Ragwort

About the Ragwort

A yellow-flowered member of the daisy family, carrying loose flat-topped clusters of small bright heads on upright stems above a rosette of basal leaves. Each head has the classic composite structure - a ring of yellow ray florets around a denser yellow centre - and the whole plant reads as a cheerful splash of gold along a roadside or a canyon slope.

Ragworts are notoriously difficult to identify to species. Texas has a good number of them, several very similar, and telling them apart usually comes down to the shape and cut of the basal leaves rather than the flowers, which look much alike across the group. Many species formerly placed in Senecio have been moved to Packera, so older references and newer ones often disagree on the name.

They are among the earliest substantial wildflowers of the year in much of Texas, often blooming while the surrounding grass is still winter-brown, and in a good spring they can carpet whole slopes.

The plants contain alkaloids that make them unpalatable and toxic to livestock in quantity, so grazed pastures sometimes end up with more ragwort than anything else - cattle eat around them. For insects they are valuable early nectar, working hard for bees and butterflies at a point in the season when little else is open.