Jacobaea erucifolia
This species is poisonous and can cause serious illness. Listed here so you can recognise and avoid it.
A tall, greyish perennial ragwort, usually 0.5–1.2 m, with stiff ridged stems branching near the top into broad flat-topped clusters of small yellow daisy-like heads. The leaves are pinnately lobed with narrow, regular, almost parallel lobes and a slim end-lobe, and are noticeably grey and downy beneath. It spreads by rhizomes into patches on lime-rich ground. Not a food plant; it is recorded here so it can be separated from other yellow-flowered composites and from its near-identical relative Common Ragwort.
Calcareous and heavy clay soils: chalk and limestone grassland, old hay meadows, roadside verges, railway banks, scrub edges and coastal cliff-tops. Commonest in central, southern and eastern England and parts of Wales; scarce in Scotland and much of Ireland.
Not edible in any quantity. All parts contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids that cause cumulative liver damage, and neither drying nor cooking breaks them down, so the real risk is leaves finding their way into a mixed salad, soup or tea rather than a deliberate meal. Wear gloves if pulling plants, and wash hands afterwards. Common Ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris) grows in the same places and is equally toxic — its leaves have irregular lobes with a broad, blunt end-lobe and green, nearly hairless undersides, rather than the neat narrow lobes and grey-downy undersides seen here.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Grey, downy leaf undersides
Turn a leaf over: the underside and the stems are softly hairy and greyish — the 'hoary' character. Common Ragwort is almost hairless and green on both sides, and this single check separates the two most reliably.
Regularly lobed leaves with a narrow end-lobe
The leaves are cut into fairly even, narrow lobes set roughly at right angles to the midrib, ending in a small pointed terminal lobe. Common Ragwort's leaves are more irregularly and deeply cut, ruffled, with a blunt end-lobe.
Flat-topped heads of yellow daisies
The yellow flowerheads, each with about thirteen ray florets, are carried in dense flat-topped clusters from July to September. This is the general ragwort look shared across the group, so it confirms the genus rather than this particular species.
Creeping perennial of lime-rich ground
It persists and spreads by creeping underground stems, forming patches on calcareous clay, whereas Common Ragwort is a short-lived biennial or perennial of open, disturbed ground.
Ridged, grey-downy stems
Stems are stiff and finely ridged, clothed in short grey hairs, and branch only in the upper third. Run a thumb up one: a distinctly hairy, ridged stem points away from Common Ragwort, whose stems are usually smoother and often tinged purple towards the base.
Flowers into late summer
In flower from July into September, on average a little later than Common Ragwort growing nearby. The seasons overlap, so treat timing as a hint only and settle the identification on the leaf undersides.
Patch-forming rather than rosette-forming
Rhizomes push up scattered shoots, so plants appear as a loose colony of similar stems. There is no large flat basal rosette of the kind a first-year Common Ragwort produces.
Updated 2026-08-08T12:03:19.394Z · Added 2026-07-22T19:05:20.984Z
Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Other