Common chickweed (Stellaria media)

Description: Often used as food and in medicine to treat skin conditions and pulmonary diseases.

Habit: Winter annual, mat-forming, grows up to 12 in tall.

Leaves: Small, oval to elliptic in shape, opposite, 0.5 to 1.5 in in length, light green in color, smooth or hairy towards base and petioles.

Stems: Light green in color with hairs in vertical rows; grows prostrate along the ground and rooting at the nodes, with the upper portion erect or ascending and freely branching.

Flowers: Star-shaped, small, 5 petals that are white in color, deeply lobed giving the appearance of 10 petals, grows alone or in small clusters at the end of stems; blooms February through December.

Fruit and seeds: Fruit is an oval, straw colored capsule that contains tiny reddish brown seeds. Seed output can be from 600 to 15,000 per plant.

Habitat: Native to Eurasia. Found in disturbed lands, cultivated fields, waste places, trails, roadsides, forests, and gardens.

Reproduction: Vegetatively through a fibrous root system and by seeds.

Similar species: Big chickweed/Mouseear chickweed (Cerastium fontanum).

Monitoring and rapid response: Hand pull or dig; remove entire plant and root system; dispose of all plant parts because shoots have the ability to re-root. Effectively controlled using any of several readily available general use herbicides such as glyphosate or triclopyr. Follow label and state requirements.

Credits: The information provided in this factsheet was gathered from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service.

Individual species images that appear with a number in a black box are courtesy of the Bugwood.org network (http://www.invasive.org).Individual photo author credits may not be included due to the small display size of the images and subsequent difficulty of reading the provided text. All other images appear courtesy of Google (http://images.google.com).

---