This is a perennial, low-growing plant with short (up to 1cm length) narrow, grass-like leaves and branching, wiry stems. (Not to be confused with the true saxifrages or rockfoils, also low-growing but with leaves in rosette form and often succulent or leathery to reduce evaporation).

The base of the plant consists of a mat of stems with dead leaves from the previous year. and the new growth spreads laterally in a branching manner so extending the mat effect. Leaves are inconspicuous and arranged alternately along the length of the stem. The flowering tips bend upwards giving a growth height of 10-25 cm.

The flowers are small with pale pink to purple petals, 5-10mm long and 3 distinct dark stripes leading into the flower tube. They produce nectar that attracts mainly flies, small bees and some butterflies. The flower tube is surrounded by a ring of sepals and a second ring of scaly bracts that develop later to form the seed capsules.

Although the stems are many branching, the creeping nature of the stems and the fact that only the tips bend upward, each bearing a single bloom, gives the impression of flowers carried singly.

Fruits are capsules opening upwards, each bearing many tiny seeds that are shaken out when dry.

This is a perennial plant growing in the form of a loose mat of creeping growth from a tangled system of rhizomes. The flowers arise on upright slender stems that may be covered with fine, glandular hairs. Leaves arise from nodes, sometimes in clusters.

The fruit is a horn-shaped capsule (hence the name Cerastium from the Greek keras meaning horn) up to 1.5cm long with ten tiny teeth at the tip. It contains several brown seeds.

This annual plant is very common, can be found at all times of the year and reproduces rapidly both by vegetative means (repeated branching and rooting along the spreading stems to form a carpet of growth) and by seed.

Chickweed is a valuable food source for birds and mammals as well as insects and it helps to protect the ground (and the life within it) from the worst of winter cold or erosion by covering it in a dense network of stems and leaves. For this reason it is often deliberately left growing in vinyards for example.

Although at first sight the small flowers (petals 2-5mm long) seem to have 10 petals, in fact there are 5, each one divided almost to the base. The petals are slightly shorter than the hairy green sepals that surround them. The anthers have a purple hue. There are 3 styles and stigma in the centre of the flower. Seeds are reddish brown and develop in a downwards hanging-capsule surrounded by the sepals (see photo !S! ). In protected environments, the plant can flower all year round.

Stems typically have a single row of hairs along their length that guide any dew or light rain down to the lower leaves and the roots.

Chickweed is a nutritious plant and can be used as salad as well as foodstuff for livestock (mainly chickens) and uses in folk medicine, for example as a poultice to treat skin diseases.

This is an annual, sometimes biennial plant with hairy, elliptic leaves arranged in opposite pairs along forked stems.

The flower has deeply notched petals and a distinctive bulbous bladder enclosing the petal tube. There is a rim of small petal-like structures between the floral disc and the hidden petal tube. Flowers open in the evening, giving off a scent that attracts night-active moths and other insects.

After flowering, toothed capsules develop reaching the size of the ‘bladder’ and containing numerous tiny seeds that are shaken out (pepper-pot style) when dry and mature.

This is a perennial plant with deep roots (up to 1m(, upright stems and elliptic leaves. The basal leaves are shorter (1.5-2cm long( than the stem leaves (3-7cm( and the upright or slightly nodding flower stems arise in a branched arrangement at the top of the stem, from nodes with 2 opposite leaves. The flowers on a single plant usually all face the same direction.

It is a night blooming plant, though the flowers may stay open during the day, they only give off the sweet scent that attracts insects during the night. They are pollinated by long-tongued moths and bees as the nectar is deep inside the flower tube. Nectar robbers such as short-tongued bees may bite through the flower tube to reach the nectar but these insects do not serve the flower as they don't aid pollination in this way.

The balloon-like sepal tube is the most recognisable aspect of the flower. It is clearly patterned with a network of veins. The 5 petals are deeply divided, so appearing to be double in number. The flower lacks the frill around the mouth of the tube often seen in other campions. They can be masculine, feminine or bisexual. The female organs have a long 3-part style, the stamens, 10 in number, also extend well beyond the petal disc.

The sepal tube develops into a pot-shaped seed capsule with teeth around the narrow opening and the tiny seeds are shaken out when the wind blows.

This is a herbaceous perennial plant, overwintering and spreading by means of a branching underground stem or rhizome. The erect leafy branches are usually single with a large, dense, untidy cluster of flowers at the tips.

Flowers are pale pink or white and open mainly at night. Each flower lasts for about 3 nights, giving off a stronger scent and more nectar at this time to attract nocturnal pollinators.

Fruits develop as capsules that dry and open, ' salt shaker' style, releasing many small, brown-black, kidney-shaped seeds.

The plant, which contains saponarin, can be used to make a very gentle liquid soap that lathers and dissolves fats or grease. Despite its toxic potential, it also finds culinary use as an emulsifier in the commercial preparation of certain pastes such as tahini halva and in brewing to create beer with a good 'head'.

This is a perennial or biennial plant that usually possesses flowers of one sex only; either female with 5 visible styles and stigmas or male with no stigmas but many stamens. Sometimes a plant can be found with both so it doesn’t have strictly separated sexes (dioecious(. The sepal tube , 10-15mm long is thickly hairy and reddish tinged.

The flowers, unlike those of the white campion, are visited by pollinating insects during the day, mainly hover flies and butterflies, insects with long tongues that can reach the nectar at the base of the flower tube. Bumble bees sometimes bite through the side of the tube as they can’t reach the nectar otherwise (nectar robbers(.

The seed capsule is a bulbous pot containing many tiny seeds. When the triangular teeth around the opening curl backwards, the seeds are exposed and shaken out by the wind.

This is a protected plant!

The stunning bright pink colour of its small flowers carried high on tall, slender, erect stems makes it very visible.

This is an endangered and protected species.

All parts of the plant are poisonous.

It used to be a common companion plant in cereal fields but has been largely eradicated by careful seed selection and treatment. It is a deep-rooting annual plant, growing each year from seed.

The flower is particularly distinctive on account of the ring of 5 long pointed sepals that project well beyond the petals (see button !D! below) and the single flower, 2.5-5cm across, carried on a tall, leafy stem. The bright pink petals have darker stripy markings, a white centre and may have darker zig-zag markings around the mouth of the petal tube. The sepal tube below is ribbed and hairy. The stem is strong and erect, also slightly hairy, and the leaves are narrow and pointed, emerging from the stem in opposite pairs, joined directly to the stem (unstalked).

Seeds are produced in a many-seeded capsule.