Hieracium pilosella (syn. Pilosella officinarum), known as mouse-ear hawkweed, is a yellow-flowered species of flowering plant in the daisy family Asteraceae, native to Europe and northern Asia. It produces single, lemon-coloured inflorescences. It is an allelopathic plant. Like most hawkweed species, it is highly variable and is a member of a species complex of several dozens of subspecies and hundreds of varieties and forms.
It is a hispid (hairy) perennial plant, with a basal rosette of leaves. The whole plant, with the exception of the flower parts, is covered in glandular hairs, usually whitish, sometimes reddish on the stem. The rosette leaves are entire, acute to blunt, and range from 1–12 centimetres (0.39–4.72 in) long and 0.5–2 centimetres (0.20–0.79 in) broad. Their underside is tomentose (covered with hair). The flowering stem (scape) is generally between 5–50 centimetres (2.0–19.7 in) tall, and sprouts from the centre of the basal rosette. The flowerheads are borne singly on the scape and are a pale lemon-yellow colour, with the outermost ligules having a reddish underside. It flowers from May until August and the flowers are visited by various groups of insects, especially flies.
The plant favours dry, sunny areas. It grows well on sandy and similarly less fertile ground types. It produces stolons are which generate a new rosette at their extremity, each rosette has the possibility of developing into a new clone forming dense mats in open space. It also propagates by seeds.
It is a known allelopathic plant, whose roots secrete several substances inhibiting root growth, including its own. It can be controlled through rotation with clover and grasses where possible.
Recent research claims that Hieracium pilosella exhibits an atavism by the reemergence of sexual reproduction.
Primula elatior, the oxlip (or true oxlip), is a species of flowering plant in the family Primulaceae, native to nutrient-poor and calcium-rich damp woods and meadows throughout Europe, with northern borders in Denmark and southern parts of Sweden, eastwards to the Altai Mountains and on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. In the British Isles, it is rarely seen outside East Anglia. It may be found near settlements, as far north as northern Norway, after escaping cultivation.
The oxlip is a herbaceous, perennial plant growing to 30 cm (12 in) tall by 25 cm (10 in) broad, with a rosette of leaves 5–15 cm long and 2–6 cm broad. It produces light yellow flowers in spring, in clusters of 10-30 together on a single stem 10–30 cm (4–12 in) tall, each flower 9–15 mm broad.
The specific epithet elatior means "taller".[3] The common name "oxlip", from "ox" and "slip", may refer to the fact that oxlips (and cowslips) are often found in boggy pasture used by cattle.
It may be confused with the closely related Primula veris (cowslip), which has a similar general appearance, although P. veris has smaller, bell-shaped, bright yellow flowers (and red dots inside the flower), and a corolla tube without folds. The leaves of P. veris are more spade-shaped than P. elatior.
The flower heads on the oxlip all hang in the one general direction, which distinguishes it from the similar False Oxlip, a Primrose/Cowslip natural hybrid, where the blooms are distributed all around the stem.
The oxlip was voted the County flower of Suffolk in 2002 following a poll by the wild plant conservation charity Plantlife.
Helleborus foetidus, known variously as stinking hellebore, dungwort, setterwort and bear's foot, is a species of flowering plant in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae, native to the mountainous regions of Central and Southern Europe, Greece and Asia Minor. It is found wild in many parts of England, especially on limestone soil.
It is an evergreen perennial growing to 80 cm (31 in) tall and 100 cm (39 in) across, with a thick succulent stem and glossy leaves. The drooping cup-shaped flowers appear in spring, and are yellowish-green, often with a purple edge to the five petal-like sepals on strongly upright stems. The flowers, typically for the family, contain numerous stamens as well as up to ten nectaries which make them attractive to bees and other insects. Each flower produces up to five (usually three) wrinkled follicles. Despite its common name, it is not noticeably malodorous, although the foliage is pungent when crushed.
All parts of the plant are poisonous, containing glycosides. Symptoms of intoxication include violent vomiting and delirium.
Yeasts colonise the nectaries of stinking hellebore and their presence has been found to raise the temperature of the flower, which may aid in attracting pollinators to the flower by increasing the evaporation of volatile organic compounds. It was the first species in which this effect was discovered.
H. foetidus is grown in gardens for its handsome evergreen foliage and large numbers of green, bell-shaped flowers borne in late winter. It prefers woodland conditions with deep, fertile, moist, humus rich, well-drained soil, and dappled shade. The species is, however, drought-tolerant. It often occurs naturally on chalk or limestone soils.
This plant has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
The cultivar 'Green Giant' has very bright green flowers and finely divided foliage; 'Miss Jekyll' has fragrant flowers, intensity varying with the time of day; 'Wester Flisk Group' has red-tinted leaves and stems and gray-green flowers; the 'Sierra Nevada Group' is dwarf, reaching 30 cm.
Propagation is by division or from seed, which can be prolific, naturalising well in ideal conditions. Rodents should be kept away from the garden since they depredate the seeds either when still in fruiting plants within the carpels or from the floor after seed release.
Anemone narcissiflora, the narcissus anemone or narcissus-flowered anemone, is a herbaceous perennial in the genus Anemone and the buttercup family.
Plants grow 7 to 60 cm tall, from a caudex (woody-like perennial base), flowering spring to mid summer but often found flowering till late summer. They have 3-10 basal leaves that are ternate (arranged with three leaflets), rounded to rounded triangular in shape with 4-to-20-millimetre long petioles.
The flowers are produced in clusters (umbels) with 2 to 8 flowers, but often appear singly. The inflorescence have 3 leaf-like bracts similar in appearance to the basal leaves but simple and greatly reduced in size, pinnatifid in shape. Flowers have no petals, but instead have 5-9 petal-like sepals that are white, blue-tinted white or yellow in color. The flowers usually have 40 to 80 stamens but can have up to 100.
After flowering, fruits are produced in rounded heads with 5–14-centimetre long pedicels. When the fruits, called achenes, are ripe they are ellipsoid to ovate in outline, flat in shape and 5 to 9 millimetres (3⁄16 to 11⁄32 in) long and 4–6 millimetres wide. The achenes are winged with no hairs and have 0.8–1.5-millimetre long beaks that are curved or recurved.
Anemone narcissiflora is native to north western North America and Eurasia where it can be found growing in high mountain alpine grasslands, in thickets, grassy meadows with moist soils, tundra, open woods, along roadsides and in pastures.
Geum rivale, the water avens, is a flowering plant of the family Rosaceae. Other names for the plant are nodding avens, drooping avens, cure-all, water flower and indian chocolate. It is native to much of Europe, with the exception of Mediterranean areas, as well as some parts of Central Asia and North America. In North America, it is known as purple avens. It grows in bogs and damp meadows, and produces nodding red flowers from May to September.
The plant is a native perennial of slow-draining or wet soils and can tolerate mildly acidic to calcareous conditions in full sun or under partial shade.
Habitats include stream sides, pond edges, damp deciduous woodland and hay meadows.
G. rivale is pollinated primarily by bees, less often by flies and beetles. As the flower matures, elongation of the stamens ensures it self-fertilises if not already cross-pollinated. The flowers stigmas mature before the stamens. It begins flowering a little earlier than G. urbanum, so early pollinations will be within the gene-pool of the single species. The seeds of Water Avens are burr-like, and are distributed after being caught in the coats of rabbits and other small mammals, and by rhizomal growth
Leopoldia comosa (syn. Muscari comosum) is a perennial bulbous plant. Usually called the tassel hyacinth or tassel grape hyacinth, it is one of a number of species and genera also known as grape hyacinths. It is found in rocky ground and cultivated areas, such as cornfields and vineyards, in south-east Europe to Turkey and Iran, but has naturalized elsewhere. In southern Italy and Greece, its bulb is a culinary delicacy.
Described by Oleg Polunin as "a striking plant", it has a tuft of bright blue to violet-blue sterile flowers above brownish-green fertile flowers, which open from dark blue buds. This tuft gives rise to the name "tassel hyacinth".The flower stem is 20–60 cm tall; individual flowers are borne on long stalks, purple in the case of the sterile upper flowers. Mature fertile flowers are 5–10 mm long with stalks of this length or more and are bell-shaped, opening at the mouth, where there are paler lobes. The linear leaves are 5–15 mm wide, with a central channel.
Leopoldia comosa naturalizes easily and may become invasive. It has spread northwards from its original distribution, for example appearing in the British Isles in the 16th century.
In a cultivar called 'Monstrosum' or 'Plumosum', all the flowers have become branched purple stems.
Cuisine
The edible bulb is eaten in some Mediterranean countries. In Apulia and Basilicata, it is cultivated and known as lampagioni or lampascioni. In Greek it is called βολβοί, βροβιούς volví, vrovioús. In Greece and especially on Crete, it is considered a delicacy and collected in the wild. The cleaned bulbs are boiled several times, pickled. and then kept in olive oil.
Hieracium villosum, common name shaggy hawkweed, is a species of flowering plant in the aster family.
Hieracium villosum can reach a height of 30–45 centimetres (12–18 in). This plant forms dense basal rosettes of silver-grey, simple, oblong to lanceolate, woolly leaves, about 4.5–8.5 centimetres (1.8–3.3 in) long. The many-stellate flowers are bright yellow, 4–5 centimetres (1.6–2.0 in) large, on white-hairy stems. They bloom from July to August.
This species is native to France, Italy, Central Europe, the Balkan Peninsula, Romania and Russia.
Hieracium villosum can be found in mountain areas in calcareous stony and grassy places, at elevation of 1,400–2,500 metres (4,600–8,200 ft) above sea level.
Eriophorum vaginatum L. (hare's-tail cottongrass, tussock cottongrass, sheathed cottonsedge) is a species of perennial herbaceous flowering plant in the sedge family Cyperaceae. It is native to bogs and other acidic wetlands throughout the Holarctic Kingdom. It is a 30–60 cm high tussock-forming plant with erect solitary spikelets.
E. vaginatum is a 30–60 cm high tussock-forming plant. The inflorescence is a dense, tufted cyme with erect solitary, multiflowered spikelets. It is rhizomatous, with leaves usually longer than the stem, and the fruit is an achene. Each individual tussock comprises 300–600 tillers, which contain two to three needle-like leaves enclosed in a sheath at the base. The density of tillers in a tussock depends both upon the diameter of the tussock (tiller density decreases as tussock diameter increases) and invasion by mosses and shrubs, factors which also affect tiller size and robustness of tiller production.
