Buttercups and bedstraws, mouse-ears and geraniums

These four groups are abundantly scattered over Upper Seeds, and though it's fairly straightforward to recognise them quickly to genus, it can take time to become familiar with individual species, especially when many characteristics are similar.  This first survey season has also been a timely reminder not to assume I know what species I'm looking at, and to take a few minutes just checking some of the finer details to make sure. Time well spent with the small, shy species in grasslands like this!

Buttercups (Ranunculus species)

Always very familiar, with their shiny yellow flowers, and beloved of all pollinators and pollen eaters, these are not always so easy to tell apart without closer inspection.  I've so far identified three species of buttercup here - Small-Flowered, Creeping and Meadow.

Small-Flowerd Buttercup (R. parviflorus) (May 2016)

The small-flowered buttercup really stood out early in the season, as its pale yellowy-green leaves weren't familiar at all.  Mostly growing towards the western end of the field, at the top of the rise, a few localised patches showed up in late May as soft leafy mounds against the otherwise still-short cover before the growing season really got underway.

It's well-named, as the flowers are small and easily overlooked, lacking the shiny in-your-face nature of some of the other buttercups.

Groovy Creeping Buttercup stem

Creeping (R. repens) and Meadow (R. acris) buttercups are possibly the two species most often encountered, and easily mixed up, as they occur together in many meadows and other habitats (I know I have to get down and check these constantly!).

Once they're flowering, there's two main characteristics that tell them apart:  leaf shape, and whether the flower stem is grooved or not.

Both creeping and meadow buttercups have spreading sepals, but creeping buttercups also have a grooved flower stem (this isn't grooved on the meadow buttercup), and have three-lobed leaves where the terminal leaflet has its own short stem  (meadow buttercup leaves are more deeply cut).

One species I expected to find but haven't yet is the Bulbous Buttercup (R. bulbosus) - another shiny yellow-flowered species, but easily told from creeping and meadow by its reflexed (downturned) sepals.

Bedstraws (Galium species)

Another group where I have got three species on site; two familiar faces, and one that is another new one for my personal species list.  Hedge bedstraw (G. mollugo) and lady's bedstraw (G. verum) are quickly differentiated by the width of the leaf blades: hedge bedstraw has much broader leaves, with fewer leaves per whorl along the stem than lady's bedstraw.

Hedge bedstraw - wider leaves, white flowers

Lady's bedstraw - narrow leaf blades, yellow flowers

Slender bedstraw - widely spaced narrow leaves, white flowers

I was happy with these IDs - until the bedstraws started to flower, when I quickly realised I had white flowers on what I thought was lady's bedstraw (which has yellow flowers).  Whoops.  A salutory reminder not to get over-confident!

This surprise species I have now down as Slender Bedstraw (G. pumilum), and the process of looking closer at it has highlighted small but crucial differences from lady's bedstraw.  The flower colour is the really obvious characteristic; beyond that, the leaf whorls are much more widely spaced along the stem, giving slender bedstraw a less robust appearance.  Getting a hand lens out, will show you a few backward-pointing bristles along the edge of the leaves, as well as a lack of the distinctively rolled edges that characterise lady's bedstraw. 

Mouse-ears (Cerastium species)

Common Mouse-ear

Small, white-flowered plants that sparkle between the grass blades and round the side of other plant species; these are the little brothers of Stitchwort, and share the same starry flowers and simple paired leaf arrangements.

Two species on site: Common Mouse-ear (C. fontanum) - ubiquitous throughout the field, hairy but not sticky (see below!), with tiny white flowers and narrow pointed green leaves. 

Crowded terminal flowerhead of Sticky Mouse-ear

I've only seen Sticky Mouse-ear (C. glomeratum)  in one location so far.  It's stickily hairy, and has crowded terminal flower heads.  These, and the broader, more yellow leaves, make it stand out as something different from the common mouse-ear.  This is a plant I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for as time goes on and I get a closer look around my field.


Geraniums

One or other of two tiny pink-flowered species have been popping up in most places, like Little Jack Horner's plums - everywhere I stopped to do a survey, there was a small pink speck demanding I figure out which it is.  Like the buttercups, both these species were found growing closely together, making unravelling which was which tricky while there was still only foliage present.

Two tiny Geranium species (and other things!)

Both with similar, deeply cut foliage, and small pink flowers each with 5 petals - but if you look a bit closer.......

Cut-leaved Crane's-bill

Cut-leaved crane's-bill (G. dissectum) is a more sprawling, hairy plant, with flowers on short petioles close to the main stem, along with a number of leaves, giving an overall rather crowded impression of the flower position.

The petals are notched, and flowers appear to be a slightly deeper pink than the Long-Stalked Geranium (this is much more obvious when you can see them growing together).

Long-stalked Crane's-bill

Long-stalked Crane's-bill (G. columbinum) - is a gracile plant with larger, unnotched, paler pink petals forming individual flowers placed at the end of long delicate stems.  This is also less noticably hairy than the Cut-leaved crane's-bill. 



Just some of the small things that please me about working in grasslands like this.  There are many others, of course, and I hope to document some of those in later posts.