Plant of the Day: Plant of the day is: Succisa pratensis or devil's bit scabious

Plant of the day is: Succisa pratensis or devil's bit scabious

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic by Udo Schmidt

Plant of the day returns! The pause was due to teaching my first semester long class. I really had no idea how much extra work teachers put in outside the class. I sure do now! Really excited to get back into this though. I had some great students, but they can't replace the plants I love.

Taxonomy/etc.: So if you get in real close, and I mean REAL close you can see that this is an inflorescence with lots of individual flowers. If you get REALLY close you can see that the individual flowers only have 4 lobes as part of their corolla. This differs to the otherwise extremely closely related Scabiosa which has 5 lobes. A member of the Caprifoliaceae family, which still makes me think MADCAP Horse a handy way of remembering several genera of opposite leaved trees and shrubs. M= Maple (Acer) , A= Ash (Fraxinus), D = Dogwood (Cornus), C = Caprifoliaceae (honeysuckle), and Horsechestnut (Aesculus). This follows the format and has opposite leaves. The VERY first thing you ever do for plant ID is note the leaf arrangement. Or maybe if it's got giant spikes or other traps around it...you can do that first. The Succisa genus is quite small, with only about 4 accepted species.

Botanical Description Here

ID: Looks a lot like Centaurea scabiosa but that is in the Aster family..the opposite leaves are the immediate giveaway for ID here.

Range: Europe, Britain, South and East from Norway to N. Africa, Siberia and the Caucusus

Culture: Very adaptable really, can handle a wide range of soils and moisture levels but does need a fair bit of sun. Noted for growing in dry grassland but as long as soil is fairly well drained I don't see why it wouldn't handle some wetter conditions.

Fun Stuff: O.k. whats with the whole devil's bit thing? Glad you asked. This plant has been used in times past for the treatment of scabies, eczema, fever, and notably, the plague. There are a few variations on the lore, but the one I like involves the devil being displeased at the plants use to cure all of his evil sicknesses. In his frustration, the devil tried to destroy it by biting the root off. The root apparently does look kind of devilish. Finnish and Latin names both come from succidere which means to 'break from the bottom' or 'to reap'

More Good Info Here

CC BY-SA 3.0 by Fornax

Etc.: I didn't run across any scientific studies indicating that it IS in fact a remedy for anything. The young leaves MIGHT be edible (again, don't eat without extensive study) but I'd have to spend a lot more time on it and I have my doubts they'd be tasty.

Propagation: Seeds should germinate easily in the Spring. Currently unsure of their ideal germination temperatures. Viability testing on this is a work in progress.

For the UBER nerds out there, this is a fantastic paper on the species. Lots of research.