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Common Chickweed / Mišjakinja
Stellaria media
45.787, 15.96
Field Notes
Description:
It is a cool-season annual plant native to Europe, which is often eaten by chickens. The plant germinates in fall or late winter, then forms large mats of foliage. Flowers are small and white, followed quickly by the seed pods. This plant flowers and sets seed at the same time.
Very small plant with tiny little white flowers. Pretty often grows next to Veronica persica and they are about the same size but its flowers are even smaller.
Habitat:
. Is very common on every meadow and on the side of a road.
Notes:
Other names: Chickenwort, Craches, Maruns, Winterweed, crijevac, ptičja trava .
Stellaria media is delicious, edible and nutritious, and is used as a leaf vegetable, often raw in salads. It is one of the ingredients of the symbolic dish consumed in the Japanese spring-time festival, Nanakusa-no-sekku.
It also contains saponins – compounds that taste like soap – which in large enough quanitities are toxic. Indeed chickweed has been known to cause saponin poisoning in cattle. But it is rare and this is when the animal has eaten many kilos of the plant.
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