Yellow Rattle - Rhonanthus minor - Yellow Western Isles Wildflowers

Yellow Rattle - Rhinanthus minor - Yellow - Western Isles - Wild Flowers
Wildflowers & Flora of The Isle of Harris and The Isle of Lewis - Hebrides Flowers
These lovely tubelike yellow flowers display through the summer months on the machairs, meadows and roadsides.. They may be small but are a truly amazingly pretty wildflower. The stems can reach 2ft in height and the yellow 2 lipped flowers often have a violet tooth at the tip.

Western Isles Wildflowers - Wild flowers of The Hebrides

Yellow Rattle - Wildflowers Western Isles

Yellow Rattle - Rhinanthus minor
Western Isles Flora - Yellow Wildflowers

Yellow Rattle - Yellow Wild Flowers Seen All Over The Western Isles

You can see these pretty yellow wildlowers in amongst the grasses and machairs or beside the roads or on waste ground. This pretty wildflower is native to The Western Isles.

Name From the Rattling of Seeds

The name of this plant is though to have been given originally as during the summer months when a breeze occurs, you can actually hear the seeds rattling in the calyxes or brown seed capsules which occur once the flowers are finished.

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Bog ASphodel - Flowers and Leaves		Bog Asphodel

Yellow Rattle is an annual
These lovely yellow wildflowers are annuals and therefore they rely on the production of enough seeds that will be dispersed ready for the next years flowers to appear

Stems up to 2 feet in height
The stems can grow in height up to 24 inches and have black spots on them . We are lucky here in the Hebrides to see this flower thriving so well on the meadow like land as many perons throughout the Uk, now buy the wildflower seeds which are included in many mixed wildseed packets. These lovely yellow wildflowers show their faces from May through to September

Yellow Rattle - Hemi Parasitic (or Partially Parasitic)

This plant is hemi parsasitic in that it gets some nutrition from host plants, but yet it can also manage to survive independently as it possesses the pigment chlorophyll and a root system.

Pollination
The flowers are typically pollinated by bumblebees, but if they are not pollinated they can self-fertilise

Flowers
Yellow rattles flowers are yellow and are a tubelike shape which stick out from the green calyx. The flowers are 2 lipped and the upper lip often has 2 short violet teeth which you can just see in the top picture at the tips..

Leaves
The leaves are narrow and toothedand serrated with dark veins and are slightly hairy and are arranged opposite each other in pairs all the way up the stems

Yellow Rattle - Western Isles Wildflowers - Hebridean Flora

The Brown Calyxes Holding the Yellow Rattle Seeds

The Brown Calyxes or Capsules That Hold The Seeds

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Western Isles Wildflowers - Flora & Flowers of The Outer Hebrides - Hebridean Wild Flowers

Yellow Wild FLowers of Scotland

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