Synonymy

Spergula arvensis-Lamium amplexicaule community Sissingh 1950

Constant species

Capsella bursa-pastoris, Chenopodium album, Poa annua, Senecio vulgaris, Stellaria media, Urtica urens.

Rare species

Erodium moschatum, Medicago polymorpha, Sisymbrium irio.

Physiognomy

In the annual vegetation of the Urtica urens-Lamium amplexicaule community, the usual dominants are Stellaria media, Poa annua or Capsella bursa-pastoris, with Chenopodium album making a very frequent but somewhat more variable contribution to the cover, Senecio vulgaris and Urtica urens constant but generally of less abundance.

Also frequent, sometimes with locally high cover, are Lamium amplexicaule, Solanum nigrum and the now widely naturalised Galinsoga parviflora, a South American plant which escaped from Kew around 1860 (Salisbury 1964). Spergula arvensis, Veronica persica, Matricaria perforata, Chamomilla suaveolens, Polygonum aviculare and Elymus repens are common, too, though usually at low cover and another South American introduction, Solanum sarrachoides, is occasional. Polygonum persicaria, Sonchus oleraceus, S. asper and Bilderdykia convolvulus are scarce companions.

More locally, this vegetation can show a very distinctive enrichment from a variety of ‘shoddy aliens’. These are plants whose seed was brought in with rags from different parts of Europe, the waste from which, after recovery of wool fibre, was dumped or spread on fields as a fertiliser.