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hoary alyssum
Berteroa incana
Berteroa incana is a species of flowering plant in the mustard family, Brassicaceae. Its common names include hoary alyssum, false hoary madwort, hoary berteroa, and hoary alison. It is a biennial herb native to Eurasia and it has been introduced to western Europe and North America. It is listed as an invasive noxious weed in some areas of United States and Canada
From the article Berteroa incana on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
Berteroa incana is typically a biennial herbaceous flowering plant, but it also grows as an annual to short-lived perennial. It is hairy, with flattened star-shaped and simple hairs. It produces one or more upright stems usually 30 to 80 centimeters tall, sometimes exceeding one meter. The basal leaves are up to 8 to 10 centimeters long. The leaves are hairy and grayish. The inflorescence is a dense raceme of flowers. The four white petals are roughly half a centimeter long and are tipped with two lobes. The fruit is a hairy silicle up to a centimeter long.
At the table
It is sometimes considered an ornamental plant good for landscaping purposes. It is planted to cover waste ground at mining sites and in urban areas in Europe.
Wikipedia: “Uses”
Toxicity
The plant is toxic to horses. Green and dry material is sometimes found in alfalfa feed. Signs of poisoning include lameness due to laminitis and leg edema, stiffness, fever, diarrhea, intravascular hemolysis, hypovolemic shock, premature birth, abortion, gut ulceration, edema of the kidneys, pulmonary edema, and calcium crystals in the urine. It can be fatal, but most horses survive with treatment. The toxic compound is not known.
== References ==
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Berteroa incana in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 75762.