Bright blue four-lobed flowers with a white eye rise from the leaf joints of a fleshy, glossy-leaved plant creeping through a stream
Brooklime, Veronica beccabunga.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Brooklime
Native · flowers May–Sep · streams, ditches and wet margins
Veronica beccabunga — Plantaginaceae
A creeping, fleshy speedwell of brooks, ditches and springs, with glossy oval leaves and little sprays of bright blue flowers with a white eye. The leaves were once eaten as a salad and a cure for scurvy, though bitter. It often grows with watercress, and shelters tadpoles and sticklebacks.
How to spot them
- ▸Bright blue, four-lobed flowers with a white eye and darker veins, the lower lobe smaller, in spikes rising from the leaf joints
- ▸Thick, juicy, rounded to oval, glossy leaves in opposite pairs on creeping and upright stems
- ▸Grows with its stems in or at the edge of water, up to about 30 cm tall
- ▸Look-alike: blue water-speedwell (Veronica anagallis-aquatica) has narrower, pointed leaves that clasp the stem
- ▸Look-alike: germander speedwell is a plant of dry ground with hairy stems
How to know it
Once eaten in northern European salads and thought to prevent scurvy, like watercress, though the leaves are notably bitter
Brooklime, per the Wildlife Trusts.
Thick, juicy leaves and stems provide cover for tadpoles and sticklebacks at a pond edge
Brooklime — Wildlife Trusts.
Its Latin species name comes from the German Bachbunge
beccabunga — brooklime.
A speedwell of running water with rounded, fleshy leaves, unlike a blue-flowered relative with pointed leaves that clasp the stem
Brooklime versus blue water-speedwell.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Plantaginaceae (formerly Scrophulariaceae), the plantain family, which includes the speedwells
- •Wildlife Trusts: flowers May to September, up to 30 cm, in brooks, streams and ditches
- •Leaves are edible but bitter; used across northern Europe in salads and thought to prevent scurvy, like watercress
- •Gives shelter to tadpoles and sticklebacks in ponds (Wildlife Trusts)
- •The species name beccabunga derives from the German Bachbunge, 'brook-lump'
- •Often grows alongside watercress in springs and streams
- •Native and common in Britain
Drill it — 6 cards
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Brooklime