Why it's worth learning a few plants

Moorland can look uniform from a distance: a grey-brown expanse broken by the odd rocky outcrop. Walk a few hundred metres along a track, though, and you start to notice how much the ground changes beneath your boots. The plants tell you why. A patch of dry, heathery bank and a soggy hollow twenty paces away support completely different species, and learning to recognise half a dozen of them turns a trudge into a running commentary on the landscape.

You don't need a botanical degree or a backpack full of reference books. A handful of distinctive species will cover most of what you'll see on a typical upland walk in the UK, and knowing them helps with something more practical too: reading the ground ahead, keeping your feet dry and picking a sensible line.

Heathers: three species, three kinds of ground

What most people call heather is usually one of three plants, and each one has its own preferences. Learning the differences is the single most useful skill on the moor.

• Ling (Calluna vulgaris) is the commonest. It has tiny, scale-like leaves set in opposite pairs along the stem, and bears spikes of pale pinkish-purple bells from roughly July to September. It thrives on drier, freely draining acid ground and gives the moors their familiar purple wash in late summer.
• Bell heather (Erica cinerea) flowers earlier, usually June to August, with deeper crimson-purple bells and needle-like leaves arranged in whorls of three. It likes the driest, most exposed banks and thin soils.
• Cross-leaved heath (Erica tetralix) is the one to watch for. Its grey-green leaves sit in whorls of four around an upright stem, and its pale pink flowers are clustered at the tips. If you see it, the ground underfoot is likely to be wet, peaty and often boggy.

That last point is worth repeating. Cross-leaved heath and cottongrass together are a reliable warning that you're about to step into something soft.

Bilberry, crowberry and other low-growing berries

Scattered among the heather you'll often find bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), known as blaeberry in Scotland and whinberry or wimberry in parts of northern England. Look for bright green, finely toothed oval leaves on angular green stems that turn reddish as the season goes on. The berries are small, dark and dusted with a blue bloom, ripe from around July. They're excellent eating, though so are they for the birds, so take only a few.

Crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) is a low, sprawling mat with dark, almost black-green needle-like leaves that carry a groove on the underside. Its berries are black and rather tasteless, but the plant is a good indicator of exposed, wind-scoured ground. Both species hug the ground to escape the worst of the weather, which is why the moor looks shorter than it really is.

Cotton grass and the bog specialists

Despite the name, cotton grass is actually a sedge. From around June, the white tufts of common cottongrass (Eriophorum angustifolium) hang like small tassels, while hare's-tail cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum) produces a single upright tuft and builds up into the hummocky tussocks that make walking so tiring. Both mean one thing: waterlogged peat. If you're navigating, treat them as a signal to contour around rather than plough through.

Among the same wet flushes you'll find bog asphodel, with spikes of yellow star-shaped flowers that turn orange-brown as they go over, and soft, spongy mounds of sphagnum moss in shades of green, rusty red and pale pink. Sphagnum holds an extraordinary amount of water. Step on it and you'll sink; treat it as a boundary rather than a path.

Reading grasses, sedges and rushes underfoot

The ground layer is worth a look too, because it tells you a lot about the terrain and the season.

• Purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea) forms tough tussocks and sends up purple flower heads in late summer, giving hillsides a hazy, drifting look. Walking through mature stands is slow, ankle-turning work.
• Wavy hair grass and sheep's fescue favour drier, grazed ground and make for easier walking.
• As the old distinction goes, sedges have edges and rushes are round. Run a stem between your fingers: a triangular feel means sedge, a smooth, pithy cylinder means rush. Soft rush in particular clusters into dense tussocks on damp ground.

Put those together and you can often predict the next fifty metres of ground before you reach it, which is a genuinely useful skill when the light is going and your legs are tired.

Fieldcraft habits to take on your next walk

A few small habits will sharpen your eye and look after the places you walk.

• Carry a small hand lens. Most of the distinguishing details here are tiny and easy to miss at arm's length.
• Use a pocket field guide, but don't try to identify everything at once. Pick one plant per walk and learn it properly.
• Take a photo and note a grid reference rather than picking anything. Some upland plants are scarce or protected, and even common species recover slowly at altitude.
• Stay on established tracks where erosion is a problem, particularly on peat.

Two safety points worth keeping in mind while you're admiring the botany. Heather and bilberry are prime tick habitat from spring to autumn, so check yourself at the end of the day, and adders will bask on warm, south-facing slopes on sunny mornings, so watch where you put hands and feet on rocky ground. Learn your plants, and the moor becomes a place you can read rather than simply cross.