Scorzonera

Podospermum laciniatum (syn. Scorzonera laciniata), the cutleaf vipergrass or false salsify, is a biennial or short-lived perennial herb in the Asteraceae (tribe Cichorieae) native to southern and central Europe, North Africa, and western Asia and naturalized as a ruderal weed in parts of North America. Plants arise from a stout, fleshy, blackish brown taproot exuding milky latex and produce one or several erect, branched, ribbed stems 20 to 60 centimetres tall. The leaves are alternate, deeply pinnatifid to bipinnatifid with narrow linear lobes, the basal forming a rosette and the cauline gradually reduced and clasping. The capitula are solitary at branch tips, with cylindrical involucres of imbricate, lanceolate, sometimes hispid bracts subtending 15 to 30 ligulate yellow florets. The fruit is a slender, ribbed cypsela with a distinct slender beak (whence the generic name) bearing a tawny pappus of plumose bristles that aids wind dispersal.