Butter and Eggs (Linaria vulgaris) is a perennial plant with short spreading roots, erect to decumbent stems 15–90 cm high, with fine, threadlike, glaucous blue-green leaves 2-6 cm long and 1-5 mm broad. The flowers are similar to those of the snapdragon, 25-33 mm long, pale yellow except for the lower lip which is orange, born in dense terminal racemes from mid summer to mid autumn. The fruit is a globose capsule 5-11 mm long and 5-7 mm broad, containing numerous small seeds.

It has many common names, including brideweed, bridewort, butter and eggs, butter haycocks, bread and butter, bunny haycocks, bunny mouths, calf’s snout, Continental weed, dead men’s bones, devil’s flax, devil’s flower, doggies, dragon bushes, eggs and bacon, eggs and butter, false flax, flaxweed, fluellen, gallweed, gallwort, impudent lawyer, Jacob’s ladder , lion’s mouth, monkey flower, North American ramsted, rabbit flower, rancid, ransted, snapdragon, wild flax, wild snapdragon, wild tobacco, yellow rod, yellow toadflax.

Uses

While most commonly found as a weed, Butter and Eggsis sometimes cultivated for cut flowers, which are long-lasting in the vase. Like snapdragons (Antirrhinum), they are often grown in children’s gardens for the “snapping” flowers which can be made to “talk” be squeezing them at the base of the corolla.

A yellow dye can also be obtained from the whole plant.