Localities. — In meadows, pastures, and waste places ; common. 
Perennial. — Flowers from June to September. 
Root strong, tapering, running deep into the ground ; brown 
externally, white and milky within. Stems several, a foot or more 
high, branched, spreading, somewhat angular, smooth, rather 
glaucous, without leaves, hut furnished with small, scattered, spear- 
shaped scales. Leaves all radical, spreading in a circle on the 
ground, flattish, oblong, bluntish,runcinate, the segments and sinuses 
rounded, rough with long white simple hairs, which proceed from 
little prominent points. Peduncles ( flower stalks ) longish, hollow, 
a little thickened upwards, clothed with small, scattered, appressed, 
awl-shaped bracleas. Flowers rather large, solitary, bright yellow. 
Involucrum of several, imbricated, unequal scales (see fig. 1, a.); 
the outer of which are short, the inner ones longer, spear-shaped, 
pointed, strongly keeled, smooth except the keel which is rough, 
with rather long, white, rigid hairs, and a few shorter black ones 
towards the apex ; the margins of the upper half minutely fringed, 
densely so at the apex. Florets (see fig. 2.) strap-shaped, blunt, 
deeply and acutely 5-toothed at the summit, tubular at the base, 
with a tuft of yellow hairs at the orifice of the tube. Seeds oblong, 
striated, tawny. Pappus (see fig. 5.) of all of them stalked and 
feathery. Scales of the Receptacle (see fig. 6.) thin, membranous, 
spear-shaped, taper-pointed, keeled, distantly fringed in the upper 
part. 
A dwarf variety, with a simple stem, or with only one flower, 
and that almost sessile on the side, sometimes occurs in barren 
soil. 
The flowers of this species, according to the observations of 
LiNN./r.us, open between seven and eight o’clock in the morning, 
and close at two in the afternoon. Dr. Withering says, it is 
the Porcellia of old authors, supposed to be a favourite food with 
pigs ; though probably not more so than some others of the same 
class; as Swines' Succory (Lapsana pusilla) , and Sow-thistle 
(Sonchus Oleraceous, 1. 147). 
“ Oh, flowers! sweet goodly flowers ! Ye were loved, in times of old, 
And better worth were crowns of flowers than crowns of beaten gold. 
They wore ye at the marriage-feast, when merry pipes were blown ; 
And, o’er their most beloved dead, fit emblems, were ye strewn 1 
— The Poets ever loved ye, for in their souls ye wrought, 
Like seas, and stars, and mountains old, enkindling lofty thought 1 
But — greater far than all — our blessed Lord did see 
How beautiful the lilies grew, in the fields of Galilee : — 
Consider now these flowers. He said, they toil not, neither spin, — 
And God, himself, the garment made which they are clothed in ; — 
In the perfectness of beauty each several flower is made. 
And Solomon, in all his pomp, was not like them arrayed ; — 
They are but of the field, yet God has clothed them as ye see ! — 
Oh, how much more, immortal souls, will He not care for ye!” 
Mart Howitt. 
