Crown Mayweed

The plant parts, especially floral parts and the oil extracted by distillation, are used as a substitute for Chamaemelum nobile (L.) All. (=Anthemis nobilis L.).

Erect or ascending, profusely branched above, up to 50 cm tall, glabrous herb with sulcate or obtusely angled internodes. Leaves on short, basally dilated and sheathing petioles, oblong, (1.5-) 2.5 – 6 (-7) cm long, up to 2 cm wide, finely bipinnatisect into narrowly linear to filiform, 3 – 4 mm long, c. 1 mm wide, ± acute to shortly mucronate ultimate segments. Capitula solitary terminal, on up to 8 (-10) cm long, filiform peduncles, 1 – 1.5 (-2) cm across, sweet-smelling. Receptacle sharply conical, 5 – 6 mm long, foveolate. Involucre hemispherical, phyllaries 2-3-seriate, imbricate, broadly lanceolate to oblong, 1 – 2.5 (-3) x 1 – 1.25 mm, greenish with pale membranous margins, obtuse. Ray-florets female, with white, oblong, 5 – 8 x 3 – 3.5 mm, shortly 3-fid, deflexed ligule from c. 1 mm long tube. Disc-florets yellow, 5-lobed, with the externally sparsely glandulose corolla tube becoming campanulate above the constriction; style branches truncate-penicillate. Cypselas oblong-cylindrical, ± curved, c. 1 mm long, greyish-brown, sparsely glandular, with 5 ribs on ventral surface, ray-cypselas with an irregularly toothed, c. 1 mm long, membranous auricle, disc-cypselas slightly coronate or epappose.

Distribution: Widespread throughout Europe, and most of temperate Asia; introduced and weedy in other parts of the world.

Fl. Per.: April-August.

Matricaria chamomilla L., Sp. Pl. ed. 2. 1256. 1763; Boiss., Fl. Orient. 3: 323. 1875; Hook. f., Fl. Brit. Ind. 3: 315. 1881; Grierson in P.H.Davis, Fl. Turk. 5: 293. 1975 non L. 1753 – nom. illeg.; Chamomilla recutita (L.) Rauschert in Folia Geobot. Phytotax. (Praha) 9: 255. 1974; Kay in Tutin et al., Fl. Europ. 4: 167. 1976.