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Common Fleabane
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Common Fleabane
P Native Photo: Sushain Babu
Common name: Common Fleabane, Greater fleabane, Wild marigold
Botanical name: Pulicaria dysenterica    Family: Asteraceae (Sunflower family)
Synonyms: Inula dysenterica

Common Fleabane is a perennial herb with stems 20-60 cm tall, branched, woolly and sparsely glandular, in lower part less densely velvet-hairy. Leaves are stalkless, soft, 1.7-6 x 0.7-2.3 cm, most lower leaves oblong or inverted-lanceshaped, narrowed to base, other stem leaves lanceshaped, with eared profoundly heart-shaped and slightly stem-clasping base, thinly gray woolly or almost woolly below, green and rough above, with short stalkless fine tuberculate hairs, rarely nearly hairless, margin almost entire or slightly wavy. Flower-heads are 3-15 per plant, in loose, corymb-like or raceme-like clusters, on rather long woolly flower-cluster-stalks, 2-6 mm. Involucre is semispherical, 1.1-1.5 cm in diameter; phyllaries numerous, in 5 or 6 series, linear, long and tapered-tapering at tip, almost thread-like, sometimes, mostly outer ones, woolly-hairy, sparsely hairy or nearly hairless inside. Ray florets are about twice as long as involucre and almost 3 times as long as tubular disk florets; florets are 8-11 mm, sparsely glandular outside, mainly in upper part; blade unbent, 1-1.3 mm wide, longitudinally 4-veined. Disk florets are tubular, 3.5-4.5 mm. seed-pods are oblong, 1.25-1.5 x 0.3-0.4 mm, slightly compressed. Common Fleabane is found in Europe and N. Africa, eastwards to Himalaya and Nepal, at altitudes of 250-2000 m. Flowering: June-September.
Medicinal uses: The bruised leaves have a soap-like smell. They are astringent and can be used in the treatment of dysentery. The root is also astringent and used in the treatment of dysentery. A paste of the plant is applied externally to wounds.

Identification credit: Sushain Babu, Tabish Photographed in Pheena, Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh.

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