Great leopard's-bane

Doronicum pardalianches is an upright perennial herb of the Asteraceae family, growing 30 to 90 centimetres tall from a knotted, creeping, tuberous rhizome that produces small, fleshy underground runners. The basal leaves are long-petioled, broadly ovate to cordate, 6 to 15 centimetres across, with a deeply heart-shaped base, irregularly toothed margins and softly hairy surfaces, while the stem leaves are alternate, smaller, the lower ones clasping by an auriculate or amplexicaul base and the upper ones sessile and lanceolate. The slender, branched flowering stems bear two to six showy, daisy-like flower heads, each 4 to 7 centimetres across, with bright yellow ray florets surrounding a yellow disc of tubular florets; the involucral bracts are narrow and softly hairy. Flowering occurs from late spring to early summer. The fruits are small ribbed achenes, the disc achenes bearing a white pappus and the ray achenes usually lacking one. Native to western and central Europe, the species grows in damp deciduous woodland, hedgerows and shaded banks.