Anthemis cotula
Kamomillkulla i oktober, i januari och i maj

Eva Ekeblad, 2002

   When the "Pineappleweed" started getting white ray florets on the two heads coming into flower at the same time I brought it to the scanner and made a number of "live" scans (flower heads weighted down with a pair of chopsticks). I sent a sample scan to Erik Ljungstrand, who told me to look out for bracts between the disk flowers - it might be an Anthemis. I checked out some nice shots of the Anthemis cotula at bioimages.org - with bracts well visible. Well, I couldn't see any bracts on mine, then in the beginning. And with the disk flowers still unripe, the flower head was fairly flat: more like a Scentless Mayweed than like a Scented one. Although when I handled the plant as much as I did, my nose started noticing an aroma: not like the Scented Mayweed, more like a Yarrow or Tansy. I quite liked it (NOT fair to call it stinking).
   As the disk florets started opening, the flower head lengthened. I still couldn't see any bracts. Perhaps just a bit, something down between the central disk florets. Surfed the Web for ideas, and sort of convinced myself it might be a Roman Chamomile, because that one would seem to have fairly hidden bracts, as well as being sometimes grown in American and British lawns - why could it not have escaped from some Swedish gardening in that vein into the new soil put into the New Lawn last July... Erik was not at all convinced, though: and then he had checked the Chamaemelum nobilein the university herbarium on my behalf - suggesting that I set my expectations to the Scentless Mayweed, after all.
   But when the bracts turned up on another of my scans - proving that at least it wasn't one of the Mayweeds ‚ I sacrificed one of the flower heads (there was a third one well under way by then) and gave it the page of the day as Roman Chamomile. A couple of days later Erik brought the Flora Europeaea over, placed it on my kitchen table for going through the key with the potted weed next to the book. Well, for REALLY deciding between the Roman and the Stinking that way, you need ripe seeds... and since we also looked at the Anthemis at Bioimages, which reminded Erik that the ray florets of the Anthemis are sterile - and they clearly weren't on my sample... I didn't see any reason to change the ID on this page.
   Not until Erik reported from a comparison of the Anthemis and the Chamaemelum in the herbarium, oriented to the bracts in particular: with those narrow and entirely herbaceous ones it can hardly be anything but the Stinking Chamomile, after all. I have seen them myself now, and hereby adapt the page. (2002-03-31)