Corncockle

Corncockle - Agrostemma githago

Alternative names
Corn Cockle
Description

Medium to tall, greyish, hairy, erect plant. Leaves narrow, lanceolate, pointed. Flowers pinky purple, 30 to 50 mm, with long leaf like sepals much exceeding the 5 petals, borne on long, slender stalks.

Identification difficulty
Habitat

A weed of cornfields, occasionally in waste places.

When to see it

May to August.

Life History

Annual.

UK Status

Widespread but quite uncommon in Britain.

VC55 Status

Rare in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 2 of the 617 tetrads.

It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but is not on the current RPR (Hall & Woodward, 2022) because records are on introduced plants

Leicestershire & Rutland Map

MAP KEY:

Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2025+ | 2020-2024 | pre-2020

UK Map

Additional images

All NatureSpot records