Crepis foetida L.
stinking hawksbeard
Annual. Stems erect, divaricately branched above, ribbed to grooved, c. 40-60 cm tall; hairs both white, slender, subappressed, and pale, spreading, coarser, glandular. Rosette and lower stem lvs thin, petiolate, linear-oblanceolate, runcinately pinnatifid, 5-15 × 2-4 cm, with pale hairs 1-2 mm long; lobes patent, entire or toothed. Upper stem lvs similar, becoming sessile and simple, narrowly oblanceolate to linear, with narrowly triangular teeth especially at subauriculate base. Capitula turbinate; buds nodding or drooping. Involucral bracts with dense glandular and finer eglandular hairs on outer surface and fine appressed eglandular hairs on inner surface; outer bracts 12-15, linear, c. ⅓ length of inner bracts; inner bracts linear-oblanceolate, keeled, 9-12 mm long, with pale to scarious, ± glabrous margins. Receptacle areoles with raised ciliate margins. Corolla yellow, with red stripe on outer face of ligule. Achenes brown, 10-ribbed, fusiform, scabrid, 8-13 mm long, the outer not beaked, the inner beaked. Pappus bristles in 2 rows, fine, dull white.
N.: Auckland (Remuera), Hawke's Bay (Westshore); S.: one early collection from Canterbury (near Springston).
Europe, S.W. and C. Asia 1870
Pastures, gardens.
N.Z. specimens belong in C. foetida subsp. foetida. C. foetida is distinguished from all other Crepis spp. in N.Z. by variation in achene beaks (outer achenes not beaked and tightly enfolded in the inner involucral bracts; inner achenes long-beaked), by the buds drooping or nodding, and by its foetid smell. The long achene beaks cause the pappus to be almost completely exserted beyond the involucral bracts at fruiting. C. foetida has also been referred to in N.Z. as Barkhausia foetida.
