Shrubby sow thistle
Sonchus fruticosus
Family · Asteraceae · Harmless
The sow thistle that turned into a shrub: a woody stem two metres tall with a rosette of enormous leaves at the top and a posy of yellow flowers above. It is what islands do to ordinary weeds.
Walls and rocks · Uplands · Oak woods
Also known asMadeira sow thistle
How to tell it
A woody, thick, little branched stem with leaf scars. Large leaves twenty to forty centimetres, deeply cut, gathered in a rosette at the top. Large yellow heads in a corymb above the leaves. White latex from any cut, the genus's mark. Range: endemic to Madeira.
What it is confused with
Sow thistle
Sonchus oleraceus
The common one is an annual half a metre tall with a hollow soft stem; this is woody, two metres tall, with a stem that does not give under pressure. Both give white latex and both are harmless.
What it is for
No use to recommend
It is a textbook example of island gigantism: the same family as the sow thistle growing in any mainland garden, here turned into a woody shrub because on the islands there were no herbivores eating 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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