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English plantain is a Eurasian exotic that is a familiar lawn weed, one with a wirelike, leafless, five-angled flower stalk 6-18" tall. At the tip of the flower stalk is a 1/2-3" long cylindrical flower spike, initially grey-green but turning brownish as the flowers open. Individual flowers have four sepals, and four petals, but their most obvious character is the long filamentous stamens with white anthers which protrude in all directions from the flower spike. The styles are white, filamentous, and fuzzy. The flowers usually open sequentially from the bottom to the top of the flower spike, first as functional females with protruding styles, then as functional males with prominent stamens; the flower spikes thus typically consist of (from top to bottom): (1) unopened buds, (2) flowers with functional styles, (3) flowers with functional stamens, (4) developing seed pods. The flowers are wind-pollinated.

Plantago

Plantago lanceolata

English plantain [Blooms: May-Aug]

Common plantain is an introduced plant commonly found in lawns and disturbed areas. The flower stalks are erect, 4-20" long; the lower third is green and unadorned while the upper two-thirds is densely covered with 1/8" green flowers. Individual flowers consist of four green sepals with a green keel and membranous margins above a single green bract, four filamentous stamens with tan to purplish anthers, a single white style, and a four small, papery, petals. The flowers are wind-pollinated. The fruits are rounded, egg-shaped capsules about 1/8" long. Common plantain is nearly indistinguishable from (the native) black-seeded plantain (Plantago rugelii); the two species differ only in the details of the sepals and seed pods. (Common plantain's seed capsule is egg-shaped and splits around the middle; black-seeded plantain's seed capsule are 2-3 times longer than wide splits nearer the bottom.) One, more ephemeral, character may help distinguish the two species in the field. According to Minnesota Wildflowers, the base of the leaf stalks of the native species (Rugel's plantain, P. rugelii) are dark red or purple in color; the base of the leaf stalks of the exotic common plantain (P. major) are uniformly green. Rugel's plantain is probably as common and tolerant of a range of habitats as common plantain, but specimens of this plant tend to be reflexively referred to "common plantain."

Plantago

Plantago major

common plantain [?-Aug]