Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Myrtales > Lythraceae > Lythrum > Lythrum salicaria

Lythrum salicaria (salicaire; purple lythrum; purple loosestrife or lythrum; purple loosestrife; rainbow weed; spiked loosestrife; Blutweiderich)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Lythrum salicaria (purple loosestrife) is a flowering plant belonging to the family Lythraceae. It should not be confused with other plants sharing the name loosestrife that are members of the family Primulaceae. Other names include spiked loosestrife, or purple lythrum.
View Wikipedia Record: Lythrum salicaria

Infraspecies

Lythrum salicaria intermedium
Lythrum salicaria salicaria (Purple Loosestrife)

Invasive Species

View ISSG Record: Lythrum salicaria

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-Low
Bee Flower Color [2]  UV-Blue
Flower Color [2]  Purple
Edible [3]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [3]  Hermaphrodite
Lifespan [3]  Perennial
Pollinators [3]  Bees, Flies
Structure [5]  Herb
Usage [3]  A decoction of the plant is impregnated into wood, rope etc to prevent it rotting in water; The leaves contain about 12% tannin, the stems 10.5%, the flowers 13.7% and the roots 8.5%; It is probably these tannins that preserve the wood etc; The powdered plant is used cosmetically in face-packs to counteract reddened skin;
Height [3]  39 inches (1 m)
Width [3]  20 inches (0.5 m)
Light Preference [4]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [4]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [4]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [4]  Wet
View Plants For A Future Record : Lythrum salicaria

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Predators

Providers

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Erysiphe lythri[8]
Zasmidium lythri[8]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Arnold SEJ, Faruq S, Savolainen V, McOwan PW, Chittka L, 2010 FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14287.
♦ 3Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 4ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 5Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 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
♦ 7Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 8Jorrit 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.
♦ 9Food of some birds in eastern New South Wales: additions to Barker & Vestjens. Emu 93(3): 195–199
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
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