White, deeply notched petals rise from a swollen, papery, veined balloon of a calyx on a grey-green, hairless plant
Bladder campion - Silene vulgaris.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Bladder campion
Native · perennial, flowers May to September · grassland, verges, field edges
Silene vulgaris — Caryophyllaceae
Bladder campion is a grey-green, hairless perennial of dry grassland, verges and field margins, named for the inflated, veined, balloon-like calyx behind each white flower. Its petals are so deeply cleft that a flower looks as if it has ten, and it is a foodplant of the red-and-black froghopper whose nymphs make cuckoo-spit.
How to spot them
- ▸Pale, papery, bladder-like calyx, netted with fine veins, swollen behind the flower
- ▸White petals, each deeply cleft in two, so there appear to be ten
- ▸Hairless, greyish or blue-green plant to 80 cm with oval to lance-shaped, waxy leaves
- ▸Look-alikes: white campion is hairy and sticky with a hairy, ribbed calyx (dioecious); sea campion is a cushion plant of coasts with a similar but less cleft flower
How to know it
Told from a hairy, sticky, evening-scented relative of hedgerows that has separate male and female plants
Bladder campion (white campion, Silene latifolia, is the look-alike).
One foodplant of the red-and-black froghopper, an insect that wraps its young in a frothy mass of 'cuckoo-spit'
Bladder campion - Wildlife Trusts.
Each of its five petals is cleft so deeply that a flower appears to have ten
Bladder campion.
Young shoots of this plant are eaten as a wild vegetable in parts of the Mediterranean; one of its folk names is maiden's tears
Bladder campion.
A coastal cousin forms low cushions on cliffs and shingle with a similar inflated calyx
Bladder campion (sea campion, Silene uniflora).
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Caryophyllaceae, the pink family, alongside carnations, chickweeds and stitchworts
- •Wildlife Trusts: flowers May to September; height up to 80 cm; hairless and greyish
- •The 'bladder' is the fused sepals forming the calyx
- •Foodplant of the red-and-black froghopper (Wildlife Trusts); also used by several moths
- •Sea campion (Silene uniflora), a coastal cushion-forming relative, was formerly treated as a subspecies of this plant
- •Silene is said to be from Silenus, the drunken, bloated satyr companion of Dionysus, a nod to the swollen calyx
- •Common in England; less so in Scotland and Wales
- •Also known as maiden's tears
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Bladder campion