Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Mouse-ear chickweed

Cerastium

Also called Chickweed, Mouse Ear, Mouse Ears, Mouse Ear Chickweeds

Mouse-ear chickweed
Photo: Ra'ike, CC BY-SA 2.0 de

Cerastium is a genus of small annual or perennial flowering herbs in the pink family, with about 214 species found worldwide, mostly in northern temperate regions. Many are common weeds of fields and disturbed ground, and they grow best in full sun with well-drained soil.

Family
Caryophyllaceae (Pink & carnation family)
Grows as
Annual, Perennial
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Water moderately and let the top of the soil dry out between waterings.
Soil
Well-drained soil or a sandy mix; tolerates poor soil.
Temperature
10–24 °C; hardy to around -20 °C in many species.
How easy
Easy

About

Cerastium is a genus of annual, winter annual, or perennial flowering plants belonging to the family Caryophyllaceae. They are commonly called mouse-ears or mouse-ear chickweeds. There are 214 accepted species, found nearly worldwide but with the greatest concentration in the northern temperate regions. A number of the species are common weeds in fields and on disturbed ground.

Cerastium species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including Coleophora chalcogrammella (which feeds exclusively on Cerastium arvense) and Coleophora striatipennella (which has been recorded on Cerastium fontanum).

Other Cerastium plants

Alpine chickweed · Common mouse-ear chickweed

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cerastium by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…