Mick Crawley
Plant ecologist, fanatical botanizer, croquet player and Newcastle supporter
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August is Eucryphia time. These wonderful plants belong to the family Cunoniaceae and provide some of the best botanical evidence for continental drift: there are native species in...
Big Yellow Asteraceae. This is the time of year when you are likely to see huge, yellow-flowered composites that are tricky to assign to genus. The thread will guide you through t...
Genera of Poaceae: The Finger-grasses. These exotic-looking alien species come in 4 easily identified categories. What follows is a key to the genera, some of which have species...
This is a good time to start thinking about alien grasses: they'll be in flower from now until Christmas, so it is well worth learning them. Probably the easiest of them all is Se...
Cudweed season is upon us (Gnaphalieae: Asteraceae). What makes these plants so tricky to identify is that their general woolliness hides all the bits that are important for ID....
Key to the species of bromes. The bromes are split into 4 genera by Stace. The first is highly distinctive and told by its very strongly keeled flattened glumes and lemmas. Th...
Genera of Poaceae. Vulpia. Closely related to Festuca, and capable of hybridizing with it. These are annual plants with leaf sheaths that are open at the back, and lemmas with l...
Key to the common species of Agrostis. You should collect underground parts and dissect a spikelet before beginning the key to determine whether the palea is large or small (more...
Here is one of my candidates for βmost elegant of all British grassesβ. Itβs Apera spica-venti, and has a droopy, shining golden inflorescence, made up of tiny spikelets with rid...
Genera of Poaceae. Phalaris. This is a genus of big contrasts, from huge perennials like Reed Canary-grass to delicate little annuals like Canary-grass. What they have in common is...
Keys to fescue species. 1) Schedonorus. These are fescues with clasping auricles. https://t.co/8yzKmFStwI
Genera of Poaceae. Festuca is one of the most important grass genera, and species dominate a wide variety of habitats from salt marshes and sand dunes to chalk and acid grasslands...