Fringed, pink-budded white flowers above trefoil leaves that look like those of a broad bean, growing from a pool in a bog
Bogbean, Menyanthes trifoliata.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Bogbean
Native · flowers Mar–Jun · bogs, fens, pond and lake margins
Menyanthes trifoliata — Menyanthaceae
A creeping aquatic of acid bogs, fens and pond margins whose pink-budded white flowers are fringed with white hairs like pieces of cotton-wool. Its trefoil leaves look like the leaves of a broad bean, which gave it its name. It was once used in Northern England to flavour beer instead of hops.
How to spot them
- ▸Star-shaped white flowers, often pink-tinged, with a shaggy white fringe of hairs on each petal, in spikes held above the water
- ▸Leaves of three large oval leaflets on long stalks, like those of a broad bean, standing above the water
- ▸Grows in shallow water, boggy pools and fen, often forming spreading rafts of stems
- ▸Up to about 30 cm tall (Wildlife Trusts)
- ▸Look-alike: out of flower the trefoil leaves can suggest a clover, but nothing else in a bog pool has this fringed flower
How to know it
In Northern England and parts of Europe this plant was used instead of hops to flavour beer, earning the local name 'bog hop'
Bogbean, per the Wildlife Trusts.
Its species name refers to leaves of three leaflets, and its family name is built on the genus Menyanthes
Menyanthes trifoliata — bogbean, in Menyanthaceae.
White flowers with a ragged white fringe of hairs on each petal, in March–June, standing above shallow acid water
Bogbean.
Creeping stems spread out across the surface of shallow water, helping to colonise pools and slowly turn them to bog
Bogbean is a raft-forming pioneer of fen and bog pools.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Menyanthaceae, related to gentians; the genus Menyanthes has just one species
- •Wildlife Trusts: flowers March to June, up to 30 cm tall, common throughout the UK except eastern England
- •Local name 'bog hop', as it was used to flavour beer in Northern England instead of hops
- •Trifoliata means 'three-leaved'; the leaflets resemble broad-bean leaves, which explains the 'bean' in the name
- •Historically valued as a bitter herb in folk medicine
- •Its creeping stems help form floating mats that can turn open water into peat bog
- •Native, and a plant of acidic, nutrient-poor water
Drill it — 6 cards
1 / 6new card
Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Bogbean