This beautiful little annual flowers May to June and more rarely these days into July. It produces fresh blooms each day and on a hot day the petals have dropped by mid-afternoon without wind assistance. You can identify it in the vegetative seedling state by the bronzy coloured leaves each with three veins.

This plant is quite odd in another respect. Many years ago I found an uprooted, damaged seedling which I thought might be T. guttata so took it home in a damp handkerchief to intensive care. It survived, grew strong and was full of flower buds. It refused to flower but the seeds were produced anyway and I raised some daughter plants from these seeds which behaved the same way. So T. guttata can produce seeds even in bad years when there is no opportunity for flowers to blossom.

Such a plant is said to be Cleistogamous. Some violets do this continuing to produce seeds without obvous flowers preceding the production of capsules.

There were plenty of T. guttata plants in full flower in 2003 but many fewer in 2004 after a very dry Spring. In 2007 there was a good crop with slightly smaller flower heads and fewer per plant than in 2003 probably reflecting the long dry spells now prevalent in spring.

This beautiful little annual seems to like island habitats. It grows on the Channel Islands and Jura but the highest concentration is on Anglesey. It also grows in various places in the wset of Ireland.