Herbariuma Backpackers project
All plants

Rough hawkbit

Thrincia hispida

Family · Asteraceae · Harmless

The yellow flower anyone would call a dandelion, and is not: a solid, not hollow, stem covered in two or three-pointed hairs, and a single head at the top.

Where it grows

Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Dunes and sand · Uplands

Also known as

hairy hawkbit, rough leontodon

In flower

How to tell it

A rosette of cut leaves covered in rough hairs branching into two or three points, seen with a lens and decisive. A leafless stem, solid when squeezed, with a single yellow head. The heads close in rain and at night. Without abundant latex, unlike dandelion.

What it is confused with

Dandelion

Taraxacum officinale

Harmless confusion

Squeeze the stem: hollow and full of milk in dandelion, solid and nearly milkless in this. And dandelion's outer bracts bend downward, this one's stay pressed close.

Open sheet

What it is for

No relevant use. It serves to dismantle a common error: not every yellow flower with a rosette is a dandelion, and the fastest way to separate them is to squeeze the stem, because a dandelion's is hollow and gives way.

Sources

No photo with a verified licence yet