Annual segetal weed with fragrant white flowers. Chamomile heads are valuable herbal material. It is used as a dried herb and an essential oil rich in valuable organic compounds. Wild, non-cultivar seeds.
SKU: N010
6,00 zł – 24,00 zł
Polish name: common chamomile
Latin name: Matricaria chamomilla syn. Chamomilla recutita
Family: the asters Asteraceae (the composites Compositae)
Status in Poland: established since the Bronze Age, very common as a weed of root crops and cereals (mainly winter rye), taken for cultivation as a medicinal herb
Annual plant with a well-known strong and pleasant fragrance.
Thin tap and lateral roots. Stem up to 50 cm high, hollow inside, bare and strongly branched.
Sessile leaves, composed of leaflets, bi- or tripinnate, arranged alternately. The individual chamomile leaflets are linear, filiform, ending acute.
What is usually called chamomile flower in cosmetology, for a botanist is whole inflorescence in the form of head. A single head consists of two types of flowers with very different structure and function. On the exterior of the head female quasi-ray flowers, white, bend downwards with age. The central flowers of this chamomile are bisexual, disc (with five stamens fused into a tube), golden. The empty torus is a great distinguishing feature of this species because the other chamomiles, dog-fennels, and mayweeds are characterized by a full torus.
The fruit of the chamomile is an oblong achene. The achenes of the wild forms of this chamomile are only 0.1 mm long.
A great species for cultivation, it grows well and then yields in many types of soil, from very dry, light and sandy to heavy, wet and clay.
Chamomile is an antispasmodic and anti-inflammatory medicine known for millennia. It also accelerates the healing of burns, erythema, ulcers, and hemorrhoids.
Chamomile is not as good for bees as corn chamomile Anthemis arvensis or yellow chamomile Cota tinctoria, as it is almost exclusively visited by small flies.
Nevertheless, it is worth sowing chamomile in flower meadows and bee pastures, because it smells lovely.
