Hare's Foot Clover - Trifolium arvense

Evening primrose - Oenothera biennis

Brachypodium pinnatum - Tor grass

This species can become a real problem in chalk grassland. It's a big tough grass that is undesirable to grazing animals and it can dominate the sward shading out more desirable grasses and forbs. It's leaves are quite a light green that can be seen at some distance standing out against the rest of the grassland

Pineappleweed - Matricaria matricarioides

Like a daisy the flower is made up of a compound yellow/green head only without the ray florets round the edge. When the plant is crushed it smells strongly like pineapples, hence its name. This plant was introduced to the UK sometime around 1900 and has spread throughout much of England

Red Star Thistle - Centaurea calcitrapa

The red star thistle is marked as vulnerable by the IUCN and it is apparantly confined to Sussex coastal areas in the UK although the NBN gateway shows a much wider distribution. The flower head has long yellowish spines and pink thistle like flowers. It can be found growing in distrubed habitats, particularly grassland. This plant was growing along a path way subject to a moderate level of disturbance

Cyperus sedge - Carex pseudocyperus

If you don't know, sedges look a lot like grasses with long green leaves. However, grasses have leaves in two ranks up the stem (i.e. alternate) whereas sedges have leaves in whorls of three. This means that usually the stem of a sedge seems almost triangular. This is a picture of the female part of the flower head. It's a massive, spikly drooping flower head and is fairly unmistakeable, i think. This plant was growing on the side of a ditch at Amberley Wildbrooks.

Ribbed Melliot / Meliot - Melilotus officinalis

Meadowsweet - Fillipendula ulmaria

Branched Bur-Reed - Sparganium erectum

The flowers of this plant are awesome! Look how strange and sculpted they look. I love the way they almost look like hairy maltesers (it's dinner time - bear with me). The flowers turn green eventually. The leaves of this plant look like a large juicy grass, they are arranged in two ranks up the stem. However, the leaves are very large and fleshy and traingular in section. Also, the base of the leaves are a dull pinkish colour. This plant is usually found growing in wetlands, places like ditches are good for spotting it.

Common toadflax - Linaria vulgaris

The leaves of this plant are arranged in whorls round the stem which you might be able to make out in the background of this photo, slightly out of focus. This plant can often be found in quite rough, disturbed grassland. This plant was growing alongside a path.

Tutsan - Hypericum androsaemum

Ok, so officially this picture doesn't count because it's not a picture of a flower but of the fruit. But i won't tell anyone if you don't. It belongs in the same family as all the st John's Wort plants so it has opposite leaves and pretty yellow flowers. The berries eventually go red as they ripen. I'll look out for a plant in flower and post it here when i find it.

Enchanter's Nightshade - Circaea lutetiana

Yet again I couldn't get a very good snap of this, the flowers are tiny and tricky to photograph without shaking all over the place and i was in a bit of a rush as i was meant to be carrying out a plant survey. It's a really pretty little plant though. The colour is a little hard to define, it's such a pale purple that it's almost white. It has those little fruits with hooked bristles that always end up getting stuck on your clothes, hair and down your boots.

Common figwort - Schrophularia nodosa

I love the flowers on this plant, they look like really tiny little foxgloves. It was a bit tricky to take a photo of this plant because the flowers are so small and it was quite gloomy in the wood, i kept shaking the camera about. There are a few different types of figworts and they tend to vary on their leaf, stem and sepal shape. For example, the aquatic figwort has more rounded leaves.

Meadow Clary - Salvia pratensis

This plant grows in tall spikes up to a metre and a half. It grows from a basal rosette of leaves. It has a hood like upper lip to the flower. It's quite rare now in England and is a protected species but fairly common in the rest of Europe. It is mainly to be found on good quality chalk grassland. It needs some patches of bare ground to allow seed germination so it might typically be found growing near rabbit warrens. If you want any more information about this plant check out Plantlife's article about the species

Round headed rampion - Phyteuma orbiculare

This is flower is known as the pride of Sussex. The flower is deep blue, almost purple. Each flower head is actually made up of a cluster of smaller flowers.

Yarrow - Achillea millefolium

Yarrow is a really common plant of grasslands. The leaves look almost like green feathers. It is thought to be good at healing wounds and Achilles is said to have taken the plant with him into battle. The younger leaves are supposed to be edible when boiled. Infusions of the flower are said to help with respitory problems such as colds or allergies. Wikipedia has a great article about its various uses

Flower dictionary

I came across something so useful the other day that i thought i should add a link to it from my blog. It's a word dictionary that someone has compiled that adds latin flower names into your spell checker. Thanks to this dictionary I no longer have loads of red lines running through everything i write, hurrah! Get it here: http://crescentbloom.com/III/D/17.htm if you're interested in moss as well there's a moss dictionary available from the British Bryological Society: http://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/Resources/Downloads.htm#spellchk which is also very handy.

Squinancywort - Asperula cynanchica

This flower has got to have one of the best common names. I love the way the name is so interesting and yet the flower itself is small and tiny and the plant is almost invisible when it isn't flowering. I've never seen the plant in flower before so it was a nice surprise to see it blooming all over the place, the tiny pale pink flowers are very beautiful close up. The plant itself is a bedstraw, which means that it has little spindly leaves arranged in whorls around the stem and four petals to the flower.

Stemless thistle - Cirsium acaule

God how i hate thistles! Especially when you're trying to do a vegetation survey on a bit of steep grassland. Oh, if only i had a pound for every thistle i sat on yesterday. Stemless thistles are the ones whose flowers have no stem to them - or only a very short stem. They look like little purple pom poms on the ground.

Vipers bugloss - Echium vulgare

This picture doesn't really do justice to the amazing shades of blues and pinks that this flower displays. I've not seen one quite so pink before as this, they're usually just a purplish blue, but this flower has streaks of almost neon colour in it. It was quite amazing. The flower stems grow quite tall. Apparantly it was once thought to cure the bites of vipers. If you want to know more about its medicinal uses check out this website: think natural

Restharrow - Ononis repens

This plant used to annoy farmers by tangling up their harrows whilst they were ploughing. Hence its common name 'restharrow.' This flower is a member of the pea family and has distinctive leaves that appear to have a neat crease down their centre, almost if the leaf has been folded in half and then opened up again. The leaves have little teeth round their edge and can sometimes be covered in sticky hairs or glands. I found this flower growing in damp grassland by the side of a ditch

Yorkshire fog - Holcus lanatus

I'm back from Yorkshire! Thank goodness, it was quite chilly up there indeed! I thought i'd start with a photo of a grass for my first post back.

I never really took the time to stop and look at grasses. I certainly never considered that they have flowers. Being wind pollinated they don't need to be showy with big petals but their flowers can still be quite beautiful when examined close up. I thought posting Yorkshire fog would be apt seeing as how i've been visiting there for the past week. Yorkshire fog is one of my favourite grasses. It's quite easy to spot because its leaves are really soft and hairy and if you look at the base of the stem it usually has purple stripes or veins running vertically. They remind me of stripy pajama bottoms. The flower head also has a rather pleasant purplish tinge. It's definately going on the list of my top ten grasses of all time!