07-July London’s Floral Puzzles

When trying to decide whether you have found a cat’s ear, hawksbit, hawksbeard, hawkweed or sowthistle, it is more useful to examine the leaves, stem and seeds rather than the flowers.

Cat’s ear Hypochaeris radicata is one of the most common of all, usually noticed in abundance on lawns or in closely cropped grass. Its flower is a brighter yellow than most and its leaves are roughly hairy with diagnostic rounded blunt ends. It has long, leafless stalks up to sixty centimetres in length with few branches and small, scale-like bracts. It is these bracts that are the ‘cat’s ears’ that may help in its identification.

Hawksbits also have no real stem leaves, but it is the lack of ‘chaffy scales’ in the flowerhead that can help to identify them. Three species, lesser, rough and autumn hawksbit may all be in flower now. If the top of the flower stalk is very hairy it will be rough hawksbit Leontodon hispidus and if almost hairless, lesser hawksbit L. taraxacoides. Autumn hawksbit L. autumnalis is by far the most common and is readily identified by its branching stems or deeply lobed leaves, neither of which the other two possess.

Hawkbeards are another group that do not possess the ‘chaffy scales’ in among the flowers on the flowerhead. They do, however, usually have leafy stems. Another of their distinguishing features is the ring of sepal-like bracts around the flowerhead giving the appearance of a double sepal ring below each flower.

Beaked hawksbeard Crepis vesicaria, rough hawksbeard C. biennis and smooth hawksbeard C. capillaris are the most likely ones to be seen in London. Beaked is best identified by the distinctive ‘beak’ or small stalk joining each individual seed to its parachute. Rough hawksbeard has no such ‘beak’ but is hairless. Other similar species such as foetid hawksbeard C. foetida has leaves which smell of bitter almonds and bristly oxtongue Picris echiodes has distinctive white swellings or pimples on its leaves. Yet another confusing species is hawkweed ox-tongue P. hieracioides which lacks the white pimples but has much more waxy spearhead-shaped leaves.

Hawkweeds are distinguished by several rows of outer bracts similar to knapweeds. They also tend to have alternate leaves which are both spearhead-shaped and toothed. Unfortunately, there are two hundred and sixty of these in Britain and forty of them can probably be found around London. So identifying the composite as a hawkweed might be just about as far as you want to go. There is, however, one species which is both very common and easy to recognise i.e. Mouse-ear hawkweed Pilosella officinarum.

We are still left with the sowthistles. These all have auricles on their leaves which are leafy outgrowths often clasping or surrounding the stem. There are three species which are ubiquitous throughout London. The smooth sowthistle Sonchus oleraceus has pointed auricles and is smooth.

The prickly or rough sowthistle S. asper has rounded auricles and is prickly and the perennial or corn sowthistle S. arvensis also has round auricles but has deeper yellow flowers and much more shiny leaves than the other two. Finally, if this helps, the leaves of the corn sowthistle are double-toothed whereas those of rough sowthistle are edged with spines.

The largest of all these composites more often than not tend to be the sowthistles which can reach two metres in height. Among the more common species, beaked hawksbeard and rough hawksbeard are close behind. Other species tend to be much smaller. If all this was not confusing enough, there are still the lettuces. Great lettuce Lactuca virosa has purple stems unlike the red stems of a number of other composites.

Wall lettuce Mycelis muralis has large, triangular-ended leaves which are often purple in colour and lastly the very noticeable prickly lettuce or Compass plant L. serriola has leaves with a very pronounced midrib on their underside which is fiercely armed with prickly spines. All these characters are really just tips to help a field identification of common yet plants which are everywhere in July. Theseus can’t have had much of a problem identifying the smooth sawthistle as this is what he ate to give him the strength to kill the minotaur.

Other uses for this group of plants included soothing sore nipples (nipplewort), increasing milk in nursing mothers (sowthistles) and improving the eyesight of hawks (hawkweeds). Great lettuce, as it smelt like opium, was infused in wine and used as a narcotic.