CAN YOU TELL THESE APART?
Both are tiny lawn weeds. One is salad. One is poison
chickweed
Stellaria media
tiny white star flowers, single line of hairs on stem
scarlet pimpernel
Anagallis arvensis
tiny orange-red flowers, square stems, toxic
How to tell them apart
White star flowers with split petals = chickweed. Orange-red flowers = scarlet pimpernel.
You can tell them apart right now. The real question is whether you'll still know in three weeks — BloomEDU quizzes you on this pair until the name sticks.
Identify it today. Know it next time.
BloomEDU pairs AI plant ID with spaced-repetition quizzes.
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Common questions
Can you eat chickweed from your lawn?
Chickweed (Stellaria media) is edible and mild, closer to corn salad than to a bitter green. Three checks together confirm it: the stem is round and carries a single line of fine hairs that switches to the opposite side at each pair of leaves, the tiny white flowers have five petals notched so deeply they look like ten, and the stem snaps to leave an elastic inner thread behind. If it came off a lawn, treat herbicide and pet traffic as the real risk rather than misidentification.
How do you tell chickweed from scarlet pimpernel?
Roll the stem between your fingers. Chickweed's is round with one line of hairs; scarlet pimpernel's is square-edged and hairless. In flower it is easier still — chickweed is white with split petals, scarlet pimpernel is salmon to brick orange with five plain rounded petals. Scarlet pimpernel also carries small black dots on the undersides of its leaves, which chickweed never has.
Is scarlet pimpernel poisonous?
Yes. Scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis, also listed as Lysimachia arvensis) contains saponins and cucurbitacins throughout the plant. Eating it causes vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain, and handling it repeatedly gives some people a contact rash; it has poisoned grazing livestock and dogs. Human cases are rarely fatal, but nothing about it is worth eating. One field habit helps: its flowers close in cloudy weather and by mid-afternoon, so a shut flower is not a white one — go back to the stem.
What else gets mistaken for chickweed?
Two plants, and only one of them matters. Mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium species) is hairy all over rather than along one line, and is edible but coarse. Petty spurge (Euphorbia peplus) is the one to know: similar size and habit, but every broken stem bleeds milky white sap, and that sap is toxic and burns skin and eyes. Chickweed sap is clear. Milky sap means put it down and wash your hands.