''Plantago coronopus'', the buck's-horn plantain, is a

herbaceous Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition of t ...

annual Annual may refer to: *Annual publication, periodical publications appearing regularly once per year ** Yearbook ** Literary annual *Annual plant *Annual report *Annual giving *Annual, Morocco, a settlement in northeastern Morocco *Annuals (band), ...

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

in the family

Plantaginaceae Plantaginaceae, the plantain family, is a large, diverse family of flowering plants in the order Lamiales that includes common flowers such as snapdragon and foxglove. It is unrelated to the banana-like fruit also called "plantain." In older cl ...

. Other common names in the US and Italy include minutina and erba stella.

Description

''Plantago coronopus'' produces a

basal rosette In botany, a rosette is a circular arrangement of leaves or of structures resembling leaves. In flowering plants, rosettes usually sit near the soil. Their structure is an example of a modified stem in which the internode gaps between the lea ...

of narrowly lance-shaped leaves up to 25 centimeters long that are toothed or deeply divided. The

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

s grow erect to about 4 to 7 cm in height. They have dense spikes of flowers which sometimes curve. Each flower has four whitish lobes each measuring about a millimeter long. ''Plantago coronopus'' mainly grows on sandy or gravelly soils close to the sea, but also on salt-treated roadsides. It is native to Eurasia and North Africa but it can be found elsewhere, including the United States, Australia, and New Zealand as an

introduced species An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there ...

. It is grown as a

leaf vegetable Leaf vegetables, also called leafy greens, pot herbs, vegetable greens, or simply greens, are plant leaves eaten as a vegetable, sometimes accompanied by tender petioles and shoots. Leaf vegetables eaten raw in a salad can be called salad gre ...

known as erba stella, mostly incorporated in salad mixes for specialty markets. Recently it has become popular as a frost-hardy winter crop for farmers in northern climates, and is usually grown in unheated hightunnels. File:Plantago coronopus 20150506 1.JPG File:Plantago coronopus1.jpg

References

External links

Jepson Manual TreatmentPlants for a FuturePhoto gallery

coronopus ''Coronopus'' is a synonym for the accepted genus name ''Lepidium''. It was applied to some species of flowering plants in the cabbage and mustard family Brassicaceae known commonly as swinecress or wartcress. These are generally low spreading a ...

Flora of Europe Flora of North Africa Flora of Western Asia Leaf vegetables Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Plantaginaceae-stub