This water-loving plant is very common all over the country in marshes
and bogs and by the sides of ditches. It blooms in summer.
The plant is easily recognised by its round leaves. These have wavy
edges, and fine green veins running from the centre of the leaf to the
edge.
The stalk is fastened exactly underneath the centre of the leaf, and it
is soft and juicy and covered with fine hairs.
The flowers of the Pennywort are greenish-white, tinged with red. These
flowers grow in little clusters of three or four together at the end of
short stalks which spring from the root, close beside the leaf-stalk.
But these flower-stalks are so short, and the flowers are so small, you
recognise the round leaves long before you discover that there are any
flowers.
The Pennywort is one of those plants with a creeping stem, which lies
along the surface of the ground. The stem is a delicate, pale pink, and
wherever a bunch of flowers and leaves rises, you find a tuft of white,
hair-like roots growing down into the mud.