Common Comfrey agg. - Symphytum officinale

Description

Stout plant to 1.2 metres. Stems erect, widely winged. Leaves large and coarse, untoothed, strongly decurrent (the base running on to the stem), only the lowest stalked. Flowers, pink, whitish or purple-violet 12 to 18 mm bell shaped with reflexed lobes, borne in forked clusters. Because Comfrey hybridizes freely and is so difficult to identify with certainty we have decided to treat Common Comfrey as an aggregate. There are few national experts who have the necessary expertise to arrive at a precise identification with any degree of certainty.

Similar Species

Many other species, hybrids and varieties of comfrey with blue, pink or pale flowers - especially Russian Comfrey and Hidcote Comfrey, for which it is often recorded in error.

Identification difficulty
ID guidance

The true species has strongly decurrent leaves - i.e wings from each leaf extend down the stem beyond the leaf below (more than 1 internode).  Hybrids often have decurrent leaves, but moderately or weakly so.   The true species also has smooth, shining nutlets.  Flower colour is variable, but rarely white or blue; cream, purplish or striped light and dark purple.

Recording advice

This can't be verified from the flowers alone; a photograph of the whole plant, including leaves and stems.

Habitat

Damp grassland, roadside verges and banks of streams.

When to see it

May to July.

Life History

Perennial.

UK Status

Found throughout Britain but scarcer in the North.

VC55 Status

Fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 80 of the 617 tetrads.

Leicestershire & Rutland Map

MAP KEY:

Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2020+ | 2015-2019 | pre-2015

UK Map

This species or aggregate is not available on the NBN Atlas currently

Species profile

Species group:
Wildflowers
Kingdom:
Plantae
Order:
Family:
Boraginaceae
Records on NatureSpot:
0
First record:
// ()
Last record:
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% of records within its species group

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