Succisa pratensis – July 28th 2025 – Devil’s-bit Scabious
I found an elegant horticultural description of this plant: “A delightful soft but rich blue flowered native scabious with the bobbles of flower dancing above the foliage on wiry stems”. My own prose, alas, is less poetic.
A typical field situation ‘bobbles of flower dancing above the foliage’. Image: Chris Jeffree
Succisa pratensis is a native perennial, flowering from now to October. You are unlikely to find it in an urban setting but if you go walking in wild places – across pastures, fens, bogs and marshes, then you will probably see it. It inhabits sites with low fertility, including dunes, heaths, sea-cliffs and the banks of streams. Grime et al. (1988) reported many records from unenclosed pastures, especially those on limestone, but this may reflect the land of the Derbyshire Dales where these authors conducted much of their study. Hill et al. (2008) gave the habitat as ‘neutral grassland’. I recall seeing it on the alpine/artic grassland of Ben Lawers and it has been recorded on derelict ground in the lowlands. Overall, its habitat range is remarkable, and it is a plant that can tolerate stress.
Macro-images to show flower development. Images: Chris Jeffree
Like many stress-tolerators, it is slow-growing and therefore not a good competitor, quite unable to compete with the fast-growing plants we often see as weeds in artificial habitats including nitrogen-enriched farmers’ fields and gardens. The leaves form an evergreen basal rosette, and the flowering shoots are nearly always less than 60 cm tall. They ‘dance’ in the wind, thus making them more attractive to flying insects.
There are two types of flowers: hermaphrodites (with both male and female reproductive organs) and females (no male organs). This ‘gynodioecious’ condition occasionally occurs in plants but is never seen in the animal kingdom. Evolutionary biologists, ever since Charles Darwin, have been trying to understand why this situation occurs.
A visit from a Silver-Washed Fritillary. Image: Chris Jeffree
Irrespective of this unusual sexual condition, the flowers are visited by a wide variety of flying insects including bees, and cross-pollination generally occurs. Seeds are shed directly on the ground around the plant and germination is normally in the spring. Individuals may be four years old before they flower, surviving the hazards of grazing and trampling by biding their time and consolidating their food reserves as inconspicuous ground-level rosettes.
Devil’s-bit Scabious belongs to the Honeysuckle Family, Caprifoliaceae. I can hear you say ‘it looks nothing like Honeysuckle’ and you are right. At a certain stage in flower development, it does however look a bit like another member of the Family, Teasel, if you half-close your eyes. The species was first recorded in Britain by William Turner in 1568, who said it “groweth in untilled places as in meaddowes and plaine feldes” and called it “the devils bite, Morsus diaboli”. There is an early Scottish record1 by Thomas Hopkirk in his Flora Gliottiana. He called it Devil’s-bit Scabious, Scabiosa succisa, and said it grew “in dry fields and pastures, frequent”.
Image of the below-ground organs showing the cut off appearance which gives the plant the name of Devil’s-bit. The image is by Stefan Lefnaer, via Wikipedia Commons. We have inverted his original so that the shoots are at the top. Please do not uproot plants from the wild (it is illegal to do so in the UK without permission of the land owner)
The name Devil’s-bit Scabious comes from the plant’s below-ground structure. It has a rhizome that grows vertically downwards for a few centimetres and then ends abruptly, as if bitten off by none other than the Devil himself. The folk-story is that the Devil was angry when he found the plant was not doing its medicinal job and, enraged, he bit off the root. The word ‘scabious’ comes from the Latin ‘scabere’, meaning to scratch – the plant was used to treat itchy skin including scabies. The name Succisa comes from Latin ‘succidere’, meaning ‘to cut off below’.
Distribution of Succisa pratensis in Britain and Ireland according to BSBI/Maps.
Despite its traditional reputation as a ‘cure-all’ medicinal herb, I found very little research on its chemical constituents. Researchers at Poznan University in Poland have however made some progress in the identification of 86 components in ‘essential oils’ from leaf tissues, and conducted some initial tests on the anti-microbial activity (Witkowska-Banaszczak and Długaszewska, 2017).
Global distribution of Devil’s-bit Scabious, according to GBIF
According to the BSBI’s Atlas 2020, the species may be in decline, at least in England. This is what they say:
“A widespread decline in lowland areas of England took place in the second half of the 20th century, with losses and the subsequent fragmentation of populations largely attributable to the destruction of grassland and heaths. Its 10 km square distribution appears to have stabilized in recent decades, albeit it is now an uncommon species locally in many areas of central and eastern England”.
Notes
1An even earlier record and perhaps the earliest Scottish record is by David Ure in his 1793 work The History of Rutherglen and East-Kilbride. He listed all the plants he found in that part of Scotland. His book can now be accessed on the internet. He recorded Devil’s-bit Scabious from a quarry at Lawmoor, known for being the source of blonde sandstone that was extensively used in the city’s older buildings
An extract from Ure’s The History of Rutherglen and East-Kilbride
References Consulted
Adams, A. W. (1955) Succisa pratensis Moench. Journal of Ecology, 43, 709-718.
Grime JP, Hodgson JG and Hunt R (1988) Comparative Plant Ecology. Unwin Hyman, London.
Hill MO, Preston CD, Roy DB. (2008). PLANTATT – attributes of British and Irish plants: status, size, life history, geography and habitats. Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Abbotts Ripton.
Hopkirk T (1813) Flora Glottiana a catalogue of the indigenous plants on the banks of the River Clyde, and in the neighbourhood of the city of Glasgow. Leopold Classic Library, originally published by John Smith and Son, Glasgow.
van der Meer S, Dahlgren JP, Mildén M & Ehrlén J (2014). Differential effects of abandonment on the demography of the grassland perennial Succisa pratensis. Population Ecology, 56, 151-160.
Witkowska-Banaszczak, E and Długaszewska J (2017) Essential oils and hydrophilic extracts from the leaves and flowers of Succisa pratensis Moench. and their biological activity. Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology 69.11: 1531-1539.
©John Grace
