Mystery plant is effective as a medicinal plant, acne cure

Picture yourself in Bavaria in the spring, in a friend's backyard. Your host, showing you around, spots this little weed and exclaims, "Schau mal, Erdrauch!" (translation below ...)

This little plant is common as a naturalizing species in North America. It is indeed native to Europe and the Mediterranean and is now widely found throughout the United States and certainly in all of the Southern states. It is an annual, appearing in the early spring, each plant lasting but one short season. It's not tall, usually less than a foot high. Its fragile leaves are divided and fernlike and often chalky and gray. Because of this, the plants, when abundant enough, resemble a sort of smoky fog cloaking the ground.

The small flowers, which are starting to appear now, are somewhat tubular and pink, each with two narrow sepals and petals. The petals are purplish toward the tips. One of the petals is swollen at the base and forms what we botanists call a rounded "spur." The flowers are able to pollinate themselves, not relying on insect visitors. After the blooms, small, rounded seed-pods are formed on the stem, each pod containing a single globose seed. Once spring decides to become summer, whether in Europe or America, the little plants are all dried up and gone, but the tiny seeds are left in the soil, waiting for the next spring.

This plant, which is related to both the poppy and mustard families, has reputedly been effective as a medicinal plant, even recently. Tonics made from it have been used as an eyewash, and as a cure for acne, among other things. (Of course, don't take this as an outright recommendation for using it.) Whatever medicinal qualities it does have must come from the organic compounds (alkaloids) which give its fresh stems and leaves a decidedly acrid, bitter taste.

The plants in bloom are a bright, new indicator of the coming spring. They might be weeds, but they don't last long.

Translation? Your southern German friend is saying, "Looky there! Earthsmoke!"

John Nelson is the curator of the Herbarium at the University of South Carolina. As a public service, USC offers free plant identifications. For more information about the herbarium, visit www.herbarium.org or call (803) 777-8196.

(Answer: Fumaria officinalis, "Earthsmoke")

Photo by Linda Lee