Common nipplewort (Lapsana communis)

Common Names: Nipplewort

Description: Produces a milky-latex substance used for sensitive skin.

Habit: Erect; annual; 1/2- 5 ft tall with milky juice; slightly reddish stems with white glandular.

Leaves: Thin, alternate, petiolate, ovate to sub-rotund blade, shallowly toothed, 2.5-10 cm long and 2-7 cm wide, narrowed and less petiolate upward.

Stems: Straight; simple or branchy; 20-100 cm in height; hollow; ridged from above; often reddish green; glabrous or pubescent in the lower part; simple hairs or with an impurity of glandular hairs.

Flowers: Arranged in groups of 5-25 with 8-15 ray florets each, 5-toothed tips, inflorescence of several to many heads in loose clusters on bare stalks; blooms June through September.

Fruit and seeds: Smooth, curved dry seed with no fluffy pappus. Nerved; oblong; 3-5 mm long.

Habitat: Native to Russia and Europe. Grows well in moist shaded areas. Found in woods, fields, disturbed sites.

Reproduction: By seed. Plant can produce 400-800 seeds, viable for 6 years.

Similar species: Wall Lettuce (Mycelis muralis); Western Rattlesnakeroot (Prenanthes alata).

Monitoring and rapid response: Hand-pulling; mowing before seed set; effectively controlled by the use of the following herbicides: dicamba, clopyralid, and atrazine and mixtures of dicamba and atrazine, bromoxynil and atrazine, diflufenzopyr and dicamba, and atrazine and 2, 4-D.

Credits: The information provided in this factsheet was gathered from the USDA PLANTS Database.

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 (https://images.google.com).

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