CALENDULA ARVENSIS

Family:- COMPOSITAE

Common Name:- Field marigold

Synonyms:- Caltha arvensis.

Meaning:- Calendula (L) First-day-of-the-month.

Arvensis (L) Of the cultivated or ploughed field.

General description:- Annual, often thinly covered with fine interlaced woolly tufts

of hairs resembling a spider's web.

Stem:-

1) (5-)15-25(-30)cm, erect or diffuse, usually much-branched.

Leaves:-

1) Alternate, simple, (1-)3-8(-10) x 0·4-1·4(-2) cm, pubescent, or thinly floccose,

oblong or narrowly obovate, acute or obtuse, with subentire or denticulate

margins.

Flowers:-

1) Capitula from 10 to 27mm. diam. In fruit usually with an outer row of incurved,

narrowly beaked achenes 1·3-2 cm, alternating with cymbiform achenes 0·6-

1cm.

2) Disk-florets having only male organs.

3) Ray-florets having only female organs and laid out on 2 or 3 rows.

4) Ligules yellow or orange, usually less than 1·8 cm, often distinctly exceeding,

but not twice as long as the involucral bracts.

5) Involucre bracts, pale green, seldom orange, reddish or purple at the top, finished

by a very small point.

Fruit:-

1) Achenes, none feathery, sometimes coiled in a ring, crest spiny or tuberculate.

2) External achenes with a very curved beak.

Key features:-

1) Ligules usually less than twice as long as involucral bracts.

2) Outer achenes with a narrow beak or cymbiform, not 3-winged.

Click here for a glossary of terms used.

Habitat:- Common weed of fallow fields, olive groves, roadsides and ruderal

habitats. 700(-1200) m.

Distribution:- Widespread and common throughout the Mediterranean. Widespread

and common on Crete.

Flowering time:- Almost throughout year but mainly Mar-May.

Photos by:- Steve Lenton