Plantago Lanceolata
bio:species:plantago_lanceolataPlantago lanceolata — ribwort plantain. Plantaginaceae, order Lamiales. Characters: a flat basal rosette of narrow lance-shaped leaves, each with three to five strong ribs running the length of the blade and no branching side-veins; from the rosette rise leafless, deeply furrowed stalks, each ending in a short, dense, brown-black ovoid spike; the flowers on that spike open in a ring that travels up it, throwing out long white stamens on fine filaments — the plant is wind-pollinated and has no need of colour. Setting: grassland, meadows, waysides and trodden ground, where the flat rosette survives what standing plants do not. Range: native across Eurasia and North Africa, now naturalised on every continent but Antarctica. Naming: planta is the sole of the foot, for a plant of the path; lanceolata for the shape of the leaf. Its English name is shared with the banana called plantain, which is a different plant in a different family on a different continent — two words that arrived in English by separate roads.