Two pink/purple flowers to ID

[chrishorak]

These are two pinkish/purple flowers. I'm impressed that I can get all these answers here, so there will be a few more over the weekend. Thanks.

[IanS]

Red campion and rosebay willow herb...

[leifus]

1 Red Campion
2 Rosebay Willowherb

[chrishorak]

Thank you very much. I saw a white flower similar to the Red Campion and that seems to be White Camption - I'm learning!

[Pete Collins]

Originally Posted by chrishorak

Thank you very much. I saw a white flower similar to the Red Campion and that seems to be White Camption - I'm learning!

I agree with IanS and leifus, Red Campion and Rosebay Willowherb. Be careful, the similar white flower you saw might be Bladder Campion rather than White Campion. I've often seen both growing quite close to each other.

Pete

[leifus]

the white flower could also be sea campion if you were near the sea - once you get used to it the campions are actually really easy to identify

[AlanS]

A white-flowered campion can also be a Red Campion!

Unless the plant is female and going into fruit (at which point the capsule teeth of Red Campion curve back), I know of no reliable character to separate white-flowered Red Campion from White Campion. I have even been through a lot of the material in the Edinburgh herbarium and established that supposed vegetative differences in some books do not work.

There is a tip in 'Stace' that white-flowered Red Campions usually lack the red anthocyanin pigment in the stem, and that seems a useful field guide, but that does not help with the pale pink-flowered plants that are often hybrids but are often not.

As a vice-county recorder (Wigtownshire, SW Scotland) it is one of my perennial problems (no pun intended) that I get records of White Campion from visitors, but not one has been authenticated.

White Campion is common in most of England of course, and locally so in East Scotland. It likes the warmer and dryer parts of the country, while white-flowered Red Campion seems to like lusher vegetation , often near the coast.

And yes, there is supposedly a pink-flowered White Campion, that was called var. colorata in past times. I did see, many years ago, a Breckland population of apparent White Campion with pale, salmon-pink flowers that seemed to fit.

Alan

[Pete Collins]

Welcome back AlanS! I haven't seen you post here for ages, it's great to have the benefit of your expertise again.

That's very interesting about the different Campions - I had no idea you could have a white Red Campion.