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.
Galega officinalis
Also called Goat's rue, Common Milkpea, Galega, Goats Rue, Goat’s Rue
Galega officinalis, goat's rue or professor-weed, is a hardy perennial legume grown as a forage crop, ornamental and bee plant, and it is invasive in parts of North America. It is grown in full sun in ordinary garden soil and spreads readily from seed.
Galega officinalis, commonly known as galega or goat's-rue, is a herbaceous plant in the subfamily Faboideae of the legume family Fabaceae. It is native to parts of northern Africa, western Asia and Europe, but is widely cultivated and naturalised elsewhere. The plant has been extensively cultivated as a forage crop, an ornamental, a bee plant, and as green manure.
G. officinalis is rich in galegine, a substance with blood glucose-lowering activity and the foundation for the discovery of metformin, a treatment for managing symptoms of diabetes mellitus. In ancient herbalism, goat's-rue was used as a diuretic. It can be poisonous to mammals, but is a food for various insects.
Although not thoroughly studied with 21st century methods, G. officinalis has been analyzed for its constituents, which include galegine, hydroxygalegine, several guanidine derivatives, such as 4-hydroxygalegine flavones, flavone glycosides, kaempferol, and quercetin. In addition to its purported effect to lower blood glucose levels and induce diuresis, goat's rue was used as a herbal tonic in folk medicine practices of medieval Europe to treat bubonic plague, worms, and snake bites.
Widely distributed throughout temperate regions of the world, predominantly in Europe, the plant is a hardy perennial that blooms in the summer months on grasslands, wetlands, and riverbanks, and is classified as an invasive weed in many parts of North America. It has also been found in South America, North Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, and New Zealand.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Galega officinalis 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.
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.
