Water-pepper
Water-pepper - Persicaria hydropiper
Medium to tall, erect hairless plant with a burning peppery taste. Leaves narrow-lanceolate, pointed, scarcely stalked. Flowers in a lax slender spike, often drooping especially at the tip, pinkish or greenish white.
Persicaria minor
Peppery taste is characteristic; hairs on face of stipules (not terminal cilia) fused to to stipule for >3/4 of length
Nibble clean leaf to detect peppery taste! Photo of stipules is needed.
Damp places, wet meadows, water margins, woodland rides etc.
June to September.
Annual.
Widespread and quite frequent in Britain in suitable habitats.
Locally frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 166 of the 617 tetrads.
In the current Checklist (Jeeves, 2011) it is listed as Native, Locally Frequent
Graham Calow
Riverside, Witherley
26 September 2015
Graham Calow
Foot of Croft Hill
29 August 2014
Graham Calow
Burbage Common
16 August 2015
David Nicholls
Swithland Wood
25 August 2011
David Nicholls
Cossington
11 October 2011
David Nicholls
Cossington
11 October 2011
David Nicholls
Charnwood Lodge
01 September 2012
Peter Smith
Hill Hole Quarry
26 August 2014
David Nicholls
Martinshaw Wood
31 August 2013
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Calybites phasianipennella
The larva of the moth Calybites phasianipennella mines the leaves of various plants including Dock species, Yellow Loosestrife,Water-pepper, Black Bindweed and Redshank. An initial gallery leads to a blotch; later instars leaves the mine and feeds inside a cone-shaped leaf-roll, made by cutting a strip out of the leaf the leaf alongside the midrib.