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If you’ve been taking part in the No Mow Movement, you might have spotted some wonderful wildflowers poking through your lawn.
Most lawns will have wildflowers seeded naturally in the soil – just waiting for a chance to bloom. It can be a fascinating part of the No Mow challenge, to see what comes through.
Here we share our top ten flowers to find! If you don’t have them all in your lawn, why not head out to your local green space for a nature-based treasure hunt!
Join our Specialist Botanical Advisor Sarah Shuttleworth on a nature-based treasure hunt around her No Mow Movement lawn. Or scroll through our list below and see if you can find them all!
Whether in your lawn, on a roadside, a park or playing field – you’re likely to find the Daisy Bellis perennis popping up from March right through to September.
These beautiful little wildflowers have become such a common part of our lives, they’ve even made it into our language. You might have heard the term, ‘it’s all coming up daisies’, which means that things are going well. The flower is even featured in slang, with ‘Daisy roots’ meaning boots.
It’s certainly a fun one to find and is thought of a sure sign of spring and summer – as well as often being associated with love. The Daisy was even said to be the sacred flower of the Norse goddess of love Freya.
A common, bright yellow flower that can be found in gardens, parks and meadows – the Creeping Buttercup Ranunculus repens is a common sight from April through to August.
If you’ve spotted one of these sunny little wildflowers before, you might have played the common test with your friends. For generations, children have grown up using buttercups, to hold under their chins to tell if they like butter. If the flower reflects a yellow hue under your chin, you like butter! The origin of this game is believed to come from a belief that buttercups gave butter it’s golden colour.
The Dandelion Taraxacum officinale agg is one of the first flowers you might spot in your lawn and one of the last! It can be a common sight from March, right the way through until October.
While it’s certainly likely that you’ll spot one of these pretty yellow flowers this summer – it also has many lookalikes that might trick you into thinking you’ve found one (we actually have one further down this list to keep a lookout for!).
There 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.
The Dandelion is truly a beautiful and often overlooked wildflower and while once revered as a ‘cure all’ medicinal herb, can now be thought of as a weed.
Read our blog here, where we weed out the myths behind the word ‘weed’.
Ribwort Plantain, Plantago lanceolata is a common sight and can be found year-round in grasslands including lawns, meadows and arable fields.
Sometimes thought of as a weed, it’s seed heads help to provide food for birds throughout much of the winter when other food sources are more scarce. The rest of the plant is also beneficial to lots of other wildlife. Ribwort Plantain provides both food and habitat for insects and pollinators including various species of moths and butterflies.
A unique-looking, violet blue wildflower, the Germander Speedwell Veronica chamaedrys can be spotted in grassy areas between March and July.
This beautiful little flower has a varied habitat and can be found in meadows, pastures, verges and lawns, as well as in woods, hedgerows and waste ground.
While not only a fun flower to find, it’s also thought to be a lucky one for travellers. In fact, people believed that wearing it, or other speedwells, in your buttonhole would ‘speed you well’ on any journey.
A tiny little yellow wildflower, Spotted Medick Medicago arabica is a common find in the south of the UK. It can be found from May until September in grasslands including lawns and roadsides.
This wildflower has very interesting seed pods (which can be seen properly in our video above), which are covered in little hooked hairs. These help the seed pods cling on to passing animals and encourage better distribution of the plant.
A fun little find, look out for other medicks and trefoils in your lawn including Bird’s-foot-trefoil, Lotus corniculatus, which is also known as ‘eggs and bacon’ because of the yellow and orange hue of the pea-like flowers.
More of a pink colour than red as the name suggests, Red Clover Trifolium pratense can be found in gardens, meadows, parks and fields from May until October.
This pretty little plant is a great one to find in your lawn for many reasons – one is that it’s a bit of a favourite with pollinators! The flowers of Red Clover are nectar and pollen rich, and attract many pollinators, in particular, bees.
The Meadow Buttercup Ranunculus acris is a common sight in grasslands including fields, meadows and gardens and can be spotted from April right through until October.
Another one from the buttercup family, the Meadow Buttercup is a taller variety than the Creeping Buttercup above, growing up to 1m in height.
Watch our video to find out more about them both the two and see if you can tell them apart.
The Oxeye Daisy Leucanthemum vulgare can be found in a variety of habitats, including grasslands, gardens, dunes, coastal cliffs, verges and waste ground.
Seeing these big, bold and beautiful flowers is said to be a sure sign that summer has arrived as they are usually in bloom around the summer solstice.
Similar to the common Daisy (of which it is part of the same family), the Oxeye Daisy is much, much bigger, reaching as tall as 70cm.
Cat’s-Ear Hypochaeris radicata, is a common sight in lawns, fields, parks and roadsides from June until September.
The bright yellow flowers can look very similar to the Dandelion above, but there are some key differences. One difference is that the Cat’s-Ear, has hairy leaves while Dandelions do not. Also, Cat’s-Ear, can have multiple flowerheads and branching stems, while Dandelions instead have one flowerhead per stem.
Watch the video above to learn more about the Cat’s-Ear, and how you can tell it apart from the Dandelion.
Did you manage to find them all?
We would love to see what flowers you have been finding right through the No Mow Movement, so be sure to tag us on social media to show us the pretty blooms you’ve found.
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