So you’re walking through the grass and at the edge, where it’s all trampled, there’s this yellow clover, or is it, and is it only one? Well in Britain we have at least four common yellow flowered small to medium clover-like plants. Although they all have trifoliate leaves (three leaflets) they are not called clover, at least the commonest common names are not clover
Learn more »
If you arrived here and have not completed Dr M’s Maiden Castle mini-quiz and you would like to, then check it out here! and then the answers here! If you have, well, with Part 1, the easy bit, out of the way, here’s the real eXtreme botany bit: vegetative plant ID and in chalk grassland – one of the most species-rich communities in Britain – to
Learn more »
For the love of seeds how did you do?! Well, there were three obvious families clinging to Dr M’s eXtreme botany boots, and one less obvious and no doubt others lurking in nooks, crannies and crevices as they do!
Well you have had some time to ponder this little fellow, and so now here is the answer: Ornithopus perpusillus (Bird’s-foot). This cute little legume is a prostrate hairy annual with stems up to about 30cm long and leaves pinnate with 4-12 pairs of leaflets. Flowers are small creamy and red veined in small heads of 2-6 together with a pinnate bract below the
Learn more »
It’s the weekend and Dr M is just back from eXtreme botany European Tour 2014 and has got a touch behind with posting on drmgoeswild so a good time to launch a new series. Dr M’s weekend mystery plants is a mini-quiz posting a mystery plant for you to ID then in a few days comes the answer and some botanical info for your
Learn more »
This rather magnificent member of the Pea family – Fabaceae – is very conspicuous on roadsides and waste ground around Reading and much further afield at the moment.
Dr M’s students have returned from the vacation and spent the first week of the new term on the New Year Plant Hunt in which they and Dr M found 38 species in flower on the University of Reading campus! This week Dr M set his students a plant ID test of vascular plants and bryophytes. This was a formative test which is a
Learn more »
Dr M loves it when this happens! Stumbling upon some writing which leaves him speechless, thinking: “Oh my! What eXtreme creative botanical mind was at work there?”
Can you recognise the commonest plant species in Britain? Dr M has previously posted 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.
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. The 30 commonest species includes eight species from the Poaceae and
Learn more »