Spec. Char. Rays spreading, its florets elliptical, nearly en- 
tire. Leaves smooth, pinnatifid, with distant, and somewhat strap- 
shaped, segments. 
Engl. Bot. t. 600.— Sm. FI. Brit. v. ii. p. 883. Eng. FI. v. iii. p. 431.— With. 
(7th ed.) v. iii. p. 937.— Lind). Syn. p. 146.— Hook. Br. FI. p. 361.— Gray’s 
Nat. Arr. v. ii. p. 470. — Purt. Midi. FI. v. iii. p. 64. — Walk. FI. Oxf. p. 241. — 
Senecio Chrysanthemifolius, Bivona Bernardi Cent. 2. 52; fide Sir J. E. 
Smith. 
Localities. — On walls, and among rubbish.— Oxfordshire ; very common 
on walls, and among rubbish, in and about Oxford.— Berkshire ; On a wall at 
Wytham, on the left hand side just as you enter the village from Godstow. May 
22,1833. W. B. — Devonshire; On walls and rubbish atBiddeford: E. For- 
ster, Esq. in Hook. Br. FI. 
Annual. — Flowers from May to October. 
Root fibrous. Stem upright, from a foot to 18 inches high, 
branched, leafy, smooth, striated, often a little hairy. Leaves 
nearly or quite smooth, bright green, rather fleshy, either sessile or 
somewhat stem-clasping, deeply wing-cleft, the segments narrow, 
nearly strap-shaped, pointed, distant, and more or less toothed, 
their margins somewhat revolute (rolled back), sometimes purplish 
underneath. Flowers loosely corymbose, terminal, upright, not 
numerous, accompanied with small awl-shaped bracteas on the 
partial stalks. Calyx smooth, inner scales narrow, strap-shaped, 
equal, outer fewer, small, loose, all of them tipped with black ; 
reflexed when the seeds are ripe. Florets all of a bright, golden 
yellow; those of the disk very numerous; of the ray about 12, 
oval, broad, slightly 3-toothed at the extremity, generally spreading, 
but becoming revolute as tbey fade. Seeds a little silky. Down 
(fig. 5.) roughish. The plant smells like Tansy or Mugwort. 
The late Sir Joseph Banks is said to have been the first who 
noticed this species on the walls about Oxford. Dillenius is re- 
corded to have sent seeds of it to Linnaeus, but whether he gathered 
them from the Oxford Garden, or from the walls of the town, is 
uncertain. It is a native of Sicily and the South of Europe ; and 
it is not improbable but it originally naturalized itself about Oxford 
from seeds which escaped from the Botanic Garden. There is no 
doubt but it is the senecionis species alluded to by Dr. Sibthorp, 
in his Preface to the Flora Oxoniensis, p. 8, (1794) ; but it was not 
published as a British plant till the late Sir James Edward Smith 
inserted it in the English Botany, and in his Flora Britannica, 
published in 1800. 
The trivial name squalidus, or inelegant , seems misapplied, as it 
is one of the handsomest British species in the genus. 
