Broad-leaved ragwort

Senecio sarracenicus (also treated as Senecio fluviatilis), broad-leaved ragwort, is a tall rhizomatous perennial herb in the Asteraceae family native to Europe, from the British Isles and France eastward through central Europe to Russia, where it grows on damp ground along rivers, in wet woodland margins, ditches, and fens. Plants form spreading colonies from creeping rhizomes and produce erect, leafy, sparsely branched stems 80 to 200 centimetres tall. The leaves are alternate, sessile and somewhat clasping, lanceolate to elliptic, sharply serrate along the margins, glabrous to slightly hairy, and lack the deep pinnate division of common ragwort. Flowering occurs from midsummer to early autumn; the inflorescence is a flat-topped to loosely paniculate corymb of numerous yellow capitula, each about two centimetres across with five to eight short ray florets and a yellow disc. Fruits are slender, ribbed cypselas with a white pappus.