Flora of New Zealand Series

catsear

Perennial. Stems ascending to erect, usually branched, glabrous or with a few sparse hairs below, 4-60-(150) cm tall. Lvs all basal, oblanceolate to linear-oblanceolate, usually shallowly to deeply pinnatifid, rarely simple and toothed, (2)-4-20-(40) × (0.5)-0.8-4-(9) cm, with moderately dense pale strigose hairs. Stem bracts few, minute. Capitula turbinate to campanulate. Involucral bracts linear-lanceolate with narrowly acute apex, 6-15 mm long at flowering, up to 20 mm long at fruiting, glabrous except for a row of strigose hairs on midrib (the distal hairs dark), herbaceous or with narrow scarious border. Florets yellow, c. 11/2× length of involucre. Achenes dark brown, scabrid, fusiform, beaked, 8-16 mm long, sometimes the outer achenes not or shortly beaked and then shorter. Pappus in 2 rows, the outer hairs short, slender, scabrid to plumose, the inner up to 12 mm long, plumose.

N.; S.: throughout; St.; K., Ch., C.

Europe, N. Africa 1867

Pasture, grassland, lawns, sand dunes, roadsides, riverbeds, waste ground, stony ground, railway ballast, scrub and damaged forest, swamps, up to 1400 m.

The row of strigose hairs on the midrib of the involucral bracts, like a miniature cock's comb, distinguishes H. radicata from H. glabra.