Field madder
Sherardia arvensis
Family · Rubiaceae · Harmless
The tiny herb with pink flowers in a tight button that covers cornfields and lawns in spring. You have to kneel to see it, and from then on it is everywhere.
Where it grows
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside
Also known asblue field madder
In flower
How to tell it
Prostrate, with small leaves in whorls of four to six, like the other madders but in miniature. Very small lilac-pink flowers grouped in a button ringed by star-like bracts.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
The root gives a red dye, like its larger cousins, but is so small it never had practical use. It serves as an indicator of cultivated and disturbed ground.