Wild and Wonderful Trivia Quiz

Answer: Taraxacum Officinale

Dandelions are found just about everywhere in the UK. Their leaves can be used in salads and have a bitter taste. They have diuretic properties as well as many health benefits. The yellow flowers are pretty and give way to seed heads that consist of a round fuzzy ball of hundreds of tiny seeds that will float in the breeze... making them very efficient at reproduction.

Answer: Ranunculus Acris

Buttercups are beautiful and, as their name suggests, are bright yellow in colour. They are very good at spreading, and not easy to dig out once they get embedded in your garden. If they are extremely abundant in grazing areas, they can be toxic to animals that eat too many of them.

Answer: Anagallis Arvensis

These tiny flowers are found right across Europe, and are annuals. In bad or dull weather, the flowers close up. They are low growing and spread easily - if they get in amongst your carrots, they can be really hard to remove!
The 'Scarlet Pimpernel' is also the hero of a series of books by Baroness Orczy, about a brave English Aristocrat, Sir Percy Blakeney, who takes on the might of the French Revolution to rescue various French emigres. They never work out who he is:

"They seek him here,
They seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel."

Answer: Digitalis Purpurea

Wild foxgloves are usually purple/pink flowers and can grow to over six feet in height. The bees love them and you can often see them crawling in and out of the tubular flowers.
Foxgloves are the source of the heart drug, digitalis and the leaves can be fatal if eaten even in small quantities.
Cultivated foxgloves come in several colours, including, white, yellow and apricot. They're all stunningly beautiful.

Answer: Geranium Pratense

Cranesbills are members of the geranium family and may be used in herbal medicines. It's a huge family with more than 400 members.

Answer: Primula Veris

Cowslips are members of the primrose family, with pale yellow flowers on multiple heads on a slim stalk. They have been used for hundreds of years in England to make cowslip wine - which I have never tasted but which is said to be delicious.
They are endangered in the wild, but in my garden they are prolific and a bit of a nuisance - but I haven't got the heart to dig them out! Maybe it's time to start making the wine.

Answer: Arum Maculatum

Also known by other names, such as 'Cuckoo Pint' and 'Jack in the Pulpit', these flowers like woodland and hedges, and in the autumn they bear knobbly heads of red/orange berries which are poisonous. Apparently they taste horrible, so incidences of people getting poisoned are rare.

Answer: Hyacinthoides Non-Scripta

The sight of English bluebells carpeting the woods in Spring is one of the glories of the English countryside. There can be few things more pleasant than walking through a bluebell wood, with the beautiful scent of these flowers all around you. Unfortunately, they are becoming hybridised with Spanish bluebells, which do not have such a strong scent.
I have bluebells growing all over my garden, and in fact some of them are pink and some are white. They are pretty, but not, I think, to be compared with the classic blue.

Answer: Bellis Perennis

These must be the commonest flowers just about anywhere. Especially in my lawn....
The name derives from the Old English for 'Day's Eye', and daisies were said to be the favourite flower of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. In wet weather they closed up to protect their faces.

Answer: Fragaria Vesca

Wild strawberries look just like ordinary cultivated strawberries, except that they are much, much smaller.
They taste good, but are probably best eaten straight from the plant when you are lucky enough to find them - it would take too long to pick enough to make a decent helping (let alone share with someone else!)