Lily of the Valley
Convallaria majalis
This species is deadly poisonous. Listed here so you can recognise and avoid it.
A low woodland perennial with a pair of broad, glossy, parallel-veined leaves and a separate leafless stem hung with small white nodding bells, sweetly and strongly scented in May. Dull orange-red berries follow in late summer. Every part is poisonous; it appears here as a plant to recognise and leave alone rather than one to gather.
Native to dry ash and beech woodland over limestone in England, where it is local and often long established. Widely planted and naturalised elsewhere in Britain and Ireland in churchyards, shady borders and hedge banks, spreading by rhizome into dense patches.
All parts are poisonous, berries included; the cardiac glycosides can disturb heart rhythm and any ingestion needs urgent medical advice. The real field risk is picking the leaves as Ramsons (Allium ursinum) — crush one and check for garlic, and note that each Ramsons leaf rises on its own stalk while these two share a single sheathed base.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Two broad leaves from a shared base
A pair of leaves, occasionally three, rises together from a single sheath at ground level and arches outward. They are elliptical, up to 20cm long, with smooth parallel veins running the length of the blade and no teeth. Leaves that each rise separately on their own long stalk are a different plant.
No smell when crushed
Tear a leaf and rub it between your fingers. There is nothing — no garlic, no onion, no scent of any kind, though the flowers themselves are strongly perfumed. In spring woodland this is the decisive test, and a negative result on a leaf you were about to pick should stop you.
White bells hanging in a one-sided row
From April to June a leafless stem carries six to twelve small white flowers, each a rounded bell about 8mm across with six short flared lobes, all nodding from one side of the stem. No other woodland plant of this size flowers quite this way.
Orange-red berries in late summer
Single round berries around 8mm across, ripening from green to orange-red where the flowers stood. They persist into autumn and are the part most likely to attract a child or a dog.
Dense spreading colonies
Underground rhizomes send up leaves in a continuous even carpet across the woodland floor, often as a pure stand with little else growing through it.
Leafless flowering stem
The flowers are carried on a slender, arching stem that bears no leaves of its own and usually sits shorter than the foliage. Nothing green grows off it between the base and the first bell.
Stalkless leaves from one sheathed base
Both leaves emerge together from a short, papery, often purple-flushed sheath at ground level, with no separate leaf stalks. Ramsons, by contrast, sends each leaf up singly on its own long stalk.
Stiff, glossy leaf that persists into summer
The blade is thick and firm with strong parallel veins, and stays dark green well after the flowers have gone. Ramsons leaves are softer, thinner and have usually yellowed and collapsed by midsummer.
Shallow creeping white rhizome
Plants are joined underground by thin white rhizomes just below the leaf litter, so a patch lifts as a connected mat rather than as separate bulbs.
Updated 2026-08-08T12:03:13.424Z · Added 2026-07-19T12:55:57.654Z
Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Other