Prickly goldenfleece
Urospermum picroides
Family · Asteraceae · Harmless
The pale yellow composite of southern cornfields and verges, rough with bristles and genuinely bitter. It is among the most gathered wild leaves in Andalusia and the Alentejo, always boiled with the water changed.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside · Montado
Also known asbitter goldenfleece
How to tell it
A pale yellow, almost cream head ringed by large bracts fused at the base into a cup, which is the genus's sign. Cut, rough leaves with stiff bristles. White latex in the stem.
What it is confused with
Beaked hawksbeard
Crepis vesicaria
Both yellow, bitter and edible cooked. This has bracts fused into a cup around the head, and is rougher and paler; the other has free bracts.
What it is for
Rosette leaves boiled, very bitter, in southern stews and scrambles. Gathered before the plant bolts. It is hard-times food that stayed on as tradition.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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