Astrantia major (L) Great Masterwort
NOMENCLATURE
Astrantia : name used by L’Echose major : greater
Masterwort : from magister : master of healing plants.
OTHER NAMES : pink masterwort.
BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION
TYPE: densely tufted, glabrous perennial. Hs.
AROMA: sickly, foetid smell. ROOTS: Short, creeps.
STEMS: erect, branched, uppermost in a whorl of 3 or more.
HEIGHT : 50-80 cm.
UMBELS : simple.. convex, terminal hermaphrodite, few male. Lateral all
male. Pedicels of hermaphrodite firs. 2-5mm, of male firs 4-10mm.
LEAVES : deeply palmately lobed. Basal 6-17cm, long petiolate. 3-7 oblanceolate
coarsley serrate lobed segments. Middle segment free for 2/3 of length. Cauline
leaves <, shortly petiolate or sessile. Cotyledons contracted into a petiole.
BRACTS : bracteoles 1-2cm, lanceolate, erect, accuminate, entire or slightly toothed at apex,
white beneath, pale greenish, purple above, strongly reticulately veined, = or > flowers.
FLOWERS: white, pink. Pedicels filiform. Calyx teeth triangular, accumminate, > than
notched, inflexed petals. Ovary with flat disc at apex. Pollinated by beetles. Fl. 5-9.
FRUIT : 6-8 mm, x3 long as wide, ovoid, oblong, commisure broad, carpels dorsally
compressed. Covered with 2-dentate vesicular scales arranged in 5 vertical rows on each
mericarp. Commisure broad. Carpophore present. Vittae 1 in each groove, styles 4-5 mm,
divergent or recurved, filiform. Stigma capitate. 2n=28.
HABITAT: Meadows and wood margins.
DISTRIBUTION: intro. N.W. Britain. Herts, Worc. Established 100
years in Stokesay Castle, Shrop. C.& S. France, Germany, Spain,
White Russia. Naturalised in Denmark, Finland, elsewhere.
http://www.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/thome/band3/tafel_043_small.jpg