Great Mullein - Verbascum thapsus

Medium to tall, soft greyish, or whitish woolly plant to 2 metres, though often less. Flowers yellow 12 to 35 mm in dense woolly spike like raceme, occasionally branched below.

Several other Mulleins with white-woolly stems and leaves have been recorded in VC55

This is a difficult genus, compounded by a large number of hybrids, and garden escapes that may become established briefly in the wild.  

Upper and middle stem leaves are decurrent. The 3 upper stamens are reniform (kidney-shaped) and the two lower are decurrent; the style is capitate (with a knob-like stigma)

A photograph of the whole plant, and details of flowers.

Waste ground, scrub, roadsides and rough grassland.

June to August.

Biennial.

Common in England and Wales scarcer elsewhere.

Fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 132 of the 617 tetrads.