Yarrow
Achillea millefolium
Family · Asteraceae · Irritating
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
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The plant with leaves so finely divided they look like feathers, and flat white clusters that last all summer. It was the wound herb of European armies for centuries, and the genus name comes from Achilles.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands · Town and roadside
Also known asmilfoil, soldier's woundwort
How to tell it
Leaves divided two or three times into very fine feather-like segments, quite unlike anything else in a meadow. A flat-topped cluster of small white heads, sometimes pink. A strong bitter smell when rubbed.
What it is confused with
Poison hemlock
Conium maculatum
From a distance the flat white cluster misleads and confusions have happened. Yarrow has miniature daisy heads with visible petals and feathery leaves of very fine segments; hemlock has tiny five-petalled flowers in an umbel, leaves of broad leaflets and a smooth purple-blotched stem.
What it is for
Traditional external use on wounds across Europe, and a beer bittering agent before hops. Young leaves are eaten in small amounts in salad. A note that stays on the sheet: it causes contact dermatitis in sensitive people and is not used in pregnancy.
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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