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It’s used as bird food, and was once a herbal remedy for just about anything (but it’s toxic to the liver so not recommended…)Īs well as a basal rosette, this perennial has a long, sturdy tap root, like a giant carrot. This scruffy, straggling little plant is no beauty, and I’m afraid I don’t remember noticing it before a survey made me look! It’s an annual, and its secret of success is that it’s a prolific seeder – its name is from Old English grundeswelige, meaning ‘ground-swallower’. Each of those little yellow specks is a separate flower, providing nectar – I’m sure a bee would agree with Chaucer’s view of them as ‘ The empress and floure of floures all’. Their basal rosette of leaves, flat to the ground, stops anything else coming up, so they can keep sparse resources all to themselves. The perennial ‘Day’s-eye’ opens at dawn and closes at dusk, and is ‘heliotropic’ meaning that the blooms follow the sun. They all have their own secret survival strategies…

These are the biggest family of flowering plants and are tough as old boots. It’s no surprise that the top 3 species are all from the Asteraceae – the Daisy family. Here are the top 4 flowers from the Plant Hunt. Even so, what is it that winter bloomers have got that other, more sensitive types don’t? Another consideration is that nearly half of the species were non-natives, probably garden escapes, which were tough customers anyway and many of the records came from urban and suburban areas which are always a degree or two warmer than rural ones. The BSBI report suggests that increasingly mild winters lead to a lot of late-flowering plants extending their season as ‘autumn stragglers’. Inevitably, climate change is the most likely reason.

We think of winter as a time bereft of flowers, so 627 seems a lot, and indeed it’s the highest total in the project’s 8 years. album), Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris), Bramble (Rubus fruticosus). The 8 species I found during my New Year Plant Hunt. Top row: Daisy (Bellis perennis), Common field-speedwell (Veronica persica), Hairy bitter-cress (Cardamine hirsuta), Wood avens (Geum urbanum). Bottom row: Red and white deadnettle (Lamium purpureum and L.