Smooth Cat's-Ear

Family: Daisy (Asteraceae syn. Compositae

Smooth Cat's-Ear Photos

Scientific Name:

Hypochoeris glabra

Smooth Cat's-ear plant
Photo: A J Brown

Status:

Native to Europe and western Asia. Naturalised throughout Australia and in New Zealand.

Plant Description:

Annual herb to 90 cm high. Leaves all basal, 2-20 cm long and 5-30 cm wide, obovate to oblanceolate with toothed to lobed margins. Leaves normally hairless or with a few hairs, mainly on the margins.

Flower-heads, 4-16 mm diameter, on branched or sometimes solitary stems. Flowers yellow with each ‘petal’ (actually a complete flower) 2-5 mm long, hardly longer than the involucre (the cup of bracts surrounding the flowers). Fruit a cypsela or achene; the inner being longer (6-12 mm) than the outer (2.5-6 mm).

Habitat:

Widespead throughout most of Victoria from dry to moist sites, on shallow soils and wastelands, in gardens, lawns, roadsides, parklands and bush verges.

Region	Salinity Class	Waterlogging Class
Mallee, Loddon Murray	S0, S1	W1, W2
Central and Northern, Wimmera, Western, Gippsland	S0, S1, S2	W0, W1, W2

Comments:

Very similar to Cat’s-ear (Hypochoeris radicata) from which it differs in its hairless or almost hairless leaves and its smaller flowers. Smooth Cat’s-ear belongs to a group of mainly yellow-flowered daisies in the Tribe Lactuceae. The plants in this tribe are characterised by having a basal rosette of leaves (flat-weeds), milky sap in their stems and their flower-heads consisting entirely of ray florets (i.e. no ‘eye’ to the daisy). See Key to Yellow Daisy Flat-weeds.

Smooth Cat's-Ear Photos

Leaves of Smooth Cat's-ear Photo: A J Brown	Flower-head of Smooth Cat's-ear Photo: A J Brown
Developing seed of Smooth Cat's-ear Photo: A J Brown

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