Also known as Spotted Loosestrife, this garden escape is an elegant, upright, perennial which grows to a height of over 120 cm favouring roadsides, waste ground and grassland as its habitat. From June to September, it bears clusters of five-petalled yellow flowers (15 – 20 mm) on short stalks in the axils of the stem leaves. The petals are fringed with dense glandular hairs. Unlike Yellow Loosestrife, the opposite, downy, ovate leaves are never black-dotted but have hairy margins. This plant belongs to the Primulaceae family.
I first recorded this plant at Moyard, Co Galway in 1978 and photographed it near Thomastown, Co Kilkenny in 2010.
If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre
