''Agrostemma githago'', the common corn-cockle (also written "corncockle") is a herbaceous annual

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. They include all forbs (flowering plants without a woody stem), grasses and grass-like plants, a vast majority of ...

in the pink and carnation family

Caryophyllaceae Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family, is a family of flowering plants. It is included in the dicotyledon order Caryophyllales in the APG III system, alongside 33 other families, including Amaranthaceae, Cactace ...

Description

It grows with a stem to long with lanceolate leaves. The flowers are up to in diameter, usually single at the ends of the stem. The sepals have five narrow teeth much longer than the petals. It has ten stamens. It has slender pink flowers. It is an erect plant covered with fine hairs. Its few branches are each tipped with a single deep pink to purple flower. The flowers are scentless, across, and produced in the summer months – May to September in the northern hemisphere, November to March in the southern hemisphere. Each petal bears two or three discontinuous black lines. The five narrow pointed sepals exceed the petals and are joined at the base to form a rigid tube with ten ribs. Leaves are pale green, opposite, narrowly lanceolate, held nearly erect against stem and are long. Seeds are produced in a many-seeded capsule. It can be found in fields, roadsides, railway lines, waste places, and other disturbed areas.

Ecology

In the 19th century, it was reported as a very common weed of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeolog ...

fields and its seeds were inadvertently included in harvested wheat seed and then resown the following season. It is very likely that until the 20th century, most wheat contained some corn cockle seed. It is susceptible to downy mildew caused by the oomycete species ''

Peronospora agrostemmatis ''Peronospora'' is a genus of oomycetes that are obligate plant pathogens of many eudicots. Most species in this group produce a downy mildew disease, which can cause severe damage to many different cultivated crops, as well as wild and ornamenta ...

''.

Distribution

It is now present in many parts of the temperate world as an alien species, probably introduced with imported European

. It is known to occur throughout much of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

and parts of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

, parts of Australia and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...

. In parts of

, intensive mechanized farming has put the plant at risk and it is now uncommon or locally distributed. This is partly due to changing patterns of agriculture with most wheat now sown in the autumn as

winter wheat Winter wheat (usually '' Triticum aestivum'') are strains of wheat that are planted in the autumn to germinate and develop into young plants that remain in the vegetative phase during the winter and resume growth in early spring. Classification ...

and then harvested before any corn cockle would have flowered or set seed. The main reason, however, is that the cereal seed is better cleaned. The plant was believed to be completely

extirpated Local extinction, also known as extirpation, refers to a species (or other taxon) of plant or animal that ceases to exist in a chosen geographic area of study, though it still exists elsewhere. Local extinctions are contrasted with global extinct ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

until 2014, when a single specimen was found growing in

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...

by an assistant ranger of the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

. It can be found in fields, roadsides, railway lines, waste places, and other disturbed areas.

Toxicity

All parts of the plant are

poison Poison is a chemical substance that has a detrimental effect to life. The term is used in a wide range of scientific fields and industries, where it is often specifically defined. It may also be applied colloquially or figuratively, with a broa ...

ous and contain githagin and agrostemmic acid. It has been used in

folk medicine Traditional medicine (also known as indigenous medicine or folk medicine) comprises medical aspects of traditional knowledge that developed over generations within the folk beliefs of various societies, including indigenous peoples, before the ...

despite the risk of fatal poisoning.

References

External links