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Smallflower Hawksbeard

Crepis pulchra (L.) Wallr.

Asteraceae (Sunflower Family)

▲▼ mature, flowering plants

▲▼ stems and leaves, showing sticky hairs on both

▲▼ flowers/inflorescences

Crepis pulchra (L.) Wallr., Small-flower Hawksbeard:  (Bayer Code:  not known; US Code CRPU3)

·         Eurasian-native biennial or perennial weed that grows 2-4 feet tall, with leaves and flowering stems covered with glandular, sticky hairs

·         First forms a rosette of slightly to deeply-toothed triangular-lanceolate leaves

·         One or more flowering stems emerge from rosette and remain unbranched until flowering commences; flowering stems are ridged and sticky-hairy; leaves along stems may be more deeply lobed, are usually smaller, and also covered with the glandular-sticky hairs

·         Numerous head inflorescences produced at tips of branches; heads are about 0.25 to 0.75 inch diameter, with yellow ray flowers (with several notches across the blunted tip) and no disk flowers

·         Bracts below the inflorescence are linear-lanceolate and have lines of hairs running along their length

·         Found in reduced tillage fields, pastures, right-of-ways, disturbed sites

·         Flowers of hawksbeard plants may appear similar to those of hawkweed plants (yellow hawkweed, orange hawkweed) or common catsear (Hypochaeris radicata), but hawkweeds and common catsear often are perennials, lack leaves along the flowering stems, and have hairy basal leaves that are oval and smooth-margined, or with a few shallow, rounded lobes

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