Alchemilla mollis Garden Lady's-mantle

Garden Lady's-mantle is native to the Carpathians and a neophyte alien in the British flora. It is commonly grown in gardens and was first recorded in the wild in Britain in 1948. Like our other Lady's Mantle species it is apomictic, but it sets seed prolifically and probably escapes from cultivation regularly. It is the most common Lady's Mantle in West Glamorgan and is particularly abundant and invasive along some of our forest roads. It is a large, densly hairy plant and is easy to distinguish from our native Lady's Mantle species, which are much less common. One of its key identification features is that all the segments of the epicalyx (5 sepal like bracts that occur immediately underneath the 5 sepals) are equal in size to the sepals, In all the other Lady's-mantles in West Glamorgan, the epicalyx segements are shorter than the sepals. Garden Lady's-mantle is widely distributed in the county and is a problematic, inavasive species in biodiverse roadside verges.

Neophyte