Common Comfrey agg. - Symphytum officinale

Stout plant to 1.2 metres. Stems erect, widely winged. Leaves large and coarse, untoothed, strongly decurrent (the base running on to the stem), only the lowest stalked. Flowers, pink, whitish or purple-violet 12 to 18 mm bell shaped with reflexed lobes, borne in forked clusters. Because Comfrey hybridizes freely and is so difficult to identify with certainty we have decided to treat Common Comfrey as an aggregate. There are few national experts who have the necessary expertise to arrive at a precise identification with any degree of certainty.

Many other species, hybrids and varieties of comfrey with blue, pink or pale flowers - especially Russian Comfrey and Hidcote Comfrey, for which it is often recorded in error.

The true species has strongly decurrent leaves - i.e wings from each leaf extend down the stem beyond the leaf below (more than 1 internode).  Hybrids often have decurrent leaves, but moderately or weakly so.   The true species also has smooth, shining nutlets.  Flower colour is variable, but rarely white or blue; cream, purplish or striped light and dark purple.

This can't be verified from the flowers alone; a photograph of the whole plant, including leaves and stems.

Damp grassland, roadside verges and banks of streams.

May to July.

Perennial.

Found throughout Britain but scarcer in the North.

Fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 80 of the 617 tetrads.