Yellow chamomile – delight for the eyes
Photos: Arne Ader
Translation: Liis
Yellow chamomile
Yellow chamomile Kollane karikakar Anthemis tinctoria
What in everyday language is called the flower of the chamomile is botanically an inflorescence - a capitula or flowerhead. The inflorescences consist of two kinds of flowers: in the centre of the capitula it has yellow disk florets and surrounding them long flat ray florets. It is a perennial with a strong hairy stem; the leaves are somewhat similar to the leaves of the milfoil.
The yellow chamomile is a companion of humans, a synanthrope; we rarely find it growing in untouched nature, rather in the tracks oif human activities – road verges, gravel pits, fallow fields, as field weed … Its seeds need open soil surface for germination so it doesn’t tolerate the competition from other densely growing plants.
It is likely that the yellow chamomile arrived in Estonia from the south with grain cultivation, but already centuries ago, and thus it is not regarded as an invasive species.
Ox-eye daisies and yellow chamomile
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