Cat's ear
Hypochaeris radicata
Family · Asteraceae · Harmless
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The yellow flower everyone calls a dandelion and which is not. It fills lawns and meadows across the country and is told apart by one simple thing: the stalk branches, and a dandelion's never does.
Fields and pasture · Town and roadside · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands
Also known ascommon catsear, false dandelion
How to tell it
A rosette of ground-hugging leaves, roughly hairy on both sides, with rounded lobes. The stalk is solid, branches into two or three flowers and carries small scales instead of leaves. A dandelion's stalk is hollow, bare and single-flowered.
What it is confused with
Dandelion
Taraxacum officinale
The stalk settles it: hollow, bare and single-flowered on dandelion; solid, scaly and branched here. And cat's ear's leaf is hairy, dandelion's is smooth. Both edible.
What it is for
Young leaves in salad and cooked, less bitter than a dandelion's, and used in Crete as a gathered vegetable. The root was also roasted as a coffee substitute.
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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