Content
- St. John's wort: beware of confusion!
- St. John's wort and ragwort - very similar
- Different leaves
- Different flowers
- Another confounding candidate: Wiesenpippau
- Tips
The ragwort (pictured here) has significantly more petals than St. John's wort, which has exactly five petals
St. John's wort: beware of confusion!
It is the end of June - the best time to gather St. John's wort. Its flowers should make it easy to recognize. But beware: There are plants that look very similar to him and one of which is even highly toxic!
St. John's wort and ragwort - very similar
The highly poisonous Jakobs-Kreuzkraut resembles the healing St. John's wort. Someone who does not really know St John's Wort and is looking for him on a meadow should be careful! At first glance, the poisonous ragwort looks like St. John's wort. Even a closer look reveals that they are quite different.
The ragwort is so dangerous because it contains alkaloids. After eating this herb it can lead to liver damage. In extreme cases, poisoning ends fatally. Both the leaves and the stems, roots and flowers are poisonous.
Different leaves
Using the leaves, you can distinguish these two plants from each other. The St. John's wort has very distinctive leaves, if you look closer. They have translucent, point-like places. When grinding, they give off a reddish juice.
The leaves of the ragwort are in contrast to the small, egg-shaped, smooth-edged and opposite-lying leaves of St. John's wort completely different:
Different flowers
While the flowering time of both herbs is the same, the flowers look different. The inflorescence of the ragwort is richly branched as in St. John's wort. But the individual flowers look different. The flowers are composed of tongue and tubular flowers. Thus, the flowers of the ragwort are more similar to those of daisies or marigolds.
It is also striking that the flowers of St. John's wort have only 5 petals. These are broad-shaped with him. The ragwort has more than 5 petals. With him, they are narrower and elongated.
Another confounding candidate: Wiesenpippau
Furthermore, the harmless meadow pippau looks like St. John's wort. But there are also some differences here:
Tips
If you are not 100% sure that it is St. John's wort, you should not collect the plant!