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Hygrocybe coccinea
With a preference for unfertilised land, the Scarlet Waxcap (Hygrocybe coccinea) can be found on cropped grassland and woodland clearings. They often appear in large troops (a group).
Hygrocybe means ‘watery head’, these waxcaps are always very moist. Coccinea means bright red (as in the food colouring cochineal) . The image above shows the justification of the name.
The Crimson Waxcap
This autumn, help Plantlife find Britain’s most colourful and important fungi – waxcaps.
Chamerion angustifolium
A striking wild plant with tall spires of large pink flowers and leaves that grow like a staircase around the stem. Its leaves resemble those of the willow species, hence the name.
Rosebay willowherb is a fine example of a ‘pioneer species’ – the first plants to colonise a barren area with very little competition (such as the sites of forest fires). For this reason it was a familiar sight following the London Blitz (see below).
Common throughout England, Wales and Scotland. Rarer in Ireland.
As a pioneer plant, Rosebay Willowherb thrives on waste ground. Keep an eye out for it when travelling by car or train. It likes to grow in dry, relatively open areas. It can typically be found in forest clearings, beside tracks and trails, on recently disturbed ground and on well-drained banks of rivers. Since it can colonise disturbed sites, even following an oil spill, it is often used to re-establish vegetation.
Late summer, when it flowers: July-September.
Galium verum
‘O perilous fyr, that in the bedstraw bredeth’ – Chaucer, “The Merchant’s Tale”
Also known as ‘yellow bedstraw’, a frothy blossom with a wonderful honey scent.
A very distinctive plant with soft clusters of bright yellow flowers that smell of hay. The leaves are narrow, dark green and in whorls. It often creeps amongst grasses, sending up tall flowering stems in summer.
It is related to the plant cleavers, or ‘Sticky Willy’ Galium aparine.
Lady’s bedstraw can be found growing across the UK.
Meadows, road verges, cliff tops, hedges, dunes and other grassy places.
In the summer months, when in bloom and producing its scent.
Allium ampeloprasum
A native wild relative of the familiar garden vegetable.
Wild Leek has globe-like heads on stems that can grow to a metre tall. Its leaves are just like the common garden leek, although the stem is not quite so fat. All parts have a strong onion scent.
County flower of Cardiff/Caerdydd.
Found wild on Flat Holm island just off the Cardiff coast, what better than the wild leek for representing the nation’s capital?
Just one locality on Ynys Mon (Anglesey) in North Wales and on a couple of islands in the Severn Estuary, two other forms of wild leek (var. bulbifera and var. babingtonii) are distributed around the coast of the British Isles.
Sandy and rocky places near the sea, especially in old fields and hedge banks, on sheltered cliff-slopes, by paths and tracks and in drainage ditches and other disturbed places.
Flowers from late June to August
Wild Leek is believed to have be en introduced to Britain. It is a scarce species, naturalised in only a few areas.
Wild Leek, image by Robbie Blackhall-Miles
Wild Leek on Anglesey, image by Trevor Dines
Pilosella officinarum
Each plant has a small rosette of hairy ragged leaves that are dark green above but whitish and hairy underneath. They’re rounded at the tips and not toothed. The flowers are carried on long stems from the centre of these rosettes, up to 30cm tall. Each narrow and tightly packed bloom – one per stem – is like a dandelion but a paler lemon yellow in colour. They are followed by fluffy seed heads.
Found throughout the UK, but rarer in north-west Scotland.
Grows in dry grassy places like meadows, pastures, verges, lawns, heaths and dunes as well as waste ground.
When in flower, from May to August.
Mouse-ear Hawkweed at Brockles Field
Taraxacum officinale
A common sight in spring, these bright yellow wild flowers can look quite exotic and the fluffy seed heads that follow are delicate and ethereal.
Look out for the bright yellow discs of tightly packed florets above a rosette of jaggedly toothed leaves. The flowers are followed by fluffy white seed heads. The plants are perennial and have a long tap root.
They are a huge number of Dandelion microspecies, in the UK, we have around 250. It’s believed that more than 40 of these are endemic species, and the majority are native.
Dandelions mostly occur in disturbed habitats such as pastures, roadside verges, lawns, tracks, paths and waste ground. They are widespread and stable throughout the British Isles.
Dandelions and daisies on a Wiltshire lawn, image by Archie Thomas
Ashy Mining Bee on Dandelion, image by Pip Gray
Veronica serpyllifolia
It spreads to form small patches of plain green hairless leaves that are carried in pairs and look similar to a large version of Thyme, hence the name.
The tips of the shoots rise up and turn into short flower spikes, bearing a succession of tiny white or pale blue flowers, 5-6mm across. Look closely and you’ll see that their uppermost petal is usually veined with darker blue. Only a few flowers open at a time and their pale colour can make this plant hard to spot.
Found throughout the UK.
Grows in a wide range of dry and damp places including grassy pastures, lawns and verges as well as woodland rides, heaths and cultivated land and waste ground.
When in flower, from March to October.
Trifolium repens
Often found in parks, banks and lawns – any type of grassland habitat – White Clover is the commonest of the clovers.
The White Clover flowerheads are ball-shaped cluster on a long stem, made up of tiny individual white and sometimes very pale pink flowers. The leaves have the archetypal ‘cloverleaf’ shape: three rounded leaflets often with a pale band.
Common across the UK.
Almost any grassy habitat.
Flowers from June to September.
White Clover lawn, image by Archie Thomas
White Clover, image by Trevor Dines
Campanula rotundifolia
In fact, it’s incredibly tough and resilient. It needs to be given the environment it grows in: the harebell is a wild flower of dry, open places from the bare slopes of hills to the windswept coast.
Hanging blue bells on slender stalks. Grows 15-40cm tall. Roundish leaves at base, very narrow linear leaves up thin stem. (Source: the National Plant Monitoring Scheme Species Identification Guide).
Dry, grassy places. From mountain tops to sand dunes. Quite catholic in its choice of habitats: as happy on chalk grasslands as on acid heaths, and under tall bracken as on exposed cliff tops. However, damp is one condition that harebells cannot tolerate. It is distributed across the British Isles but not in the Channel Isles and most of south and east Ireland.
July to September.
Generally stable although there have been some local declines at the edges of its range.
Harebell flowers in a meadow
Harebell, image by Cath Shellswell
Rhinanthus minor
An erect plant with longish stems without many leaves. When the yellow tubular flowers fade, the calyx behind them becomes a silvery sphere in which the seeds ripen – the rattle.
On nutrient-poor grasslands, including permanent pastures hay meadows and dunes. Also on roadsides and waste ground.
In flower from May to July
Yellow rattle underwent a marked decline in Britain throughout the 20th century, thought to be a result of changes in farming practices.
Yellow rattle in a meadow, image by Lucia Chmurova
Yellow rattle close up, image by Lucia Chmurova
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