Mignonette (Reseda lutea) is a native berb that has dense terminal spikelike clusters of yellowish white flowers. The scent of the flowers is an intense spicy fragrance. It is a good green roof plant, where the substrates are deeper than 100mm.[slideshow id=20]
Mignonette can be found on wastelands and other places where the soils are well drained, such as road verges, sand dunes and brownfield sites. This makes it a relatively suitable plant for green roofs, biodiverse roofs and brown roofs. The plant forms small clumps and the conical spikes of green/yellow/white flowers are very attractive to a range of bees, butterflies and moths. It has conical spikes of small, unscented, green-yellow flowers that alternate up the stem and are much visited by bees. The plant is similar to weld but is smaller.
Small White Butterfly (Pieres rapia) caterpillars use mignonette as one of there food plants and the Red Mason Bee (Osmia rufea) can often be seen feeding on its nectar.
An excellent plant to seed onto a green roof. Many of the roofs in London that we have been involved in have been seeded from seeds collected locally from wastelands. They tend to grow smaller on green roofs than at ground level but still provide a valuable resource for invertebrates.