fragaria vesca
Before the advent of the familiar garden strawberry Fragaria x ananassa (actually a hybrid created from two American species) our ancestors enjoyed our wild, native variety of Strawberry.
Strawberry (wild) is common across the UK but rarer in north Scotland. It thrives in a variety of environments from roadsides to hill slopes to forest clearings. White flowers appear in spring followed by the recognisable red fruit in the summer.
Myosotis arvensis
Our most common Forget-me-not is often found as a “weed” of arable land. It is also known as Field Forget-me-not. It is a greyish coloured plant, its very small, bright blue flowers (sometimes interspersed with pink) occur in spikes. The leaves are oval and hairy, the ones at the base forming a rosette.
Forget-me-not (Common) can be found on cultivated land, roadsides, waste ground and dunes. It flowers from April to September.
Found throughout Britain and Ireland, it is more common in areas where land is put to arable use. Despite changes in agricultural practice, distribution of has remained stable since 1900, probably due partly to its flexible life history and seed longevity.
Clinopodium acinos
Basil Thyme used to be picked as a substitute for thyme, but it is now too rare to pick. Its distribution closely follows that of underlying chalk and limestone rock.
Like other members of the dead-nettle family, Basil Thyme is popular with bees and insects. At only 15 cm high, it produces whorls of violet flowers with white markings on the lower lip. Common Calamint and Wild Basil are closely related but are larger and with taller more dense flower spikes.
Basil Thyme grows mainly in southern and eastern England and is very rare in Wales, Scotland and northeast England. It is also present in eastern Ireland where is it considered an alien species. It grows in open habitats in dry grassland, especially around rock outcrops and also in arable fields, where it is now rare. It can be found in quarries and waste ground where calcareous rocks and lime-rich soil has been exposed and roads and railways where lime has been applied. In Ireland, Basil Thyme grows on sandy and gravelly soils.
Basil Thyme is unfortunately in decline because of more efficient methods of weed control almost causing its complete extinction in arable habitat. Basil Thyme is only present on less intensively used arable land and in chalk and limestone grassland. Threats to grassland populations include the lack of bare ground which is required by this species to aid seed germination. In Ireland, sand and gravel extraction are the main causes of decline.
It is classified as ‘Vulnerable’ and is included as a species “of principal importance for the purpose of conserving biodiversity” under Sections 41 (England) and 42 (Wales) of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006. Basil Thyme is also noted on the Scottish biodiversity list of species of principal importance for biodiversity conservation in The Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004.
Lamium purpureum
Red Dead-nettle is traditionally known as the ‘bumblebee flower’ in some British counties as bumblebees love it! Other names include ‘sweet archangel’ and ‘bad man’s posies’. Red Dead-nettle is related to the stinging nettle but has no sting – hence the ‘dead’ in ‘dead-nettle’.
Red Dead-nettle has whorls of pink-purple flowers clustered amongst leaves towards the top of the plant. The aromatic leaves are hairy, heart-shaped and have toothed edges. Some leaves near the top of the plant take on a purple tint. This plant can be mistaken for henbit dead-nettle which has similar flowers. They can be differentiated because Red Dead-nettle leaves have short petioles (leaf stalks).
Found throughout the UK, Red Dead-nettle likes arable and waste land and can also be found in gardens, hedgerows and on roadsides.
Red dead-nettle has a long flowering season that can begin in February and last until November.
Capsella bursa-pastoris
The seedpods of this common wildflower resemble little drawstring pouches worn by medieval peasants, spilling out tiny copper-coloured seeds when broken apart
A member of the Cabbage family, this annual plant produces flowers throughout the year, and is able to yield hundreds of seeds.
With a leafy rosette at the base, it grows to about 40cm. The leaves are larger and pinnately lobed at the bottom, and then arrow-shaped with wavy edges along the stem. It has tiny white scentless flowers arranged in a loose raceme, which are replaced by its highly recognisable seedpods.
It is widespread throughout Britain, particularly in waste grounds and cultivated fields.
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