Tags

, , , ,

This native British wildflower may well be the ‘common weed of gardens, arable fields and waste places’ that my Flora Britannica describes, but I’ve only found it once, earlier this week, in my local area, despite there being plenty of those suitable habitats. This is Common fumitory (Fumaria officinalis), which also goes by the vernacular names of Earth smoke and Red-tipped-web. Flora Britannica goes on to explain:

Both scientific and English names stem from the Latin Fumus terrae – ‘smoke of the earth’. The delicate, grey-green leaves do have a slightly smoky appearance, enough to persuade one seventeenth-century herbalist that ‘it appeareth to those that behold it at a distance, as if the ground were all of a smoak’.

210516 common fumitory