Found in similar places to: Sea Milkwort [to which it superficially resembles]. Easily confused with : other Scurvygrasses but Danish Scurvygrass is the earliest flowering scurvygrass, and has stem leaves that are stalked, and with the topmost leaves pentagonal (or Ivy shaped). Seed pods egg shaped.

Hybridises with : Common Scurvygrass (Cochlearia officinalis) to produce Cochlearia danica × officinalis.

Not to be confused with : Grass Of Parnassus, Sea Arrow-grass, Marsh Arrow-grass, Sparrowgrass, Eelgrass, Yellow-eyed Grass, Blue-eyed Grass, Grass Poly, Grass-leaved Orache, Grass-wrack Pondweed or Grass [plants with similar names].

No relation to : Grass [a plant with similar name].

Danish Scurvygrass is salt-tolerant and grows in grassland or bare ground, including sand, near the sea. It is also spreading inland along dual carriageways on major roads and motorway verges because of the salt used to de-ice the roads in Winter. It is annual or biennial and low, less than 6 inches high, tending to sprawl low.

CALYSTEGINES Danish Scurvygrass contains a total of about 5000µg/g of Calystegines, polyhydroxylated nortropanes, of which roughly 92% is Calystegine A5, 5% Calystegine A3, and 3% Calystegine B3. This is more than twice as much of the total content of Calystegines as that of the next highest concentration of Calystegines in members of Cochlearea species, English Scurvygrass (Cochlearia anglica). This is possibly because Danish Scurvygrass has to tolerate a higher concentration of salt. Calystegines, being related to tropanes, are toxic, but have only been discovered relatively recently. They are present in quite a few Families incuding the Solanaceae, Moraceae, Convolvulaceae, and Brassicaceae and many more Genera. Generally, they are alkaloidal glycosidase inhibitors, and are found not only in many plants but also some fungi. In mammals they inhibit lysosomal glycosidases which are involved in glycoprotein processing. As such they have a lot of potential in chemotherapy against cancer, since oncogene products and cancer-specific proteins sometimes show unique glycosyation patterns. CALYSTEGINE NOMENCLATURE The author thinks he has worked out the nomenclature of the Calystegine alphabetic designations; he thinks A has three hydroxyl groups, B four, and C five, etc, but he has no idea what they do when there are only two or fewer hydroxyl groups. There is a further designation, that of 'N' as in Calystegine N1 where there is an NH2 group substitution for a hydroxy OH group.

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