As you walk the streets of Sidmouth in spring if, like me, you are prone to look for wild flowers (aka weeds!) you will surely see thale cress plants growing in all sorts of places, often where there seems to be no soils at all. It is a common weed of cultivation and will be common in gardens and parks around the town too. It does not generally occur on lime soils.
Thale cress is a small, frail plant with just a few tiny four-petalled flowers at the top of the stem, easily overlooked in a field but less so in a roadside gutter. The amazing thing about thale cress is that despite its very small flowers they create long, thin, cylindrical seed pods which point upwards. This distinguishes it at once from the similar shepherd's purse whose fruits are very different.
Thale cress is now used extensively in botanical research because of its very simple genetic structure.
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