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Geum urbanum
Also called Herb bennet, Bennet's Root, Avens, Cloveroot, Town Avens
Wood avens is a small, downy perennial woodland herb in the rose family, native across temperate Eurasia and parts of North Africa. It thrives in partial shade near hedgerows and woodland edges, and is usually left to naturalise rather than cultivated.
Geum urbanum, also known as wood avens, herb Bennet, colewort, clove root and St. Benedict's herb (Latin: herba benedicta), is a perennial plant in the rose family (Rosaceae), which grows in shady places (such as woodland edges and near hedgerows) in the temperate regions of Eurasia and North America.
Geum urbanum is found throughout Europe (its areas are more scattered in southern Iberia and in Russia, and it is completely absent from northern Scandinavia, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Shetland, Malta, the Balearic and the Aegean islands). It also occurs in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, in Turkey and the Levant, the Caucasus and the Armenian Highlands, around the Alborz mountains in Iran, and less extensively in western Siberia and in the mountains of Central Asia up to the Western Himalayas.
The leaves can be cooked like spinach.
Geum montanum · Scarlet Avens · Creeping Avens · Avens · Appalachian barren strawberry · Waldsteinia ternata
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Geum urbanum 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.
