Melampyrum arvense

A wild plant that we can reintroduce to nature!

This plant, with its attractive lilac-pink and yellow flowers in a small cluster, grows 15–50 cm tall and “taps” nutrients and water from grasses and cereals as a (semi-)parasite. This allows the plant to be used to suppress unwanted grass growth. Thanks to these clever parasitic properties, the plant grows easily, even in dry conditions, as long as there are grasses growing nearby!

Wild wheat seeds are toxic (they contain aucubin), heavy, and black. In the era of traditional farming, their weight and shape made them almost impossible to separate mechanically from harvested wheat kernels. When they were accidentally ground up with the wheat, the bread took on a bitter taste and unsightly blue-black spots (hence the name black wheat).

Names:

• Latin: Melampyrum arvense
• Dutch: Wild wheat
• Also known as: Black wheat
• English: Purple Cow-Wheat