Night-flowering Catchfly - Silene noctiflora

This plant has a glandular stem up to about 75 or 80 cm in maximum height which is sticky in texture. The hairy, widely lance-shaped leaves grow in opposite pairs and are up to 14 cm long and 5 cm wide, the largest ones located low on the stem. The flowers are nocturnal, and occur in an open cyme of up to fifteen blooms, each borne on an erect pedicel. The flower is encapsulated in a hairy calyx of fused sepals lined with a netlike pattern of veining. The five petals are whitish to pink and each has two lobes at the tip. They measure up to 2.5 cm wide when fully open. The fruit is a yellowish-brown capsule with six chambers which splits open to release the seeds.

some other rare Silene are similar

See key in Stace. The upper part of the flower-head is sticky, and calyx-teeth have broad, papery ('scarious') margins

Photos of the plant in its habitat, with close-up photo showing detail of calyx (RPR)

Arable land on calcareous soils.

June to August.

Annual. As night falls the flowers of the night-flowering catchfly open and release a strong fragrance which attracts night-flying moths which feed on the copious nectar and pollinate the plant.

Found mainly in central and southern England and even here it is decreasing.

Uncommon in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi and Evans 1988) it was found in 4 of the 617 tetrads, and in 31 tetrads in the Flora of Rutland (Messenger 1971).

In the current checklist (Jeeves, 2011) it is listed as Alien (archaeophyte); arable land on the Oolitic limestone, occasional.

It is listed on the current VC55 Rare Plant Register (Hall and Woodward 2022) because of its threat-level