Plant · P-121

Common Chickweed

Stellaria media

Common chickweed is a cool-season annual that carpets bare ground through the winter months, exactly when pasture and garden beds otherwise sit empty, and it has been valued as poultry feed since Greek and Roman times - one of its old names literally means the hen's inheritance. The cooked leaves are barely distinguishable from spring spinach, and a thick mat of it holds and mulches winter-bare soil against spring rain before dying back on its own once summer heat arrives. It spreads by both seed and rooting stems, so a patch renews itself continuously through the cool season and needs encouragement more than control.