Four-leaved allseed
Polycarpon tetraphyllum
Family · Caryophyllaceae · Harmless
The tiny herb growing in pavement joints and at wall bases, with leaves in crosses of four and flowers so small you need a lens. It is everywhere and nobody sees it.
Town and roadside · Walls and rocks · Roadsides and waste ground · Dunes and sand
Also known asallseed
How to tell it
Leaves set in groups of four, crosswise, along thin trailing stems, which gives the name. Tiny whitish flowers in loose clusters, with silvery translucent bracts. A plant of a few centimetres.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
No use
It is here for one reason only: it is the most trodden plant in Portugal and it deserves a name.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.