Corn Cockle

Did you know

• Once one of the most common weeds in European wheat fields, corn cockle has been driven nearly extinct in the wild by modern seed cleaning—it now exists almost entirely in gardens.
• Medieval bakers feared it: cockle seeds mixed into flour would turn bread bitter and could even be mildly toxic, causing 'cockle poisoning' in poor villages.
• The starry magenta flowers sit on impossibly long, slender stalks—up to a foot above the foliage—giving them a floating, weightless quality in the breeze.
• Its disappearance from British farmland is so total that some county wildflower societies now distribute corn cockle seed to symbolically restore lost cornfield diversity.
• The genus name 'Agrostemma' literally means 'crown of the field' in Greek—a poetic farewell to a once-ubiquitous bloom.

Color meanings

Uses

• Cut flowers
• Wildflower meadows
• Cottage gardens
• Cornfield restoration