Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Boraginales > Boraginaceae > Echium > Echium plantagineum

Echium plantagineum (salvation jane)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Echium plantagineum, commonly known as purple viper's-bugloss or Paterson's curse, is a species of Echium native to western and southern Europe (from southern England south to Iberia and east to the Crimea), northern Africa, and southwestern Asia (east to Georgia). It has also been introduced to Australia, South Africa and United States, where it is an invasive weed. Due to a high concentration of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, it is poisonous to grazing livestock, especially those with simple digestive systems, like horses. The toxins are cumulative in the liver, and death results from too much Paterson's curse in the diet.
View Wikipedia Record: Echium plantagineum

Attributes

Height [1]  26 inches (.67 m)
Lifespan [1]  Biennial
Structure [3]  Herb
Light Preference [2]  Full Sun
Soil Acidity [2]  Moderate Acid
Soil Fertility [2]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [2]  Mostly Dry

Protected Areas

Predators

Dialectica scalariella (Echium Leaf Miner)[4]
Dysmicoccus pietroi[5]
Mogulones geographicus[6]
Psephotus haematonotus (Red-rumped Parrot)[7]
Utetheisa pulchelloides (Heliotrope moth)[4]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Golovinomyces cynoglossi[8]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1PLANTATT - Attributes of British and Irish Plants: Status, Size, Life History, Geography and Habitats, M. O. Hill, C. D. Preston & D. B. Roy, Biological Records Centre, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (2004)
♦ 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)
♦ 3Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 4HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 5Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 6Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 7del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 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.
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