Synonyms: Senecio glabellus

Common Names: Yellowtop, butterweed, groundsel, ragwort

Description:

Habit: Winter annual or biennial that forms a low rosette of basal leaves.

Leaves: Alternate, petiolate basally, sessile above, pinnately divided. About 20 cm. long and 5 cm. wide, glabrous. Terminal division is rounded, shallow-coarse serrate, larger than the lateral divisions. Lateral leaf divisions are opposite and toothed as leaflet terminates.

Stems: Fleshy, ridged with a purplish tinge, growing up to 1-3 feet tall

Flowers: Yellow in color; stems terminate in flat-headed panicles of flowerheads. Bunched, becoming spread out with age up to 6 in. across. Each flowerhead is 0.50 in. across with 5-15 ray florets that surround numerous disk florets.

Fruit and seeds: Flowerheads are replaced by achenes with small tufts of white hair. Distributed by wind and water.

Habitat: Native to parts of North America. Can be found in agricultural fields, waste areas and streambanks.

Reproduction: By seed and vegetatively.

Credits: The information provided in this factsheet was gathered from Illinois Wildflowers.

Individual species images that appear with a number in a black box are courtesy of the Bugwood.org network (http://www.invasive.org). Individual photo author credits may not be included due to the small display size of the images and subsequent difficulty of reading the provided text. All other images appear courtesy of Google (http://images.google.com).

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