Rosebay willowherb
Chamerion angustifolium
A tall perennial reaching about two metres, topped by a long spike of magenta four-petalled flowers that open from the base upwards. Narrow, willow-like leaves spiral up an unbranched, often reddish stem. Young shoots are cooked like asparagus, the pith scraped from older stems, and the leaves dried or fermented for tea. It colonises bare ground fast after fire or felling, often in vast single-clone stands.
Bare and disturbed ground: woodland clearings and felled plantations, burnt sites, railway embankments, quarries, road verges and urban waste ground. Spreads by rhizome and wind-blown seed, and is common throughout Britain and Ireland from lowland to upland.
Young shoots and leaves are eaten cooked; older stems become fibrous and bitter. The dried leaf is drunk traditionally as a tea, though quantity has been reported to loosen the bowels. Before flowering, the leafy shoots can be taken for foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), which is deadly: foxglove leaves are broad, grey-green, softly downy and wrinkled in a basal rosette, while this plant's are narrow, smooth-edged and spiral singly up one stem. Much of the best-looking growth is on railway land and busy verges, which brings access and pollution problems.
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Flower spike
A long tapering spike opening from the bottom up, so buds sit at the tip while pods are already forming below. Each flower has four rounded magenta petals with four narrower, darker sepals showing between them, and a downcurved style tipped with a four-lobed white stigma.
Leaf arrangement and veins
Lance-shaped leaves set singly and spiralling up an unbranched stem, not in opposite pairs. Held to the light, the side veins loop and join one another inside the leaf margin rather than running out to the edge.
Stems and stand habit
Smooth, hairless, often flushed red, rising in dense stands from spreading underground roots. A patch is usually one clone, so plants across several metres flower and set seed together.
Seed pods
Long, narrow four-parted pods that split from the tip and curl back, releasing masses of silky white-plumed seed from late summer. Old dry pods persist on the stem through winter and identify last year's stand.
Compared with great willowherb
Great willowherb (Epilobium hirsutum) shares the damp disturbed ground but is densely soft-hairy all over, with notched pink petals and opposite leaves that clasp the stem. Harmless, but the hairiness settles it at arm's length.
Updated 2026-08-08T06:53:04.006Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Herb