Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Plant ID please tiny white flowers 4 petals, not shepherd's purse

12 replies

Kalim8 · 11/04/2020 12:17

Hello, there's a lot of this plant growing on a bareish patch of lawn that's been under the trampoline for ages, so it's rather shady.

The leaves seem to be smooth with little hairs along the edges, up the stems, the leaves appear one at a time, and on opposite sides, but there's a clump of leaves at the bottom.

Plant ID please tiny white flowers 4 petals, not shepherd's purse
OP posts:
MereDintofPandiculation · 11/04/2020 15:31

Possibly Thale Cress, Arabidopsis thaliana. Are the basal leaves simple in outline or do they have leaflets?

Kalim8 · 11/04/2020 16:40

Thanks for replying, I don't think it is thale cress as the stalk doesn't have those long spiky looking things. The basal leaves look like this - they are hairy and have little bumps - I feel like someone unfamiliar with chess referring to a knight as a "little horsey"

Plant ID please tiny white flowers 4 petals, not shepherd's purse
OP posts:
HennyPenny4 · 11/04/2020 16:53

Possibly a Brookweed
here

Kalim8 · 11/04/2020 18:34

Thank you - I don't think it's that either as the brookweed leaves are a different shape.

OP posts:
MereDintofPandiculation · 12/04/2020 10:36

Thanks for replying, I don't think it is thale cress as the stalk doesn't have those long spiky looking things. Not sure what you mean by this. Long spiky things on yours? On thale cress? leaves look OK for thale cress.

Could we have a close up of the flowers, please? That would at least get us to family.

I see you have dandelion leaves in the background ... did you know there's nearly 250 species of them? Grin

MereDintofPandiculation · 12/04/2020 10:39

You could subscribe temporarily to the facebook group Wildflowers of Britain and Ireland - there's good people on there, including some of the authors of the classic field guides. Don't make it too obvious that it's in a garden.

MereDintofPandiculation · 12/04/2020 10:41

Note the brookweed has 5 petals. Hard to see from the photo, but I'm guessing your plant has 4?

MereDintofPandiculation · 12/04/2020 10:48

Hard to see from the photo, but I'm guessing your plant has 4? Stupid of me - you say it has 4 in your title. The combination of 4 petals and the overall look of it suggests it's in the cabbage family, Brassicaceae, which is why you considered and dismissed Shepherd's Purse. There are some other families which have 4 petals, but none spring to mind as being right for this. A close up of the flower would help. If you find it difficult to focus on the flower, because the camera keeps focusing on the ground or a distant leaf, hold a piece of paper or even your hand just behind it - then the camera will focus on that, and the flower is close enough to be in focus.

I'm hoping it's Thale Cress - it's a very special plant - it was the first plant to have its genome sequenced.

Kalim8 · 12/04/2020 11:20

Hello, what I was calling spikey things may have been what was left after the flowers had gone - this is the best close up I could get, I'm not impressed with my phone's camera

Plant ID please tiny white flowers 4 petals, not shepherd's purse
OP posts:
Kalim8 · 12/04/2020 11:22

I also found this nearby, with very obvious "spikey bits" - that's very interesting about thale cress, wonder why it was chosen for sequencing.

Plant ID please tiny white flowers 4 petals, not shepherd's purse
OP posts:
MereDintofPandiculation · 13/04/2020 09:02

I don't see anything to suggest that it isn't Thale Cress. And mine has the same "spiky bits" - as you say, remains of flower stems.

It's small, has abundant seed, and a short life cycle - 6 weeks, which makes it ideal for genetic research. It's been used since about 1900, it's been described as the plant equivalent to fruit fly (Drosophila) - anyone doing an OU genetics course will have fond memories of breeding fruit flies in the living room and watching the inheritance of red or brown eyes. So since it was so much used in researcj already, it was an obvious first choice.

Your second specimen is one of the bittercresses, Cardamine sp. It'll be one of these 5 Grin

Kalim8 · 13/04/2020 14:17

Great! Thank you very much for sharing your expertise, MereDint.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page