Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Caryophyllales > Caryophyllaceae > Stellaria > Stellaria media

Stellaria media (chickweed; common chickweed; nodding chickweed)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

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 or late winter, then forms large mats of foliage. Flowers are small and white, followed quickly by the seed pods. This plant flowers and sets seed at the same time.
View Wikipedia Record: Stellaria media

Infraspecies

Stellaria media var. maritima
Stellaria media var. media
Stellularia media var. media

Invasive Species

View ISSG Record: Stellaria media

Attributes

Dispersal Mode [3]  Anemochory, Zoochory
Edible [1]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [1]  Hermaphrodite
Hazards [1]  The leaves contain saponins; Although toxic, these substances are very poorly absorbed by the body and so tend to pass through without causing harm. They are also broken down by thorough cooking. Saponins are found in many plants, including several that are often used for food, such as certain beans. It is advisable not to eat large quantities of food that contain saponins. Saponins are much more toxic to some creatures, such as fish, and hunting tribes have traditionally put large quantities of them in streams, lakes etc in order to stupefy or kill the fish;
Lifespan [1]  Annual
Pollinators [1]  Bees, Flies, Bats
Structure [4]  Herb
Height [1]  4.724 inches (0.12 m)
Width [1]  20 inches (0.5 m)
Light Preference [2]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [2]  Moderate Acid
Soil Fertility [2]  Rich
Soil Moisture [2]  Moist
View Plants For A Future Record : Stellaria media

Protected Areas

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Ecosystems

Predators

Providers

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Melampsorella caryophyllacearum[7]
Peronospora alsinearum[7]
Puccinia chasmatis[7]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 2ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 3Paula S, Arianoutsou M, Kazanis D, Tavsanoglu Ç, Lloret F, Buhk C, Ojeda F, Luna B, Moreno JM, Rodrigo A, Espelta JM, Palacio S, Fernández-Santos B, Fernandes PM, and Pausas JG. 2009. Fire-related traits for plant species of the Mediterranean Basin. Ecology 90: 1420.
Paula S. & Pausas J.G. 2013. BROT: a plant trait database for Mediterranean Basin species. Version 2013.06.
♦ 4Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 5Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 6HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 7Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 8Food eaten by the free-living European bison in Białowieża Forest, Zofia GĘBCZYŃSKA, Marek GĘBCZYŃSKI and Ewa MARTYNOWICZ, Acta Theriologica 36 (3-4), 307-313, 1991.
♦ 9Ecology of Commanster
♦ 10del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 11New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
♦ 12Comparatore, Viviana, and Cristina Yagueddú. Diet of the Greater Rhea (Rhea americana) in an agroecosystem of the Flooding Pampa, Argentina. Ornitologia Neotropical 18.2 (2007): 187-194.
♦ 13Sciurus griseus, Leslie N. Carraway and B. J. Verts, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 474, pp. 1-7 (1994)
♦ 14Food habits of the copper pheasant Syrmaticus soemmerringii in winter season, Noritomo KAWAJI and Jun YOKOYAMA, (Bulletin of FFPRI) Vol.8 No.2 (No.411) 127 - 132 June 2009
♦ 15Robertson, C. Flowers and insects lists of visitors of four hundred and fifty three flowers. 1929. The Science Press Printing Company Lancaster, PA.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0