A little bit of flowery stuff 🙂

There are quite a few different Speedwells about just now and telling one from another can seem a bit daunting. The little blue flowers of different species can look very similar.

One day I will write a post about all the different types that I know and point out the differences, that will be a long post. Today I am just going to write about the Germander Speedwell, Veronica chamaedrys.

Fortunately Germander Speedwell has a unique identifiable feature that separates it from all of the others..

and we will get to that in a bit.

First the flower.

Germander has multiple flowers growing from a single main flower stem on their own little stalks. This kind of arrangement is called a raceme and it helps to separate Germander from say, Persian Speedwell that just has one flower on each flower stem.

Germander Speedwell:

Persian Speedwell (Veronica persica)
Quite a few Speedwells flower on racemes so that alone isn’t enough for a positive ID but it helps.

I usually look at the leaves first. They are a good indication of species as many of the Speedwells have quite distinctive leaves. In the case of the Germander they grow in opposite pairs.

 I suppose that I could tell you that “The leaves are in opposite pairs, triangular and crenate, sessile or with short petioles,” etc. etc. (Wikiwotsit) but I don’t think that kind of gobbledegook helps  anybody, they simply look like this.

Now we come to the unique identifiable feature.

Germander Speedwell has two lines of hairs on opposite sides of the main stem, it is the only one of our Speedwells that has this feature and is is quite easy to see with the naked eye.

It is only the main stem that has these two distinct lines of hairs, the flower stems have hairs all around them but if the main stem has this feature and the flowers and leaves fit then you have found a Germander Speedwell and nothing else 🙂

I like it when flowers can be this positive about their own identity. It makes life easy.