Plantago major

Common plantain

Family: Plantaginaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Common plantain is a naturalized perennial herb found in California's Foothill Provinces, Great Basin, and southern Mojave Desert in disturbed areas at elevations below 2,200 meters. Flowering from April to September, this plant produces small, inconspicuous greenish-white flowers in dense linear spikes 5 to 60 centimeters tall. Growing with a short caudex and fibrous roots, it forms a low-growing rosette with broad leaves 5 to 18 centimeters long. Its leaf blades are widely elliptical to slightly heart-shaped, narrowing abruptly to the petiole and often with fine teeth along the margins. The plant produces numerous small seeds, typically 5 to 16 per flower spike, and is commonly found in disturbed ground, roadsides, and urban landscapes.

Habitat: Disturbed areas

Bloom period: Apr-Sep

Elevation: < 2200 m

Bioregions: CA-FP (exc SNF, Teh), GB, DMoj (uncommon)

California counties: Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Mendocino, Santa Barbara, Orange, Riverside, Siskiyou, Inyo, Kern, San Diego, Trinity, Lake, San Francisco, Mono, Santa Clara, Modoc, Humboldt, Colusa, Plumas, Ventura, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, El Dorado, Tuolumne, Fresno, Contra Costa, Nevada, Yolo, Alpine, Sonoma, Placer, Sacramento, Alameda, Butte, San Luis Obispo, Tehama, Sierra, Napa, Glenn, Monterey, Merced, San Joaquin, Mariposa, Stanislaus, Shasta, Yuba, Solano

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.