Garden Cress

Garden Cress - Lepidium sativum

Description

Short to medium strong smelling plant, greenish, hairless, with a single erect stem. Basal leaves pinnately lobed, soon falling. Stem leaves lobed, not clasping, the uppermost leaves linear, unlobed. Flowers white, occasionally reddish, 3 to 5 mm, fragrant, petals twice as long as the sepals. Fruit 5 to 6 mm, notched, not hairy.

Identification difficulty
ID checklist (your specimen should have all of these features)

Fruits with wings at apex, to which the style is fused; lower and middle leaves deeply pinnately lobed 

Recording advice

You must attach images that show sufficient detail for the plant to be identified.

Habitat

Occasional causal on rubbish dumps and other waste places.

When to see it

Flowers June and July.

Life History

Annual.

UK Status

Occasional but widespread in Britain as garden escape or bird seed introduction.

VC55 Status

Infrequent or under recorded casual in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 8 of the 617 tetrads.

In the current Checklist (Jeeves, 2011) it is listed as Alien (casual), rare

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

No additional images available for this species.

All NatureSpot records