Calendula arvensis Seeds | Field Marigold
LATIN NAME: Calendula arvensis
COMMON NAME: Field Marigold
Plant Profile
Field marigold is the wild, small-flowered cousin of the pot marigold, native to the Mediterranean and western Asia and long established as a weed of arable fields, vineyards and disturbed ground across Europe. It grows ten to forty centimetres tall with narrow, pale green leaves and small daisy flowers one to two centimetres across, usually bright yellow, sometimes with a darker centre.
It flowers from spring into summer and seeds itself freely. The whole plant is downy and slightly sticky, with a resinous scent, and the seed heads curve as they ripen, which is one of the ways the genus differs from its relatives.
Science & Biotechnology
The species is of interest in farmland biodiversity research, because it is one of the segetal weeds that have declined sharply since the 1950s with the use of herbicides and dense sowing. Surveys in Spain, Italy and France have documented its retreat to field margins and old vineyards, and it is now a target of agri-environment schemes that leave strips unsprayed.
Work on the genus has also compared the flavonoid and carotenoid content of the wild species with the cultivated pot marigold, and has looked at how the two differ in flower size and in the number of ray florets. Its seed bank is short-lived, so a population disappears within a few years of the last flowering.
Uses & Benefits
It has a modest ornamental role, suitable for a wildflower strip or a patch of disturbed ground, but it offers a much smaller display than the garden marigold. The flowers are edible and can be used to colour rice or salads, though the yield is small.
In folk practice the plant was applied to minor wounds and skin complaints, following the pattern of its better-known relative, but the cultivated Calendula officinalis is the species used in modern preparations. Field marigold is of most interest to wildflower enthusiasts and to anyone recording the plants of old farmland.
Its flowers open only in sun, and they close in the afternoon or on cloudy days.
Growing from Seed
Sow directly where it is to grow in autumn or early spring, five millimetres deep, at 15-20C. Germination is fast and the plant flowers within ten weeks. It needs full sun and open ground, and it will self-seed into any bare patch if a few flowers are left to ripen.
Do not enrich the soil; rich ground produces leafy plants with few flowers. Thin the seedlings to fifteen centimetres apart so the plants have room to spread, and water only while they are establishing, since the species tolerates dry ground once it is growing.
Water the drill after sowing, then leave the patch alone.
It competes poorly with taller weeds, so keep the ground open around it.
Our Take
Field marigold is a wildflower of arable land rather than a garden plant, and its small flowers are best appreciated in a strip of disturbed ground. It is easy from seed and gone in a season.
Related Reading
More species in the same orbit as Field Marigold: