Tag: Hairy Bittercress

Mouse Ear of the Fields

forget me not
Scanned at 300 dpi.
forget me not
Scanned at 100 dpi.

Common or field forget-me-not has hairy leaves, hence its Latin name, Myosotis arvensis, which translates as ‘mouse ear of the fields’.

leaflets leafletsHairy bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta, reminds me of a small version of lady’s smock, Cardamine pratense. It’s one of the earliest of weeds to flower and one plant can produce 50,000 seeds.

groundselgroundselI always think of groundsel, Senecio vulgaris, as a user friendly weed. It doesn’t have a taproot or spreading rhizomes, so you can soon clear a bed of groundsel just by pulling it up. Although it will probably soon appear again as its seeds can germinate within a week.

Hairy Bittercress


hairy bittercressHAIRY BITTERCRESS, Cardamine hirsuta, growing in the shady flower bed by the front door, is one of those little green jobs, a garden weed that looks so nondescript that you might think that it would be impossible to identify it.

The four-petalled cross-shaped flowers show that it’s a crucifer, a member the cabbage, cress and mustard family, formerly the Cruciferae but now known botanically as the Brassicaceae family.

The leaf-shapes and the sausage-shaped seed-pods help me narrow it down to hairy bittercress and a hand lens reveals that, as the species name hirsuta suggests, the stems and the backs of the leaves are covered in little hairs.

flower

You also need a hand lens to spot that its flower has four stamens. This distinguishes hairy bittercress from a similar looking species, the wavy bittercress, Cardamine flexuosa, also known as greater bittercress.