Ladysthumb

Polygonaceae

LIFE FORM: Summer annual

NATIVITY: Europe

VEGETATIVE CHARACTERISTICS:

Densely branced plant can grow up to a foot tall; swollen stems are jointed at the nodes and green or reddish; lanceolate leaves have a darkly pigmented mark in middle of the leaf blade (this is the lady's thumb).

FLOWERS:

Bright pink to white flowers bloom from July through October; they are arranged in dense, spike-like clusters.

FRUIT/DISPERSAL AGENTS:

Self-sows readily.

ECOLOGICAL PREFERENCE:

Grows best in moist soil in either sun or shade. Prefers neglected residential and commercial landscapes; minimally maintained public parks and open space; vacant lots and rubble dump sites; abandoned grasslands (meadows); woodlands that develop on abandoned open space; freshwater wetlands, ponds and streams; small-scale pavement openings (tree pits) and cracks; unmowed highway banks and median strips with frequent salt applications.

ENVIRONMENTAL FUNCTION:

Disturbance-adapted colonizer.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:

A tea made from the leaves was used in traditional European medicine as well as by native Americans. Included by Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in his five volume herbal, De Materia Medica, which was written in the first century AD and remained in active use into the 1600s.