Golden button-like flower heads with no petals over fern-like leaves that smell of camphor when crushed
Tansy - Tanacetum vulgare.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Tansy
Native or archaeophyte · perennial, flowers July to September · riverbanks, verges, rough grassland
Tanacetum vulgare — Asteraceae
Tansy is a tall, strongly aromatic perennial of riverbanks and rough verges, with flat-topped clusters of yellow button-like flower heads that have no petals. It was once eaten in Easter tansy cakes and strewn to repel pests, but it is toxic. It is the food plant of the rare tansy beetle.
How to spot them
- ▸Flat-topped clusters of golden, button-like heads, each without any rays
- ▸Fern-like, deeply divided, dark green leaves with toothed leaflets
- ▸Strong, bitter, camphor-like smell when crushed
- ▸Stiff, angular, furrowed stems up to 1.5 m, often reddish
- ▸Look-alikes: common ragwort has ray florets and less finely cut leaves; mugwort has silvery-backed leaves and tiny dull heads; pineapple weed has rayless heads but they are greenish and smell of pineapple
How to know it
Its leaves were once eaten at Easter mixed with eggs, milk and flour in a kind of pancake or omelette, said to rid people of the worms brought on by a fish-based Lent diet
Tansy - Wildlife Trusts.
The main food of a rare metallic green leaf beetle confined to a few riverbank sites, notably by the Ouse near York
Tansy - the tansy beetle, Chrysolina graminis.
Long used as a strewing herb and household insect and rodent repellent, though its oils are toxic and have poisoned people who used it medicinally
Tansy - BSBI.
Botanists cannot yet agree if this aromatic yellow-flowered plant is a British native or an ancient introduction
Tansy - BSBI: native or archaeophyte.
Told from a yellow ragwort by lacking rays: its flat heads are all disc florets
Tansy (common ragwort is the look-alike).
Quick-fire facts
- •Wildlife Trusts: flowers July to October; up to 90 cm; fern-like, aromatic foliage
- •BSBI: native status uncertain - native or an archaeophyte
- •The Wildlife Trusts say the tansy beetle is restricted to only two UK locations
- •Toxic: BSBI records human poisoning from medicinal use of its oils and leaf infusions
- •Traditionally eaten in tansy cakes at Easter; the Ancient Greeks cultivated it as a medicinal herb
- •BSBI: used as a household repellent against rodents and insects, and externally on wounds
- •The name is thought to derive from the Greek athanasia, 'immortality'
- •Grows best where the ground is occasionally disturbed, since it cannot compete in dense vegetation (BSBI)
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Tansy
- BSBI — Tanacetum vulgare L., Tansy