Hedge mustard
Sisymbrium officinale
Family · Brassicaceae · Harmless
The lean crucifer of verges and rubble with a stiff skeleton of branches spread almost at right angles, and slender pods pressed to the stem. It was for centuries the singers' remedy for hoarseness.
Town and roadside · Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Walls and rocks
Also known assinger's plant, wild mustard
How to tell it
An unmistakable silhouette: the branches leave the stem almost horizontally and the plant looks like a stiff candelabrum. Minute yellow flowers, two to three millimetres, clustered at each branch tip. The pods are slender, conical, one to two centimetres, and lie pressed to the branch, almost parallel. Lower leaves deeply cut.
What it is confused with
Wild radish
Raphanus raphanistrum
They grow on the same verge and the lower leaves are alike. Wild radish has large flowers, two centimetres, white or pale yellow with purple veins; hedge mustard has minute flowers two to three millimetres and pods pressed to the branch. Both were eaten cooked.
What it is for
A traditional syrup for hoarseness and the voice across Europe, with modern studies recognising an effect on throat irritation. The young leaves were eaten cooked, pungent. Traditional use, and it is not gathered on road verges.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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