Today's spotlight species is one whose name is probably longer than the plant itself - Procumbent Pearlwort (Sagina procumbens). This tiny little thing is actually extremely common in pavements, garden paths and other similar places in towns and cites. As well as urban environments it can be found in bare, often damp and shady, places almost anywhere in the British Isles.
When I first started getting interested in botany I skipped over this plant, dismissing it as a moss (and therefore probably too hard for me to identify). However, it is not a moss, and is in fact a flowering plant. The flowers are very insignificant and only have tiny (almost invisible) white petals, which are sometimes absent altogether. It is a perennial plant, meaning that that easily overlooked little weed in your front path may in fact be several years old.
It is native to most of the northern hemisphere and has also been found on the very remote Gough Island in the South Atlantic (which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site) where it is thought that the seeds were brought in on the soles of visitors' boots. Despite its size the presence of Procumbent Pearlwort on Gough Island is extremely worrying, as it has already led to apparently irrevocable changes to the ecosystems on other remote islands, and concerted efforts are underway to prevent this happening here.
For such a little plant, there is a surprising amount of folklore connected to it, at least in the UK and Ireland. Much of this has to do with it granting protection from malicious fairies (such as hanging it from your door lintel or drinking the milk from a cow that has eaten it). Also if a maiden drinks an infusion of Procumbent Pearlwort (or even uses it to wet her lips) it will attract her chosen swain to her.
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