The open plant encyclopedia
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.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Draba verna
Also called Common whitlowgrass, Shadflower, Nailwort, Vernal whitlow grass, Early witlow grass, Whitlow-grass, Spring Whitlow Grass
Draba verna (syn. Erophila verna), common whitlowgrass, is a species of plant in the cabbage family. It is a small spring-flowering annual which is widely dispersed around the world, and which is found on walls, pavements and patches of bare ground. It has a complex taxonomy which is not yet fully elucidated.
Common whitlowgrass is native to Europe, western Asia and parts of North Africa southwards to Ethiopia. It is also widely established in the temperate regions of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. It has been postulated that it was brought to North America when the European colonizers came to the New World.
There appear to be no recorded uses for whitlowgrass. In the 1600s Culpeper described it as "exceedingly good for those imposthumes in the joints, and under the nails, which they call Whitlows, Felons, Andicorns and Nail-wheals", but Vickery explains that it was never really used in folk medicine either in Britain or Ireland. Neither is it mentioned in American herbals. Presumably Culpeper ascribed to it this property according to the doctrine of signatures, owing to the unusual shape of the leaves.
Yellow whitlow-grass · Slender draba · Alpine draba · Draba aretioides · Rough draba · Lake Tahoe draba · Mt. Lassen draba · Draba bertiscea · Cushion draba · Snowbasin draba · Draba cacuminum · California draba
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Draba verna by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
