Common comfrey

Short Description

Comfrey is a perennial plant with a growth height of up to one metre.

The leaves form a basal rosette or are alternately arranged on the stem. They are narrow and lance-shaped, rough and covered in bristly hairs.

The stem is upright to upward, stiff and covered in bristly hairs. The leaves emerge from the stem like wings.

The flowers appear in distinctive curled clusters of flower heads. Their colour ranges from white and cream to purplish-pink and dark purple. The petals are largely fused into tubes, but the flower shows five distinct crown lobes.

The fruit consists of four mericarps (mericarpic nutlets). Mericarps are fruits that split into several sections after ripening.

In the city

In an urban environment, comfrey can often be found at riverbanks and damp ditches. It prefers damp to wet sites rich in nutrients and alkalines. It is a nitrogen-indicator plant and mainly grows where the soil is oversupplied with nitrogen. The plant takes nitrogen out of the soil and thus has a regulatory effect.

Gardeners use the liquid from decomposed comfrey leaves (“comfrey tea”) as a soil improver because of its excellent qualities as an organic nitrogen fertiliser.