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Silene gallica
Also called Small-flowered catchfly, French Catchfly, English Catchfly, Five Wound Catchfly, Small Flower Catchfly, Windmill Pink
Common catchfly is a small annual wildflower in the pink family, with white or pink flowers, usually found as a roadside or field weed. It is easy to grow from seed in sun and poor, free-draining soil.
Silene gallica is a species of flowering plant in the family Caryophyllaceae known by several common names, including common catchfly, small-flowered catchfly, and windmill pink. It is native to Eurasia and North Africa, but it can be found throughout much of the temperate world as a common roadside weed.
Native to Europe, this species has a submediterranean / subatlantic distribution. In the British Isles it mostly occurs near the coast of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, but also sporadically inland. It is found in sandy or gravelly, often acidic, soils in arable fields, on wasteland and on walls, as well as poor dry pastures on the coast, and on sand dunes in the Channel Islands.
Moss campion · Pink Family · Silene banksia · Maltese-cross · Silene cognata · Weed silene · Crown-pink · Forked Catchfly · Ragged Robin · Silene flos-jovis · Bladder campion · Nightflowering silene
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Silene gallica by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
