Oriental false hawksbeard

Youngia japonica is an annual or short-lived perennial herbaceous plant of the Asteraceae family, growing 10 to 80 centimetres tall from a basal rosette of pinnately lobed to lyrate leaves 5 to 20 centimetres long, with the terminal lobe largest and the margins irregularly toothed. The leaves are thin, soft and sparsely hairy, and the plant exudes a milky latex when broken. A slender, branched, often glandular-pubescent flowering stem bears small heads of yellow ligulate florets, each capitulum 4 to 8 millimetres across with 10 to 20 ray florets; flowering occurs over a long season from spring through autumn. The achenes are reddish to dark brown, ribbed, and tipped with a soft white pappus that aids wind dispersal. Native to eastern and southeastern Asia, the species has naturalised widely as a weed of disturbed ground, lawns, gardens and roadsides throughout the tropics and warm temperate regions of the Americas, Africa and Oceania.