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Mercurialis annua
Also called Herb Mercury, Annual Dog's Mercury, French Mercury, Mockery, Stinkweed
Annual mercury is a small weedy annual herb in the spurge family, native to the Mediterranean and Middle East and now a common weed of disturbed ground, fields and pavements in many parts of the world. It is a tough, easy plant that grows from seed each year and is best managed by pulling it before it sets seed.
Mercurialis annua, annual mercury, is a species of flowering plant in the spurge family Euphorbiaceae. It is native to the Middle East and the Mediterranean region, where it grows on bare, sandy soils. Its seeds are dispersed by harvester ants, which remove an oily coating that delays germination. In recent centuries, annual mercury has spread to northern Europe and many other parts of the world as an agricultural and urban weed. It has been studied for its complex genetics and breeding system. The name is from the Roman god Mercury, due to its association with fertility.
Annual mercury is native to the Middle East and countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, where it occurs in desert and semi-arid regions, and from which it has spread to disturbed, agricultural soils and urban areas around the world. In the Arabian Peninsula it is found on sandy soils in mountain valleys, at an altitude of 1,200 m, where it grows just 5 cm tall.
It is not known whether annual mercury is poisonous to humans or not. The closely related dog's mercury certainly is, as there are cases where people have mistaken it for an edible herb such as spinach, and subsequently died. Similarly, livestock have been known to die after eating a type of mercury, but the species is not recorded.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Mercurialis annua 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.
