Whimsical Butterbur

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Unfortunately, this extremely decorative beauty is known only to a few gardeners. A wonderful butterbur grows mainly along the banks of various reservoirs and in other damp corners. Its original flowers will serve well in ornamental gardening. And such a funny name, butterbur, is obtained due to the fact that its wide leaves of a rather impressive size resemble the prints of horse hooves in shape

Getting to know the plant

Butterbur represents the wonderful Asteraceae family. Depending on natural conditions and species, its height is in the range from 30 to 200 cm. Tuberous-thickened along the nodes creeping winding rhizome of butterbur is located either on the surface or in the upper layer of the soil. Thin roots extend from the nodules. The length of the cord-like powerful rhizomes can easily reach even one and a half meters, and their diameter is from 1 to 30 mm. Their characteristic feature is the ability to grow with great speed over the entire area suitable for growth.

The incredibly juicy and rather plump shoots of this bizarre plant are densely covered with scaly leaves enveloping the stems. In early spring, quite interesting inflorescences begin to form on the tips of the funny shoots. What makes the shoots funny is that, before flowering, their appearance is somewhat reminiscent of morel mushrooms. The main part of the butterbur varieties blooms almost always before the appearance of young basal leaves, in April - May. At the end of flowering, active shoots grow further, stretching out about one and a half to two times. And at the end of fruiting in the summer, these shoots gradually die off.

Bright basal leaves of butterbur are much larger than stem leaves. These petiolar, finger-dissected or whole leaves can be either reniform or cordate. Often they are equipped with a felted pubescence. But in general, the shape of the leaves of various types of butterbur is similar, only their size differs noticeably.

Tubular flowers arranged in rather dense baskets, closer to the edges, often have long and slightly elongated reed limbs. At the tops of flowering shoots, baskets form racemose or corymbose inflorescences. The color of the flowers can vary from white to reddish and greenish-yellow.

The single-seeded fruits of the beautiful butterbur are slightly ribbed achenes equipped with elongated tuft. And numerous seeds ripening already in May - June can move both in water and in the air.

Butterbur use

A number of varieties of this bizarre plant are used in folk medicine, and in science they are raw materials for the manufacture of numerous medicines. In the Middle Ages, they were cured of the devastating plague. And the hybrid butterbur has gained popularity in homeopathy as an antispasmodic, as well as an excellent analgesic and effective expectorant.

Young shoots of the wonderful Japanese butterbur have taken root in Japanese cuisine, and the peoples inhabiting the Arctic are happy to feast on the useful cold butterbur: they fry powerful rhizomes, and eat young leaves raw.

In gardening, this handsome man has been cultivated for a long time as an excellent ground cover plant - growing at lightning speed, it actively suppresses all kinds of weeds.

How to grow

Butterbur propagation in the autumn period takes place with rhizome particles, in spring - leaf buds taken from parts of the rhizomes. It also reproduces by seeds, but in this case its flowering should be expected only in the third or fourth year.

Butterbur is perfectly content with moderate lighting, but if you provide it with decent shading, combined with proper moisture, it can grow in the sun. It is important to know that this proud handsome man will lose his decorative effect if he grows on poor soils. For butterbur, rich, well-moisturized and fairly dense clay soils are preferred.

This highly aggressive and difficult to eradicate plant needs constant monitoring. Fading inflorescences should be cut off in time to avoid blooming of flying seeds.

It is impossible not to mention that butterbur leaves are quite loved by harmful slugs, eating numerous holes in them and thereby reducing the decorative effect of such a bizarre plant. To avoid such a misfortune, protective measures against slugs are carried out from the very moment the leaves grow back.