Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Lamiales > Scrophulariaceae > Verbascum > Verbascum thapsus

Verbascum thapsus (great mullein; mullein; common mullein; flannel mullein; flannel plant; big taper; velvet dock; velvet plant; woolly mullein; Barbasco; Aaron's-rod; Bouillon blanc; Flannelleaf; Gordolobo comun; Guardalobo; Hag taper; Molène; Torches; Verbasco)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Verbascum thapsus (great mullein or common mullein) is a species of mullein native to Europe, northern Africa, and Asia, and introduced in the Americas and Australia. It is a hairy biennial plant that can grow to 2 meters tall or more. Its small yellow flowers are densely grouped on a tall stem, which grows from a large rosette of leaves. It grows in a wide variety of habitats, but prefers well-lit disturbed soils, where it can appear soon after the ground receives light, from long-lived seeds that persist in the soil seed bank. It is a common weedy plant that spreads by prolifically producing seeds, but it rarely becomes aggressively invasive, since its seeds require open ground to germinate. It is a very minor problem for most agricultural crops, since it is not a very competitive specie
View Wikipedia Record: Verbascum thapsus

Infraspecies

Verbascum thapsus crassifolium
Verbascum thapsus thapsus (Common mullein)

Invasive Species

View ISSG Record: Verbascum thapsus

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium
Edible [2]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [2]  Hermaphrodite
Hazards [2]  The leaves contain rotenone and coumarin, though the quantities are not given; Rotenone is used as an insecticide and coumarin can prevent the blood from clotting; Hairs on the leaves can act as an irritant;
Lifespan [2]  Biennial
Pollinators [2]  Flies, Lepidoptera, Bats
Structure [4]  Herb
Usage [2]  A yellow dye is obtained from the flowers by boiling them in water; When used with dilute sulphuric acid they produce a rather permanent green dye, this becomes brown with the addition of alkalis; An infusion of the flowers is sometimes used to dye the hair a golden colour; The flowering stems can be dipped in wax and used as torches; The down on the leaves and stems makes an excellent tinder when quite dry; It is also used as an insulation in shoes to keep the feet warm; One report says that the leaves contain rotenone, though it does not say in what quantity; Rotenone is used as an insecticide;
Height [2]  5.904 feet (1.8 m)
Light Preference [3]  Mostly Sunny
Soil Acidity [3]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [3]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [3]  Mostly Dry
View Plants For A Future Record : Verbascum thapsus

Protected Areas

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Ecosystems

Predators

Providers

Consumers

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 3ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 4Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 5HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 6Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 7Study of Northern Virginia Ecology
♦ 8Geomys breviceps, James M. Sulentich, Lawrence R. Williams, and Guy N. Cameron, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 383, pp. 1-4 (1991)
♦ 9Jorrit 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.
♦ 10New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
♦ 11Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 12Robertson, 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