Silene Gallica

Silene gallica in a meadow near beach

Silene gallica is a plant of the Pink family (Caryophyllaceae) that grows in meadow habitat. The plant is inconspicuous, with rather small pink flowers and hairy stems and leaves.The blooming period is short.

Silene gallica flowers

Corn Sandspurry

Corm sandspurry (Spergula arvensis)

Corm sandspurry (Spergula arvensis) is a plant that at first sight can be confused with Gilia millefoliata. They are both tiny inconspicuous plants and the leaves look somewhat similar. However, if you look close, you'll see that the flower structure of spergula is quite different: it has a big pistil in the middle while gilia has none.

Spergula arvensis

Spergula (and very similar to it  spergularia) are part of the Pink family (Caryophyllaceae), which also counts amonng its members such planrs as carnation (Dianthus), campion (Silene), chickweed (Stellaria) etc.

Here is a close-up of the flower of Spergula arvensis:

 Spergula arvensis

And just for comparison here is a picture of sticky sandspurry (Spergularia macrotheca). Notice how similar the flowers look: same distinctly visible petals and similar round pistil.

Spergularia macrotheca

Chickweed

Chickweed is a small white flower that grows wild. Though I saw the description pretty much in every book I only found one a couple of years ago. Here it covers big grassy areas in the park. The plant is edible too: you can eat it raw as salad or add to some other dish (it's tender so it does not require any cooking).

Chickweed (Felicita Park, Escondido, CA)

A feature that is helpful to identify chickweed is that is has 5 petals but each petal has a deep cleave so it looks like the flower has 10 petals.

Chickweed's Latin name is Stellaria media and it belongs to the pink or carnation family (Caryophyllaceae).