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Plantains

Common Plantain
(Plantago major)

English Plantain
(Plantago lanceolata)

OK, look at the botanical names above and guess which plant has the skinny leaves.
I bet you probably know more than you think you do......if you are a good word detective!

These are NOT native plants.

How did you do guessing which of these two plantains is the Common, and which is the English?

If you know the word "lance" (those pointy spear things warriors carry ) you can pick the one that looks most spear-like.

Which one do you think it is now?

The Common is on your left.................................................the English on your right.

I have to get better photos of their seed stalks. The English one has both lance shaped leaves (skinny and pointed) and the stem that holds the flowers is very spear shaped. You can see it maybe, there are two of them on that plant. One is at the top, the other swoops to the right.

Common plantain was a very important plant! While nowadays people think of it only as a lawn weed, plantain has been highly prized for many hundreds of years as a cure for many kinds of sores. When settlers brought it with them to North America the American Indians noted how the plants appeared where ever Europeans went....so they named it "White Man's Foot". The Indians also saw the use of it and adopted it as an healing herb.

The roots, leaves and the seeds have uses. The Common plantain was used to rub on insect bites and stings, or burns and scalds to give relief. The seeds can be a laxative!

English plantain seeds are often eaten by songbirds and used for feeding to cage birds. The leaves are a favorite food off rabbits.

 

Study pointers:

• Next time you are in a drugstore, read the labels on the laxative boxes. What plants are used today for that purpose?
  
• If the pharmacist is not busy, ask her/him what modern medicines are used a lot that are made from plants. Tell them how you are studying how plants have been used for hundreds of years as medicines.
  
• Try shooting the seed head off the English plantain. I forget how you do it....show me when you figure it out!
  
• Do a plantain survey. Pick an area and note how many of each kind there are. Which is most common there? Find another area some distance away and do the same thing. Which is the most common there? Is it the same one? If you do that sort of survey enough you could generalize and say which type of plantain is most common in Manchester places like you tested.

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