CHAMOMILE or CAMOMILE FLOWERS, the Flores anthemidis of the British Pharmacopoeia, the flower-heads of Anthernis nobilis (family Compositae), a herb indigenous to west ern Europe. It is cultivated for medicinal purposes in Surrey, at several places in Saxony, and in France and Belgium—that grown in England being much more valuable than any of the foreign chamomiles. In the wild plant the florets of the ray are ligulate and white, and contain pistils only, those of the disk being tubular and yellow ; but under cultivation the whole of the florets tend to become ligulate and white, in which state the flower-heads are said to be double. The flower-heads have a warm aromatic odour, which is characteristic of the entire plant, and a very bitter taste. In addition to a bitter extractive principle, they yield a .volatile liquid, which on its first extraction is of a pale blue colour, but becomes a yellowish brown on exposure to light. It has the char acteristic odour of the flowers, and consists of a mixture of butyl and amyl angelates and valerates. Chamomile is used in medicine in the form of its volatile oil.
Wild chamomile is Matricaria Chamomilla, a weed common in waste and cultivated ground especially in the southern counties of England. It has somewhat the appearance of true chamomile, but a fainter scent.