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Category Archives: edible

Hieracium

– Orange Hawkweed
– Devil’s Paintbrush
(H. aurantiacum)
Family: Asteraceae
Hieracium
Although considered a pernicious weed, the bright orange blooms along paths and roadways are breathtaking. I’ve personally transplanted a few to planters on my balcony. They thrive, blooming more than once, if given good fertilizer, right after a blooming is done.

Blackish hairs on the bracts around flower heads and elsewhere were so reminiscent of coal in their blackishness, that herbalists in the sixteenth century called it Grim the Collier.

Flowers and flower-heads

Hieracium or hawkweeds, like others in the Asteraceae family, have mostly yellow,[11] tightly packed flower-heads of numerous small flowers[8] but, unlike daisies and sunflowers in the same family, they have not two kinds of florets but only strap-shaped (spatulate) florets, each one of which is a complete flower in itself, not lacking stamens,[11] and joined to the stem by leafy bracts. As in other members of the tribe Cichorieae, each ray corolla is tipped by 3 to 5 teeth.[8]

Bracts, stems and leaves

Erect single, glabrous or hairy stems, sometimes branched away from the point of attachment, sometimes branched throughout.

The hairiness of hawkweeds can be very complex: from surfaces with scattered to crowded, tapered, whiplike, straight or curly, smooth to setae; “stellate-pubescent” or surfaces with scattered to crowded, dendritically branched (often called, but seldom truly, “stellate”) hairs; and “stipitate–glandular” or surfaces with scattered to crowded gland-tipped hairs mostly. Surfaces of stems, leaves, peduncles, and phyllaries may be glabrous or may bear one, two, or all three of the types of hairs mentioned above.[12]

Like the other members of the Chicory tribe, hawkweeds contain a milky latex.[11]

Ecology

The Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba) feeds on Hieracium species.

Distribution

Hieracium species are native to Africa,[12]Asia, Europe, North America,[13] Central America and South America.

Species

Main article: List of Hieracium species

The classification of Hieracium into species is notoriously difficult. One reason is the apomictic reproduction (in which plants asexually produce seeds), which tends to produce a lot of minor geographical variation. Over 9000 species names have been published in Hieracium but some botanists regard many of those as synonyms of larger species.[12]

Europe

North America

The list below is a selection of species that have been accepted by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service[1] and Canada.[14] A more complete list is given in the list of Hieracium species.

Plant pest

All species of the genus Hieracium are classed as invasive species throughout New Zealand. They are banned from sale, propagation and distribution under the National Pest Plant Accord. Hieracium is a pasture weed that reduces available feed for livestock and displaces the indigenous plants.[15] It is a particular threat in alpine ecosystems previously dominated by native tussocks, though it will colonise habitats from bare ground, to exotic pine forest, to native Southern Beech forest.[16]

In the United States, many species of Hieracium have been introduced and all species present are considered noxious weeds in one or more states.[17]