Reseda (plant)
Reseda Template:IPAc-en,[1] also known as the mignonette Template:IPAc-en,[2] is a genus of fragrant herbaceous plants native to Europe, southwest Asia and North Africa, from the Canary Islands and Iberia east to northwest India.
Description
Reseda includes herbaceous annual, biennial and perennial species Template:Cvt tall. The leaves form a basal rosette at ground level, and then spirally arranged up the stem; they can be entire, toothed or pinnate, and range from Template:Cvt long. The flowers are produced in a slender spike, each flower small (Template:Cvt diameter), white, yellow, orange, or green, with four to six petals. The fruit is a small dry capsule containing several seeds.
Cultivation and uses
Propagation is by seed, which is surface-sown directly into the garden or grass verge. The plant does not take well to transplanting and should not be moved after sowing.
Mignonette flowers are extremely fragrant. It is grown for the sweet ambrosial scent of its flowers. It is used in flower arrangements, perfumes and potpourri. A Victorian favourite, it was commonly grown in pots and in window-boxes to scent the city air. It was used as a sedative and a treatment for bruises in Roman times. The volatile oil is used in perfumery. Yellow dye was obtained from the roots of R. luteola by the first millennium BC, and perhaps earlier than either woad or madder. Use of this dye came to an end at the beginning of the twentieth century, when cheaper synthetic yellow dyes came into use.[3]
Charles Darwin used R. odorata in his studies of self-fertilised plants, which he documented in The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom.
Species
since March 2014[update]Template:Dated maintenance category (articles)Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". The Plant List recognises 41 accepted species (including infraspecific names):[4]
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- Reseda alba Template:Au White Mignonette
- Reseda arabica Template:Au
- Reseda aucheri Template:Au
- Reseda barrelieri Template:Au
- Reseda bucharica Template:Au
- Reseda complicata Template:Au Glaucous Mignonette
- Reseda decursiva Template:Au
- Reseda ellenbeckii Template:Au
- Reseda glauca Template:Au
- Reseda globulosa Template:Au
- Reseda gredensis Template:Au
- Reseda inodora Template:Au
- Reseda jacquinii Template:Au
- Reseda lanceolata Template:Au
- Reseda lutea Template:Au Wild Mignonette
- Reseda luteola Template:Au Weld
- Reseda media Template:Au
- Reseda minoica Template:Au
- Reseda muricata Template:Au
- Reseda odorata Template:Au Common Mignonette
- Reseda orientalis Template:Au
- Reseda paui Template:Au
- Reseda phyteuma Template:Au Corn Mignonette
- Reseda pruinosa Template:Au
- Reseda scoparia Template:Au Canaries Mignonette
- Reseda stenostachya Template:Au
- Reseda stricta Template:Au
- Reseda suffruticosa Template:Au
- Reseda tymphaea Template:Au
- Reseda undata Template:Au
- Reseda urnigera Template:Au
- Reseda villosa Template:Au
- Reseda virgata Template:Au
- Reseda viridis Template:Au
See also
- Reseda green, a color named after the plant's leaves (not a dye)
References
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- ↑ Template:OED
- ↑ Template:OED
- ↑ Daniel Zohary, Maria Hopf and Ehud Weiss, Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Domesticated Plants in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin, 4th edition (Oxford: University Press, 2012), p. 209
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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External links
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