Ribwort plantain
Plantago lanceolata
Family · Plantaginaceae · Harmless
The rosette herb with strongly marked parallel veins, growing on any trodden path in the country. It is the traditional first aid for stings: crush a leaf and apply it.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside · Uplands
Also known asnarrowleaf plantain, ribgrass
How to tell it
Narrow, long leaves in a ground-hugging rosette, with five to seven raised parallel veins you can feel with a finger. A short dark spike atop a grooved, leafless stalk, ringed with white stamens.
What it is confused with
Buck's-horn plantain
Plantago coronopus
The leaf decides: ribwort has an entire smooth leaf, buck's-horn a leaf cut like a comb. Both edible.
What it is for
Young leaves eaten cooked, and traditional external use on insect stings and nettle rashes across Europe. The seeds are mucilaginous, from the same family as psyllium.
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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