This unusual plant is spring beauty Claytonia perfoliata, which has flowers that appear in the centre of a leaf that surrounds the stem - what botanists call a perfoliate leaf. Some honeysuckle species have perfoliate leaves and so does the delightful native yellow wort Blackstonia perfoliata ............ but spring beauty is an exotic introduction, hailing from North America, all the way from Alaska down to Mexico.
With such a broad geographical range it's perhaps not surprising that it has escaped from British gardens and settled into the countryside, establishing itself in areas of disturbed sandy soil. We found a lot of it in bloom along the landward edge of Holkham NNR last week - an alien species that doesn't seem to present any kind of threat to our native flora, merely adding a little unconventional botanical interest to the countryside.
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