British wildflowers - Ladys Mantle

British wildflowers - Ladys Mantle

039 II Ladys Mantle Alchemilla Vulgaris L

British wildflowers of the Fields and Medows

No trace of Lady's Mantle is found in the rocks. It is an Arctic plant found in the North Temperate and Arctic regions in Arctic Europe, N. and W. Asia, Kashmir, Greenland, Labrador. In Great Britain it occurs in every part of the country except in Mid Lancashire, as far north as the Shetlands. In the Highlands it is found at a height of 3600 ft. It is native also in Ireland and the Channel Islands.

Lady's Mantle is a plant of the uplands, being rarely found at low levels. Whilst it grows in meadows and fields of intermediate altitude, it is more often found on the sides of hills, where such plants as Viola calcarea, Hieracium Pilosella, Salad Burnet, Koeleria, and other plants are found.

Ladys Mantle is an erect plant, with kidney-shaped leaves, plaited, with 6-9 lobes, and toothed, the stem and leaf-stalks being smooth, the leaves greenish below and downy. The stipules or leaf-like organs on the leaf-stalks are united at the base and toothed. The leaves are mainly radical leaves, and spring from the rootstock, being large and neat. Such leaves borne on the flowering stems are without stalks.

Photo. J. H. Crabtree - Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris, L.)

The yellowish-green flowers are borne in racemose cymes, which are spiked and panicled. The short flower-stalks are downy, and the texture of the whole plant is more or less silky. The achenes or fruits are few and glandular.

Occasionally the stem is a foot long, usually less, or about 6 in. June to August are the months when the flowers are in bloom. The plant is propagated by dividing the roots. It is a deciduous, herbaceous perennial.

The small flowers on the Ladys Mantle have no corolla. Because they are green beetlesdo not visit them. There is a yellow, fleshy ring on the inner wall of the receptacular tube which surrounds the style (and later the ovary) which secretes a thin layer of honey, giving a greenish-yellow colour to the flower.

The small amount of honey makes it unattractive to insects with a long proboscis. It is not usually self-pollinated, but the partial separation of the sexes makes for cross-pollination. It is not often that male and female organs are equally developed, but usually either the stamens are fully developed and the pistil is short, barely projecting above the honey-secreting ring, or the style is long and projects and the anthers are completely useless. Sometimes flowers occur in which one or two stamens are developed as well as the pistil. It is visited by Xantho-gramma, Flies, and Butterflies. The Ladys Mantle plant is becoming dioecious, stamens and carpels being often found on different plants.

The glandular achenes are enclosed in the membranous calyx and are chiefly dispersed by the wind.

Lady's Mantle is a sand-loving plant, addicted to a dry soil, in which there may be some little lime.

The leaves are checked in growth by a fungus, Uromyces alchemillae. A beetle, Phyllobius viridicollis, two moths, the Small Rivulet (Emmelesia alchemillata), Lampronia praelatella, and a Homopterous insect, Trioza scutipennis, live upon it.

Alchemilla, Tragus, is from the same Arabic origin as alchemy, from its supposed virtues, and the second Latin name from its universality.

Lady's Mantle is called Bear's-foot, Dew cup, Duck's-foot, Great Sanicle, Lady's Mantle, Lamb's Foot, Lion's Foot, Padelion, Pedelyon, Syndaw. The name Dew cup is given to it because the moisture, owing to the hairs on the surface, collects in a drop in the middle of the leaf, which thus appears unwetted. It was also called Our Lady's Mantle. It is the Maria Stakker of Iceland, which produces sleep if placed under the pillow. It had a reputation for restoring feminine beauty. It is astringent.

Essential Specific Characters:

101. Ladys Mantle - Alchemilla vulgaris, L. - Herbaceous, erect, leaves reniform, plaited lobed, hairy, flowers yellowish-green, terminal, in racemes or cymes.

British wildflowers

Browse through our online Volumes of British wildflowers in their natural haunts. This is Volume II of VI Volumes - Ladys Mantle