A low, glossy evergreen with propeller-shaped blue-violet flowers, a plant of old cottage sites and shady hedge banks that has been grown here since before 995
Lesser periwinkle — an archaeophyte.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Lesser periwinkle
Archaeophyte (in British gardens by 995) · flowers Apr–Sep · hedge banks, woodland margins and old garden sites
Vinca minor — Apocynaceae
Lesser periwinkle is an evergreen, trailing plant with glossy dark leaves and blue-violet, five-petalled flowers like tiny propellers. It is not truly native: it has been grown in British gardens for over a thousand years and persists on hedge banks, in old woods and around former dwellings. Its bigger relative, greater periwinkle, is the one that spreads aggressively.
How to spot them
- ▸Trailing, rooting stems carrying pairs of small, glossy, dark green, oval evergreen leaves with untoothed edges
- ▸Flowers about 2.5 cm across, blue-violet (sometimes white or purple), with five blunt lobes set like a propeller or pinwheel
- ▸Low mats of ground cover, often marking the site of a former cottage or garden
- ▸Look-alike: greater periwinkle (Vinca major) is larger and more robust, with bigger flowers, a fringe of hairs on the leaf margin and stiff-pointed sepals; lesser periwinkle is smaller, lower, more shade-tolerant and less invasive
- ▸It rarely produces fruit; it spreads mainly by stems rooting at their tips
How to know it
The smaller of two British periwinkles: leaves lack a hairy edge, and the plant is lower, more shade-tolerant and less invasive than its larger relative
Lesser periwinkle — Vinca minor versus Vinca major.
Its stems root where the tip touches the ground, so it spreads over shady banks by vegetative growth and rarely sets fruit
Lesser periwinkle.
A member of the dogbane family whose leaves are a source of the alkaloid vincamine
Lesser periwinkle — Apocynaceae.
Established in British gardens by the year 995, this plant was grown a full 550 years before its greater cousin arrived
Lesser periwinkle — Vinca major arrived around 1550, according to the BSBI.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Apocynaceae, the dogbane family; the genus is Vinca
- •The BSBI treats it as an archaeophyte and rare garden escape, believed to have been in British gardens by 995 AD
- •Vinca major (greater periwinkle) arrived around 1550, and is more invasive
- •Flowers April to September, according to the BSBI's account
- •More frequent in the warmer southern half of Britain
- •Establishes from garden waste and plant fragments; spreads vegetatively because it rarely fruits
- •The leaves contain vincamine, a monoterpene indole alkaloid, and the plant has been studied as a medicinal species
- •Typically found near houses, woodland margins, hedgerows and roadsides
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Sources
- Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland — Vinca minor L., Lesser Periwinkle (Fermanagh species account)