Small-flower hawk's-beard

Crepis pulchra, the small-flowered hawksbeard, is an erect annual herb in the Asteraceae family widespread across much of Europe, North Africa (Morocco, Algeria) and western and central Asia, and naturalised in scattered parts of North America including the eastern and central United States and southern Ontario. From a slender taproot it produces a single stem up to about 1 metre tall, usually well branched in the upper half and clothed at its base in obovate, sinuately toothed leaves; the stem leaves diminish upward and become lanceolate to linear, sessile and clasping. The much-branched inflorescence bears up to 40 small, narrow, cylindrical flower heads, each about 1 centimetre across, with bright pale yellow ligulate ray florets only (no disc florets) and a smooth, glabrous, often glandular involucre of bracts arranged in two distinct rows. The achenes are slender and ribbed, bearing a soft white pappus. The plant favours dry calcareous grasslands, fallow fields, vineyards, roadsides and other disturbed open habitats.