Our plant of the week: the Butcher's Broom

The butcher's broom - Ruscus aculeatus L.

Winter flowers in the Botanical Garden usually attract a lot of attention and admiration. But exceptions prove the rule: discovered only by insiders, the butcher's broom is currently flowering sporadically and inconspicuously. The evergreen plant, which was named "Medicinal Plant of the Year" in 2002, can be found in the Southern European Quarter, in the perennial system and in the Morphology Department.

The tiny flowers are only about 3 mm in size. Six green petals surround a dark purple tube in a star shape. It consists of the widened and fused stamens which enclose the ovary in an ovoid shape. Some flowers have anthers at the tip of the tube, while the ovary is stunted - these are male flowers. In others, the disc-shaped stigma of the fully developed ovary is located above the end of the tube, while anthers are missing - these flowers are female. Each individual plant of the dioecious species always bears flowers of only one sex.

The position of the flowers is also astonishing: do they actually emerge in the middle of the leaves? Appearances are deceptive: what is perceived as a leaf is actually a short shoot that has taken on the shape of a leaf and has become the most important photosynthetic organ of the butcher's broom. Botanists call these modified shoots "phyllocladia". The true leaves of the plant, which have atrophied into dry-skinned scales, lie below the attachment points of the phyllocladia and at the base of the flower stalks

The name "butcher's broom" is derived from its historical use: The twigs with the stiff phyllocladia ending in a prickly tip were once laid out in larders to protect food from mice and rats. It is not only in the Mediterranean region, where the butcher's broom is native, that it is used in floristry and as a Christmas decoration. In medicine, extracts from the underground rhizome are used to treat venous disorders and bladder dysfunction, among other things.

A closely related species, the butcher's broom(Ruscus hypoglossum L.), grows in the Oriental region. It differs from the butcher's broom in having significantly larger phyllocladia without a spiny tip.

(KW 5/25)

Around 10,000 plant species grow in the Botanical Garden of TU Dresden. On this page we regularly present an example of this diversity in more detail. The special features of our scientific plant collection can be seen in many different ways: in amazing adaptations, strange names, interesting uses or even in the extraordinary splendor of their flowers.

You can view previous Plant of the Week articles in the archive.