Snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum), native to Italy and Sicily, has been cultivated as an ornamental in British gardens since the mid 17th century, but was not recorded as a wild plant in the British Isles until 1914.  It continues to be a commonly cultivated rockery plant and is widely naturalised in dryish places.  The name snow-in-summer is shared with garden arabis (Arabis caucasica), another common rockery plant.

Alternative names include: Dusty miller, recorded from Lincolnshire and Suffolk;  shared with field mouse-ear (Cerastium arvense), cineraria (Pericallis x hybrida), auricula (Primula auricula) and silver ragwort (Senecio cineraria).

Love-in-a-mist, the standard English name for Nigella damascena, in Northamptonshire.

Silver moss in Birmingham in the late 19th century.

Snow-in-harvest in Leicestershire; shared with garden arabis also in Leicestershire, traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba) in Northamptonshire, and sweet alison (Lobularia maritima) also in Northamptonshire.

Snow-on-the-mountain in Somerset; shared with garden arabis in north Devon, sweet alison, meadow saxifrage (Saxifraga granulata) and greater stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) both in Wiltshire.

White rock, shared with garden arabis.

For references, etc., see the Local Names page on this website.

Images:  Ambleside, Cumbria; May 2014; inset, Epsom Cemetery, Surrey, May 2024.

Edited 23 February 2025.