Which are the commonest plant species in Britain?
Recently Dr M has investigated the 30 most common British plant species based on data in the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora and the Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora. The top 30 include species from 10 plant families including nine of the top twenty plant families.
With this post Dr M has reached number 30! Those 30 commonest species includes eight species from the Poaceae, seven from the Asteraceae and three from the Fabaceae, three from the Caryophyllaceae, two from the Ranunculaceae, two from the Plantaginaceae, two from the Polygonaceae, one species from the Juncaceae, one from Urticaceae (all posted previously) and the final one (#30) from the Lamiaceae below.
The 30 commonest vascular plant species in Britain – Lamiaceae
Prunella vulgaris (Self-heal)
For the first time in this series of posts Dr M has had to use someone elses botanical image as he had nothing in his own collection! This nice picture of Prunella is from Wikimedia Commons, click the image and you’ll see the original and the featured image at the top of this post is by Dr M’s colleague Dr Stephen Jury.
But as Dr M has now posted all of the top 30 British plant species he now moves on to re-post each of the thirty with descriptions and ID notes – and with updated photographs by Dr M if possible!
September 19, 2013
