Corncockle - Agrostemma githago

Alternative names
Corn Cockle
Description

Medium to tall, greyish, hairy, erect plant. Leaves narrow, lanceolate, pointed. Flowers pinky purple, 30 to 50 mm, with long leaf like sepals much exceeding the 5 petals, borne on long, slender stalks.

Identification difficulty
Habitat

A weed of cornfields, occasionally in waste places.

When to see it

May to August.

Life History

Annual.

UK Status

Widespread but quite uncommon in Britain.

VC55 Status

Rare in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 2 of the 617 tetrads.

It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but is not on the current RPR (Hall & Woodward, 2022) because records are on introduced plants

Leicestershire & Rutland Map

MAP KEY:

Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2025+ | 2020-2024 | pre-2020

UK Map

Species profile

Common names
Corncockle
Species group:
flowering plant
Kingdom:
Plantae
Order:
Caryophyllales
Family:
Caryophyllaceae
Records on NatureSpot:
29
First record:
01/07/1998 (John Mousley)
Last record:
03/06/2025 (Pugh, Dylan)

Total records by month

% of records within its species group

10km squares with records

The latest images and records displayed below include those awaiting verification checks so we cannot guarantee that every identification is correct. Once accepted, the record displays a green tick.

In the Latest Records section, click on the header to sort A-Z, and again to sort Z-A. Use the header boxes to filter the list.

Latest images

Latest records