Botanical atlas
One-flowered Broomrape
Orobanche uniflora
This plant is kept in the atlas for identification and safety, not for use. Read the safety notes below before handling it, and keep it away from children, cats, and food.
Orobanche uniflora has long fascinated botanists and wildflower hunters more for its strange biology than for any place in the herbal medicine chest. Early European settlers, watching broomrapes overtake garden and field plants abroad, carried over the old English name for the group after a parasitic relative known to strangle broom shrubs across the Atlantic. Some of its Orobanchaceae cousins earned the folk name cancer-root for their pale, leafless clusters pushing up from bare soil, and while that name sometimes attached loosely to this species too, no reliable tradition of using Orobanche uniflora as food or medicine has come down to us. Its real legacy lives in natural history rather than the apothecary, a small, ghostly reminder that not every wildflower's story ends in a remedy.
Safety.
This wildflower has no established history of culinary or medicinal use and should not be eaten. Digging it up also kills the host plant it parasitizes, so it is best left undisturbed and admired in place.
Our sister app HerbLens identifies one-flowered broomrape from a photo and keeps its full botanical portrait: growing guide, harvest notes, and look-alike warnings.
View on HerbLensHerbSense shares traditional herbal knowledge for education, not diagnosis or treatment. Herbs can interact with medicines and conditions. Speak with your doctor before acting on anything here, and seek care promptly for anything severe, sudden, or worsening.