common chickweed (005 Spickzettel kleine Arten in Hessen im Frühjahr)

common chickweed

Stellaria media

Summary ¹⁰

Stellaria media, chickweed, is a cool-season annual plant native to Europe, but naturalized in many parts of North America. It is used as a cooling herbal remedy, and grown as a vegetable crop and ground cover for both human consumption and poultry. It is sometimes called common chickweed to distinguish it from other plants called chickweed. Other common names include chickenwort, craches, maruns, winterweed. The plant germinates in autumn o

Description ¹¹

Chickweed is a hardy annual which flowers throughout the year in northern Europe, in mild weather. The stems are terete and glabrous with a lax and sprawling growth habit, up to 400 mm (16 inches) long and 1 mm (0.039 inches) in diameter, with a line (very occasionally 2 lines) of hairs running straight down its length, alternating sides at the nodes. The petioles are 5 to 8 mm long with hairy margins. The leaves are green, hairless, oval and opposite, 6 to 25 mm long by 3 to 10 mm wide with a hydathode at the tip.

The flowers are small, about 1 cm in diameter, with 5 bifid white petals, 1-3 mm long, nestled inside the larger (3-5 mm long) sepals. These sepals have long, wavy (villous) hairs on their outer (distal) sides and are oval in shape, and usually 5 in number. There are often only 3 stamens but sometimes more (up to 8) and 3 styles. Many publications state that chickweed sometimes has no petals at all, but this may be due to confusion with lesser chickweed, which used to be considered a subspecies but is now considered to be a species in its own right.

The flowers quickly form capsules. Plants may have flowers and capsules at the same time.

Distribution ¹¹

Stellaria media is widespread in Asia, Europe, North America, and other parts of the world. There are several closely related plants referred to as chickweed, but which lack the culinary properties of plants in the genus Stellaria.

Identification ¹¹

Chickweeds are recognisable by the line of hairs down the stem. The species most likely to be confused with chickweeds are mouse-ears (Cerastium), however, mouse-ears are hairy all over (leaves and stems).

Common chickweed can be differentiated from lesser chickweed by the presence of white petals on the former and from greater chickweed by 3 stamens present compared to 10 found in greater chickweed. Water chickweed has petals longer than the sepals.

Summary ¹¹

Stellaria media, chickweed, is an annual flowering plant in the family Caryophyllaceae. It is native to Eurasia and naturalized throughout the world, where it is a weed of waste ground, farmland and gardens. It is sometimes grown as a salad crop or for poultry consumption.

Sources and Credits

(c) Jim Walker, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Jim Walker
(c) anonymous, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), https://eol.org/media/4377326
(c) Zidat, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asladan_-_Stellaria_media_.jpg
(c) Aka, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chickweed_(aka).jpg
Kaldari, no known copyright restrictions (public domain), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaldari_Stellaria_media_01.jpg
(c) anonymous, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stellaria_media_(Caryophyllaceae)_(Common_Chickweed)_-_(flowering),_Ortenaukreis_(Landkreis),_BRD.jpg
(c) Rasbak, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stellaria_media_(vogelmuur).jpg
(c) Stefan.lefnaer, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stellaria_media_%2B_Stellaria_pallida_sl1.jpg
(c) anonymous, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), https://eol.org/media/9355876
Adapted by Stephan Pflume from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellaria_media
(c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellaria_media

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