European heliotrope
Poisonous white-flowered weed of summer stubble and irrigated fields; gives nectar in the summer dearth, but its alkaloids can reach honey.
- Nectar
- Medium
- Pollen
- Low
- Flowering
- JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
- Height
- 0.1-0.5 m
- Life cycle
- Annual
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European heliotrope is a grey-hairy annual herb that grows throughout the summer on stubble left after harvest, in irrigated cotton, maize and vegetable fields, between vines and along roadsides. Small white flowers are lined up along branches that curl like a scorpion's tail. Because it keeps producing nectar in the hot, dry summer months, when most other plants have dried up, honey bees visit it.
Flowering
It flowers from June to October, until the first cold spells of autumn.
Honey and pollen
It has no honey of its own. The plant contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which can pass into honey via nectar and pollen. In Australia, marked alkaloid levels have been measured in honeys from areas where this species and its relatives are abundant.
Note for the beekeeper
It is a poisonous weed that damages the liver of sheep, cattle and horses. In irrigated farmland where it is abundant, harvest the late-summer honey separately and be careful before offering it for consumption; it should not be regarded as a flow source on its own.