White Comfrey

White Comfrey - Symphytum orientale

Description

Medium to tall softly hairy plant without creeping rhizomes. Stems erect, much branched. Leaves rather pale green oval. Flowers white, 14 to 18 mm the lobes not recurved.

Similar Species

Other comfreys may have pale flowers

Identification difficulty
ID checklist (your specimen should have all of these features)

Pure white flowers.  Stem leaves are not decurrent (i.e. there are no wings down the stem from each leaf).

Recording advice

Photograph of whole plant, plus flowers and stems

Habitat

Damp places, woodland and hedgebanks.

When to see it

April and May.

Life History

Biennial or short lived perennial.

UK Status

Not very common in Britain, most records coming from the east and south-east of England.

VC55 Status

Uncommon in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 1 of the 617 tetrads.

Leicestershire & Rutland Map

MAP KEY:

Yellow squares = NBN records (all known data)
Coloured circles = NatureSpot records: 2025+ | 2020-2024 | pre-2020

UK Map

Additional images

All NatureSpot records

Photo of the association

Agromyza abiens/myosotidis/lithospermi agg.

The larvae of the  Agromyzid flies Agromyza abiens, Agromyza myosotidis and Agromyza lithospermi produce identical mines on the leaves of several food plants in the Boraginaeceae family, such as Borage, Comfrey and Green Alkanet plus a number of other host plants. The initial narrow gallery contains frass in a double line, which it then expands to form a blotch mine. Several larvae may occupy a leaf to form a large blotch. Because the mines on these plants cannot be reliably separated to species level we treat them as an aggregate.