Short to tall creeping plant, with weak, straggly much branched, square, smooth stems. Leaves lanceolate to linear, pointed, and smooth. Flowers in lax clusters of 10 or more, white 5 to 12 mm, petals more or less equalling and sometimes longer than sepals, notched nearly to the base.

other chickweeds, especially S palustris (Rare in VC55) and S alsine

Petals split ('bifid') almost to base, and as long as or longer than sepals; styles 3; stems glabrous and angled; leaves hairy at margins near base.

Details of flower and stem and leaves

Rough grassland, heaths, and dry hedge banks.

May to August.

Perennial.

Quite common throughout Britain.

Quite common in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 400 of the 617 tetrads.

In the current checklist (Jeeves, 2011) it is listed as locally frequent