Florapass
English
Creeping Yellow-Cress

Creeping Yellow-Cress

Rorippa sylvestris

Identify the Creeping Yellow-Cress from a photo and log your finds with Florapass.

Coming soon to the App Store and Google Play.

How common: Common

Invasive alien species

Creeping Yellow-Cress is a spreading perennial with small yellow flowers in the mustard family. It often turns up on disturbed ground and easily invades lawns, gardens and nursery areas by creeping stems and root pieces. Native to Europe, it has been moved around with soil and plants.

Did you know?

  • It often spreads with the soil around nursery trees and shrubs, hitchhiking into new gardens.
  • Many plants set few seeds and rely on creeping stems and broken root pieces to spread.

About the species

Identification

A low, creeping perennial 20–50 cm tall that spreads by long runners and root fragments. Leaves are on short stalks and deeply divided into many narrow, sharp-toothed side pieces; the tip piece is not bigger than the others. Small, bright yellow four-petaled flowers, about 8 mm across. Slender, slightly curved seed pods 0.8–1.8 cm long on stalks about 1 cm; often few seeds. Can be confused with marsh yellow-cress, which has smaller flowers and much shorter pods and grows in wetter places. Flowers in Finland in July–August.

Plant group

Herbaceous plants

Habitat

yards and roadsides

Flowering

Jul–Aug

About the habitat

Found on disturbed ground: lawns and parks, gardens, fields, roadsides, waste places and along rivers in farmed areas. Most common in southern Finland, and found as a permanent species up to around Oulu.

Sources

Photo: User:SB_Johnny, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rorippa sylvestris flowering 01.JPG

Text: Pinkka: Verso- ja leviäintunnistus - Kaikki versot, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38394

Text: Pinkka: Maatalouslajintuntemus - Brassicaceae, Salicaceae, Ericaceae, Primulaceae, Malvaceae, Saxifragaceae, Crassulaceae, Grossulariaceae, Paeoniaceae ja Hydrangeaceae, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38394

Text: FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38394

Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikkanen%C3%A4tti

See also