Cross Gentian

A special, magical tool

This very rare species bears blue flowers from June to August and prefers full sun.

Once the star gentian was highly regarded as a medicinal plant, which probably accounts for its local decline in the past.

It gets its name entirely from the leaves arranged in a crosswise fashion.
This star shape, which can also be seen in the root, is the reason behind many folk laws and beliefs. The star gentian was thought to help against poison, the plague as well heartbreak: “dig up the root on Johannis day with a coin. At sunrise place the roots under the altar cloth of a priest, who must know nothing of it. He must hold three services over it. Then you will have a very special and magical tool.”

All gentian species are known for their incredibly bitter taste due to the number of glycosides they contain such as amarogentin, gentianmarin, gentiopicrin, and gentin. Frisians added this plant to their herbal drink -Beerenbug.

Ecology and habitat

This species can be found in dunes on dry, calcareous sand mainly on (north) slopes and in a few places in chalk grassland in Zuid-Limburg. A particularly rich area for the species is the dunes at Meijendel and Berkheide near Wassenaar, it is locally present around Haarlem and Castricum. Rabbits like to eat the buds. In the last century there appeared a new subspecies of the gentian blue butterfly, the dune gentian blue, using the star gentian of Meijendel and the marsh gentian along the Meije near Nieuwkoop. This butterfly is now extinct. In Europe the star gentian occurs from north Spain in the south to Scandinavia in the north, and from the Netherlands to West Siberia and the Caucasus Mountains.

Threat

In the Netherlands the star gentian is legally protected. In its habitat within the dunes it is stable and is beginning to spread.