Soapwort - Saponaria officinalis

The plant possesses leafy, unbranched, often straggling stems (sometimes tinged with red). It grows in patches, attaining a height of 70 cm. The broad, lanceolate, sessile leaves are opposite and between 4 and 12 cm long. Its sweetly scented flowers are pink, or sometimes white. Each of the five flat petals has two small scales in the throat of the corolla. They are about 2.5 cm wide, arranged in terminal clusters. The long tubular calyx has five pointed red teeth.

They are occasionally double flowered ('flore pleno')

Waysides and verges.

Flowers June to September.

Perennial.

Widespread as an occasional casual in much of Britain, but quite rare in Scotland.

Occasional in Leicestershire and Rutland usually as a casual and often short lived. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 17 of the 617 tetrads.

In the current checklist (Jeeves, 2011) it is listed as Alien (archaeophyte), occasional