Matricaria discoidea Pineappleweed D I
First recorded in 1871 in the British Isles, this introduction has colonised our waste places so effectively that I had assumed it to be native until looking up the details in New Flora of the British Isles by Clive Stace. Because it is greenish and fairly small it is easily overlooked. As its name suggests, a crushed flower head smells of Pineapple.
It has been suggested that there are two sub-species of this plant where there are differences in the pappus (equivalent of calyx or all the sepals in non composite flowers) between the two. The plants here would be ssp discoidea and the alternative ssp occidentalis has been recorded from Ireland but this separation is not yet totally convincing according to Stace.
M. discoidea is common throughout The British Isles and is even found on the remote Scottish islands such as St Kilda.
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| Matricaria discoidea Pineappleweed |
LHS: Helsby verge, Cheshire 7th October 2009 RHS: Banks of River Inny, Ireland 8th October 2004
Added on 7th November 2004, amended 29th January 2005, updated on 19th December 2010