Plantago ovata is a species of the genus Plantago (Plantago). It is native to the deserts of North Africa and Southwest Asia. The seeds of the plants are sold under the name Indian psyllium or Flohsamenschalen as food and for medicinal purposes, mainly grown for this purpose in India and Pakistan.

Plantago ovata is an annual (sometimes perennial), herbaceous plant with a plant height 20-10 cm. The rulers (often lineal-lanceolate) leaves are ground in a rosette and are 20-10 inches long and 1 to 5, with good water supply to 10 millimeters wide. They are pointed, the margin denticulate removed or mostly entire, einnervig and dense with adjacent, woolly, covered up to 5 millimeters long hair.

The ascending shafts are slightly longer than the leaves, not wrinkled and densely hispid-woolly with 1 (or 2) mm long hairs. The flowers are in dense, ovoid, 0.5 to 2 (rarely 3.5) cm long spikes. The bracts are about 3 millimeters long, ovate to circular, with fuel leaking at the head of the midrib and wide skin edges. The petals are 2 to 2.5 millimeters long, almost the same size, only fused at the base, almost circular and almost flat. You have an emerging midrib and broad, balanced skin edges. The petals are 1.5 to 2 mm long and hairless. Corolla lobe to about 2.5 mm long, broadly ovate to rounded and the tip pointed stumpflich short to very good.

The capsule fruits are elliptical, 2.5 to 3 mm long and glabrous. They each contain two 2 to 2.5 millimeters wide, ovate to oblong-round, boat-shaped, yellow to brown seeds.

The plant has 2n = 8 chromosomes. It blooms after rains, usually from January to April. Depending on the water supply is the plantain in size, leaf shape and hairiness highly variable.

Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantago_ovata
See Also: sending flowers, online florist