Common cow-wheat (Melampyrum pratense)

  • Kwitnące Flowering
  • White
  • Yellow

Figwort family (Scrophulariaceae)

 

Herbaceous annual and root hemiparasite. Stem of heights 10-40 cm. Leaves opposite, narrow with long and sharp point, almost sessile, entire. Flowers placed almost horizontally, growing out of axils and forming loose unilateral raceme. Corona whitish-yellow with 2 lips and long, straight tube. Seeds with elaiosomes for ant-mediated dispersal. Flowers May-Sep.

Grows on nutrient-poor mesic soils, in pine and mixed/coniferous forests or more oligotrophic broadleaved forest, in forest-edge communities. Steals water and mineral salts from roots of trees and bilberry bushes. POISONOUS.

 

Descriptions devised by the team at the Independent Department of Forest Botany, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, i.e. L. Witkowska-Żuk, K. Marciszewska, W. Ciurzycki, A. Obidziński and P. Zaniewski.