COMMON LUNGWORT IN GARDEN

As I snapped the first "wild" flowers to appear in our back garden this year (the red dead nettle flowers), I thought I'd snap this bunch too - the second species to flower in our BACK garden.

The above photo I've just taken - and shows a tiny plant of Common Lungwort, growing in the lawn, near the "Polish fence".

It's very easy to recognise, with pink buds (blooming to purple or mauve little bell-shaped flowers), but its the leaves that this plant is named after.

Common Lungwort has spotted oval-shaped leaves (see second photo above), which are supposed to look like lungs.

In olden days, (ddd-ddddurrrring da warr, as Uncle Albert might say), concoctions brewed up from these leaves were meant to help with chest infections and problems with one's lungs...

Anyhoo. Common Lungwort, is as the name suggests, a very common plant (although less so in urban gardens like ours), flowers between MArch and May, and allegedly likes damp, alkali hedgebanks....

NB. Most of that information above is paraphrased from my NEW (and first EVER) Wildflower identification field guide, which I bought from good-ol Waterstones in town this afternoon...