Localities. — In meadows, pastures, and waste ground, also on old walls, roofs, 
dry banks, and by road-sides, everywhere. 
Annual. — Flowers from June to September. 
Root tapering, simple, or slightly branched, fibrous, yellowish, 
and milky like the rest of the plant. Stem from 1 to 2 feet high, 
or more, upright, branched, furrowed, smooth, or sometimes slightly 
hairy, purplish, leafy. Leaves smooth, very variable both in size 
and form ; those next the root more or less runcinate, somewhat 
resembling the leaves of the common Dandelion (t. 163.), sometimes 
rather pinnatifid ; those on the stem slightly runcinate, variously 
toothed, stem-clasping, and arrowed-shaped at the base ; the upper- 
most smaller, and nearly entire. Flowers small, yellow, sometimes 
a little purplish on the outside, in a slender, loose, roughisb, 
bracteated, corymbose panicle. Bracteas awl-shaped, lnvolu- 
crum oval when in the bud, becoming afterwards ventricose, equal- 
ling the pappus, more or less downy and glandular, its outer scales 
adpressed, few, small, and short, withering, but scarcely deciduous. 
Seed oblong, not attenuated, ribbed, smooth, shorter than the pap- 
pus. Receptacle with shallow rough-edged cells. 
Mr. Baijington, of St. John’s College, Cambridge, in a Paper 
published in the 17th volume of “ The Transactions of the Liunean 
Society of London,” p. 451, has clearly shown that this plant is 
the Crepis virens of Linn.kus, and not the C. teclorum of that 
author, as has generally been supposed. It is subject to so many 
variations both in shape and luxuriance, as well as smoothness, as to 
have occasioned no small confusion among Botanists, some of whom 
have considered its different varieties as distinct species. The most 
marked forms of these varieties are well defined by Mr. Baijington 
in the Paper above mentioned ; they are as follow. 
“ Crepis Virens, Linn. 
a. Vera. Leaves lanceolate-runcinate, eauline ones lanceolate, sinuato-dentate, 
or nearly entire, sagittate ; stem erect, branched above. C. virens, Linn. Sp. PI. 
p. 1134. — Common Hawkbeard. Pet. Herb. xn. 6. 
j3. Pinnatifida. Radical leaves broadly ovate, blunt, remotely dentate, 
eauline ones linear-lanceolate, very deeply divided into numerous long linear seg- 
ments, the uppermost nearly entire, sagittate ; stem erect, branched above. C. 
■pinnatifida. Willd. Sp. PI. v. iii. p. 1604. — Succory Hawkbeard. Pet. Herb. 
XII. 7. 
y. Stricta. Wallr. Leaves linear-lanceolate, remotely dentate, eauline ones 
slightly sagittate ; stem erect, branched above. C. stricta. Scop. v. ii. p. 99. — 
Buddle’s Hawkbeard. Pet. Herb. xii. 5. 
S. Diffusa. Wallr. Leaves remotely dentate, sinuate or runcinate, eauline 
ones linear, nearly entire, hardly sagittate ; stem diffuse, branching at the base. 
C. tectorum, var. 4. With. Bot. Arr. v. iii. p. 690. [7th edit. v. iii. p. 901.] C. 
diffusa, DC. FI. Fr. v. v. p. 448. Spreng. Syst. v. iii. p. 634. C. virens, Willd. 
Sp. PI. v. iii. p. 1604. Pers. Syu. PI. v. ii. p. 376. — Dandelion Hawkbit, Pet. 
Herb. xii. 4. ?” 
Mr. Babincton observes, that the above mentioned varieties 
are so completely connected by intermediate forms, that it is often 
quite impossible to determine to which of them a particular speci- 
men ought to be referred ; but as they have been adopted as 
species by some Continental authors, he has thought it right to 
define their most marked forms. — The Crepis tectorum of Linn a; us, 
which has not yet been found wild in Britain, is described as hav- 
ing the leaves sinuato-pinnatifid, the fruit (seeds) oblong, attenuated, 
with rough ribs, equalling the pappus ; whereas our plant has the 
fruit smooth, oblong, shorter than the pappus. 
