Wood Avens Seeds (Geum urbanum)

Wood Avens (Geum urbanum), also known as Herb Bennet, is a leafy native perennial of woodland, hedgerows and shady roadsides, growing 30 to 60cm tall. It has lobed, rough-textured leaves and slender branching stems carrying small, five-petalled yellow flowers from May to August, followed by rounded heads of hooked seeds that catch on fur and clothing. Its roots smell faintly of cloves and it was once valued by herbalists as the blessed herb.

The small open flowers are visited by hoverflies, small bees and other flies through the summer, and the plant provides leafy cover for invertebrates in shaded places where few meadow flowers will grow. It is a hardy, long-lived perennial that self-seeds readily and tolerates dry shade, so it is useful for filling the base of a hedge or the floor of a small copse rather than for colour.

It grows on most well-drained soils in partial shade and copes with the dry shade beneath trees and hedges better than most native plants. It suits a woodland edge, a hedge bottom, a shaded bank or a rough shady corner of a garden. It is not a plant for open sunny meadows, where it will be outcompeted, and it can spread freely by seed where conditions suit it.

Sow in autumn onto bare or scarified ground in shade or part shade, surface-sown and firmed in without covering. Plants build a leafy clump in the first year and flower from the second. It needs little management; cut back in late autumn if tidiness matters and allow it to self-seed. Combine with our woodland and shade mixes or single species that share the same shaded conditions.