Common Cornsalad - Valerianella locusta
Low to medium hairless plant. Flowers pale pinkish or bluish, tiny in flat clusters.
other corn-salads
Ripe fruits are essential for identification; this plant cannot be verified from photos of the plant or flowers.
Fruit is 2 x as thick as wide, and about as long as thick, with a shallow groove on the abaxial face (i.e to side furthest from the axis)
The fruits need to be photographed, or the specimen checked by an expert.
Arable and waste land and around the coast.
April to June.
Annual.
Widespread but localised, it is mainly coastal in the north of Britain.
Local in Leicestershire and Rutland, but may be increasing; probably under-recorded due to similarity to other corn-salads. In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi and Evans 1988) it was found in 23 of the 617 tetrads.
In the current checklist it is listed as Native, now scarce.
It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but does not meet the criteria for the current RPR (Hall and Woodward, 2022)
Alan Semper
Harby roadside
01 May 2014
Graham Calow
Croft Pasture
06 May 2013
David Nicholls
Gilroes Cemetery
06 May 2012
Leicestershire & Rutland Map
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Species profile
- Common names
- Cornsalad, Common Cornsalad
- Species group:
- Wildflowers
- Kingdom:
- Plantae
- Order:
- Dipsacales
- Family:
- Caprifoliaceae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 24
- First record:
- 17/05/2006 (Calow, Graham)
- Last record:
- 13/05/2022 (Cranston, Elspeth)
Total records by month
% of records within its species group
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