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Leucojum aestivum
Summer Snowflake has dainty bell-shaped flowers which are white in colour.
It flourishes in boggy areas, as well as in riverside marshes and wet open woodland. Despite its common name it actually flowers from April to May.
Himantoglossum hircinum
Lizard Orchid is usually rare in the UK but in the right location it can be found in great numbers. It grows up to a metre in height but can nonetheless be difficult to spot when growing in long grass on roadside verges.
The long, tail-like lip is usually spiralled and dotted with pink or purple in the centre. Lizard Orchid’s flowers have a rather foul smell, said to be similar to the smell of goats.
The largest British population of the Lizard Orchid is amongst the golf links and sand dunes at Sandwich Bay in Kent, where there are reportedly many hundred plants. A large population can be found in East Anglia, along the stretch of the Devil’s Dyke that runs through Newmarket Racecourse.
Lizard Orchid grows on calcareous soils and likes sunny positions on the edges of open woodland and on roadside verges. This orchid also grows in dry meadows, rocky areas, and open woods.
Alliaria petiolata
Also known as Hedge Garlic or Jack-by-the-Hedge, Garlic Mustard appears in hedgerows and open woodland in early Spring.
Garlic Mustard sometimes grows to over a metre tall and has leaves that are broadly heart shaped, stalked, with numerous broad teeth, and clusters of small white cross-shaped flowers. The whole plant smells of garlic when crushed.
It can be found in shady areas of hedgerows and waste places, and open woodland, mostly on fertile moist soils. It flowers from April to June throughout the UK, but is particularly common in England and Wales.
Garlic Mustard is still very common throughout the UK and is therefore of least concern.
Anthriscus sylvestris
Frothy and lacy, Cow Parsley is a wildflower which grows in abundance along country lanes in summer. It is the earliest flowering member of the carrot family. Its tripinnate leaves are fern-like with pointed leaflets and seeds are oblong, beaked and smooth. Its stems are hollow and without spots – a good way to distinguish this plant from the similar, but very poisonous Hemlock.
Cow Parsley is widespread and common throughout the UK. It is often seen on roadsides and near hedgerows and can also be found in woodland edges.
Cow Parsley is one of the few flowers that benefits from current road verge management since it likes high levels of nutrients (much like nettles). Sadly, this is at the expense of other more delicate species.
Anemone nemorosa
One of the first flowers of spring, Wood Anemones bloom like a galaxy of stars across the forest floor.
As a species it’s surprisingly slow to spread (six feet in a hundred years!), relying on the growth of its root structure rather than the spread of its seed. As such, it is a good indicator of ancient woodland.
Wood Anemone has solitary star-like white flowers with 5-8 petals, often pinkish underneath. Long-stalked stem leaves divided into three lobes, with each lobe divided.
Colonies of Wood Anemones with purple or purple-streaked petals are frequent in Norfolk, but the sky-blue type (var. caerulea) is much rarer or possibly lost. It was a favourite of William Robinson, the 19th century pioneer of ‘wild gardening’ who carefully distinguished it from the occasionally naturalised European blue anemone.
You can find Wood Anemone in deciduous woodlands, particularly ancient ones. It can also be found in hedges and shaded banks. In the Yorkshire dales it is frequently found in limestone pavements. In many places the colonies could be relics of previous woodland cover, but its liking for light (it only opens fully in sunshine and does not grow in deep shade) suggests that it may not have purely woodland origins.
Wood Anemone flowers from March to April
Buxus sempervirens
Box is a classic of formal hedging, but this native shrub is under severe pressure in the wild.
Box has glossy, dark evergreen leaves which occur in opposite pairs on square stems and usually have their edges rolled under. Its yellowish flowers are easily missed in April as they are tucked away among the leaves. The flowers are in clusters of both male and female flowers, neither having petals. During a good Summer in Britain, small seed capsules with three short prongs develop. In tree form it has one or a few slightly twisted trunks with brown, cracked bark.
The best time of year to spot Box is April, though you’ll have to look carefully!
As a native, Box occurs in Britain only in a few isolated localities on chalk in southern England, the best known of which is Box Hill in Surrey. It is found in woodlands and thickets on steep slopes on chalk, and in scrub on chalk downland.
Box is considered to be Nationally Rare in Britain as it is widespread as an introduced plant. It is believed to be native at only some of its sites, such as the Mole Valley in Surrey. The remaining populations are generally stable, and there appear to be no clearly identified and significant threats.
Viola odorata
Sweet Violet is a low, creeping plant with fragrant flowers, usually blue-violet or white. It has a long and rather romantic history in European and Asian folklore: the ancient Greeks first used it to make perfume and the Romans to make wine. Ancient Britons used it for cosmetics. Medieval French troubadours used it to represent constancy in their tales of chivalrous love.
Sweet violet’s leaves are broad and glossy and like the stems are covered with fine hairs. Both flowers and leaves grow from a central tuft.
Sweet Violet is widespread throughout most of England, although it’s less widespread in the north. In Scotland and Wales its distribution is even patchier: a wildflower of woodland margins and shady hedgerows, it tends to avoid the more mountainous regions.
The best time to see Sweet Violet is from March to May.
Caltha palustris
Also known as ‘kingcups’, Marsh-marigold could be one of our most ancient plants. It is thought that it was growing here before the last Ice Age!
Marsh-marigold is a member of the buttercup family, a large, almost luxuriant version of its smaller cousin with bright yellow flowers and dark, shiny leaves. The latter are kidney shaped and quite waxy to touch – although doing so too often is best avoided: like all buttercups the marsh-marigold is poisonous and can irritate the skin.
Marsh-marigold is widespread throughout Britain. It can be found in wet meadows, marshes and wet woodlands and grows well in shade.
Marsh-marigold is a common native species, whose distribution remains relatively stable in Britain. It is, however, locally threatened by drainage and agricultural improvement of its wet grassland habitat. Loss of habitat through drainage and abandonment is therefore one of the key threats to Marsh-marigold.
Marsh-marigold is also known as Mayflower – the name of the ship that carried the Pilgrim fathers to America. In Lancashire it is known as ‘the publican’ – maybe a reflection of its sturdy nature!
Orchis purpurea
The Lady Orchid is a tall, elegant herbaceous plant belonging to the Orchidaceae plant family.
Lady Orchid can reach 30–100 centimetres with the fleshy, bright green leaves being up to 15 cm long. The leaves are broad and oblong, forming a rosette about the base of the plant and surrounding the flower spike. These flower spikes can contain up to 200 individual flowers to which the stem upwardly points. Some of the flowers have the look of women in crinoline ball gowns. In terms of colour they are usually pale pink or rose, with a deeper purple ‘head’.
The Lady Orchid can be found in most parts of Europe (specifically Kent, England), Northern Africa, Turkey and the Caucasus.
Lady orchids usually grow in woodlands, oak forests, slopes and meadows, and can occasionally occur on savanna. They prefer to grow in limestone or chalk soil, in shady or sunny places. The Lady Orchid occurs in short grassland, on woodland edges and sometimes in open woodland. However, it is now very rarely found in the UK.
Lady Orchid’s flowering occurs in late April to June.
The sepals and upper petals are known to be purple, hence the Lady Orchid adopting the latin name purpurea.
Linnaea borealis
The beautiful Twinflower has two pink bell-like flowers on a slender stem, and a thicker stem below which creeps along the ground, forming small mats of the plant. It is one of our smallest and most delicate native flowers.
Twinflower is confined to Scotland. It grows mainly in the native, open, pine woods, particularly in the Cairngorms, and is an Arctic-Alpine plant that is a relic of the Ice Age.
The clearance of native woodlands before the 1930s resulted in severe losses of this little flower. Continued habitat destruction and changes in woodland management have also lead to declines in populations.
Twinflower is the County Flower of Inverness-shire.
The isolation of the remaining sites of Twinflower leads to poor seed production and thus contributes to its continued decline. Other threats include; mechanical harvesting of timber, the deliberate thickening of forests leading to excess shade and poor management of pine plantations leading to single age structure woodland without a niche for seedlings to develop.
One of Plantlife’s most exciting projects has been research into how the historical management of ancient pine plantation may have benefited Twinflower. A study of how timber was grown and extracted in the 18th and 19th centuries has led to a proposal to test whether these methods could boost Twinflower populations today. Read more about our work with Twinflower here.
We’re continuing our work with Twinflower through the Resilience and Recovery, Helping Rare Species Adapt to a Changing World project. Read more about our work here.
Without intervention, the delicate pink blooms of the rare Twinflower could disappear from Scotland.
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