Urban Botany

As Spring starts to appear, so too do the flowering plants. I have been starting to notice these around my estate and on the walk to my local shops I plucked a few specimens to take home and identify. I was fairly sure I knew what they were, but wanted to make sure - it's good to keep botanical knowledge up-to-date, especially after winter when it inevitably fades slightly with lack of practice.

The violet is likely to be Common Dog Violet (Viola riviniana). The leaves and flowers do not all come from the same location at the root; heart shaped leaves are sparsely hairy; flowers have mid-purple petals with a cream spur and darker purple branched veins; sepals are pointed and the flower has no obvious scent. The leaves are stem are tinged red/purple though so this may be a garden variety.

Shown in the pot is Variegated Yellow Archangel (Lamiastrum galeobdolon ssp argentatum). This is a non-native varient of Yellow Archangel. It differs as the leaf edges are more regularly toothed, and the colouring is variegated with silver which turns a chocolate brown colour over winter. The native plants is very similar but has just a few flecks of silver and never has the chocolate colouring.

The trefoil plant with the yellow flower is Black Medick (Medicago lupulina). This has the three leaves typical of the trefoil family. The leaves are hairy and have a distinctive point at the tip, as shown opposite. Once the flowers die off, distinctive black seed heads are left.

Also common at this time of the year is a weed common in my garden, Wavy Bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa). This is the straggly plants (second from left in bottom photograph) with narrow leaves and small, white four petalled flowers. It has long seed pods and is one that I will be digging up before it can spread to my mini allotment patch!

The last once shown is, I think, Wall Lettuce (Mycelis muralis) a dandelion type plant that has tiny yellow flowers later in the year, with the leaves heavily clasping the stem.