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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!
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.
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.
Narcissus pseudonarcissus ssp pseudonarcissus
Our native Daffodil is smaller than many garden varieties but is still a striking sight in early spring.
The Daffodil is also known as the ‘Lent lily’ or ‘Easter lily’ since it often blooms and fades within the Lenten period. The wild Daffodil is smaller than horticultural varieties, with paler petals and a deep yellow trumpet-like tube. The leaves are grey-green, thin, long and flattened. It grows in groups so can be quite an impressive sight.
The native Daffodil is found in damp woods, fields, grassland and orchards.
It is a rare plant but can be abundant in some areas. The ‘golden triangle’ around the Gloucestershire villages of Newent and Dymock is famous for its wild woodland Daffodils.
A 10-mile footpath known as ‘The Daffodil Way’ runs through woods, orchards and meadows, in which the wild Daffodil is rarely out of sight. These colonies have built up over hundreds of years. It currently survives in patchy populations, often scattered across the western side of Britain.
Wild Daffodils are best spotted in the spring months of March and April.
Once one of the most common wild flowers to be found in the English and Welsh countryside, the wild Daffodil declined mysteriously in the mid-nineteenth century. Picking by passers-by doesn’t seem to have been the cause – Daffodils are relatively resistant to this practice. A more likely culprit was the simultaneous fall in cash-crops grown by locals hoping to capitalising on the flower’s popularity, combined with agricultural intensification and mismanagement of its habitat.
There is a risk that wild Daffodils will hybridise with the cultivated varieties.
Tussilago farfara
Colt’s-foot is a bright, yellow daisy and is one of the first wild flowers to emerge in Spring.
The single flowers are held on scaly, crimson stems. As these start to die back, flat-fans of dark green leaves appear. These leaves are silver-white on their undersides.
Colt’s-foot grows in a range of habitats with open or disturbed ground, including arable land, waste land, shingle and scree, and even landslips. It grows particularly well in waste, rough and cultivated places where there is poor drainage.
Colt’s-foot is one of the early arrivals of spring. The best time to see it is throughout March and April.
Petasites hybridus
Fond of moist ground, Butterbur is a pink, tassled wildflower can often be found carpeting riversides and damp ditches.
With so many small flowers packed densely together, Butterbur is very popular with bees. It is a great source of nectar early in the year, when wildflowers are still rather sparse.
Flower spikes appear before the leaves and have tiny pale pink flowers arranged down stems which are 10-40cm tall. The leaves are very large, sometimes almost 1 meter wide and are downy-grey underneath.
Butterbur is found throughout the UK, but is rarer in central and northern Scotland. It inhabits wet meadows, streamsides, roadside ditches and copses.
The best time to see Butterbur is in spring, throughout March, April and May.
Helleborus foetidus
The green flowers of the Stinking Hellebore can be a pleasant surprise amidst a dusting of snow.
You might think Stinking Hellebore is a garden escapee, but this is not the case! Although populations may have become obscured by such varieties, the Stinking Hellebore is a native through and through.
Stinking Hellebore is evergreen. It has dark green leaves sprouting from a thick stem. The flowers are green also but a lighter, yellowish shade, and they are a drooping cup-like shape. The five sepals have a distinctive purple fringe.
Given the popularity of this plant in gardens it is often hard to distinguish the native population from horticultural escapees.
Stinking Hellebore can be found in woodland, walls and roadside verges. It is particularly fond of limestone-based soils.
Stinking Hellebore traditionally blooms between February and April.
Prunus spinosa
Each year, Blackthorn heralds the coming of spring as one of the first native trees to burst into blossom.
Blackthorn belongs to the rose family and its fruit are known as sloes – famously used to flavour sloe gin!
Blackthorn is a rather shrubby tree with dark-hued branches (hence the name “black” thorn). It produces white, five-petalled blossom in early spring. When these wither, they are replaced with sloes – dark blue-purple fruit, around a centimetre wide. Blackthorn leaves are oval-shaped, serrated and pointed at the tip.
In spring and summer, it can be confused with Hawthorn. Hawthorn blossom, however, appears amidst the leaves, whereas Blackthorn blossoms before they appear.
Blackthorn is found most commonly in hedgerows but it can also be spotted in scrub and wood borders all over the UK and Ireland.
Why not take along Plantlife’s winter wildflower spotter sheet and see what common species from catkins to snowdrops you can spot out and about?
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