Shepherd's purse
Capsella bursa-pastoris
An annual crucifer with a low rosette of variable, usually deeply lobed leaves and a slender flowering stem to about 40cm. Small white four-petalled flowers open at the tip while flattened, heart-shaped seed pods ripen below on short stalks, giving the plant its name. Leaves and young pods taste of peppery cabbage and are used raw in salads or cooked like spinach.
A weed of disturbed and cultivated ground: arable margins, allotments, gardens, pavement cracks, waste ground and trampled path edges. Common and widespread throughout Britain and Ireland, and can be found in leaf in almost any month.
Generally safe raw or cooked, though the peppery glucosinolates make large raw quantities harsh on the stomach. It favours sprayed field margins, verges and dog-walked path edges, so choose the site with care, and leave plants blistered white by Albugo candida. Traditionally avoided by those who are pregnant.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Seed pods
Flattened, triangular to heart-shaped pods about 5-8mm across, notched at the tip and held on short spreading stalks up the stem. This purse shape settles the identification on its own; round or oval flat pods point to a penny-cress instead.
Basal rosette
A flat rosette of leaves that vary wildly from almost entire to deeply pinnately lobed, sparsely covered in fine branched hairs. Broken leaves and stems give no milky sap, which separates young rosettes from small dandelion-type plants.
Flowers
White, four-petalled and only 2-3mm across, in a raceme that keeps lengthening. Flowers at the tip and ripe pods lower down are usually present at the same time on one stem.
Stem leaves
Small, narrow and stalkless, clasping the stem with pointed arrow-shaped bases, quite unlike the leaves of the rosette below.
Taste and smell
Crushed leaves and green pods smell faintly of cabbage and taste peppery, mustardy and slightly bitter. No cabbage or mustard note at all means it is not this plant.
Updated 2026-08-07T20:41:50.043Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Herb