hottonia

Locally uncommon plants include Meadow Rue Thalictrum flavum, Brown Sedge Carex disticha, Water Violet Hottonia palustris, Whorl-grass Catabrosa aquatica and the carnivorous bladderwort Utricularia australis.

There, on a small body of brackish water filled with fallen limbs, they found scores of examples of the plant, an unusual aquatic annual called feather foil (hottonia inflata), its clusters of thick stems rising from the water.

Where the ditch has been recently cleared, there are patches of open water, in which water crowfoot, Ranunculus aquatilis, water plantain, Alisma plantago-aquatica, and similar species are dominant; water violet, Hottonia palustris, which is at its northern limit in Britain at this site, is locally abundant.