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Valeriana excelsa

Valeriana excelsa

Valeriana excelsa

Identify the Valeriana excelsa from a photo and log your finds with Florapass.

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How common: Common

Valeriana excelsa is a tall, sweet‑scented wildflower of damp, nutrient‑rich places. It carries airy heads of white to pale pink (sometimes slightly bluish) flowers above divided leaves and a hollow, angled stem. You’ll often see it along shores, streambanks and wet woodland edges.

Did you know?

  • Its fruits carry a tiny fluffy “parachute” that helps them ride the wind.
  • A variable species with subspecies that are hard to tell apart.

About the species

Identification

Tall perennial (40–130 cm) that often spreads by creeping runners. Stem hollow, angled, greenish to brownish, smooth or slightly hairy near the base. Leaves stand in pairs up the stem; each leaf is split into 3–6 pairs of narrow side parts, with the tip part usually broader. Many‑branched clusters hold small, funnel‑shaped, white to pale pink or slightly bluish flowers with a strong scent. Later, small egg‑shaped fruits have a fluffy tuft for wind spread. Looks like common valerian (V. officinalis), but that has more pairs (7–13) and lacks runners. Flowers in Finland in June–July.

Plant group

Herbaceous plants

Habitat

shore

Flowering

Jun–Jul

About the habitat

Moist, nutrient‑rich places: shore thickets and riverbanks, wet groves and forest meadows, and also meadows, abandoned fields, field edges and ditches. Occurs throughout Finland; common in the south and west, rarer in the east and north.

Sources

Photo: Zeke Marshall, CC BY 4.0 https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/6235656178

Text: Pinkka: A Pohjolan kasveja - Tanacetum-Vaccinium, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39359

Text: Pinkka: BIO-514 Pohjois-Suomen putkilokasvit - Taraxacum-Viscaria, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39359

Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehtovirmajuuri

See also