Oxtongue (Picris Echioides, L.)

The habitat of this species is hedges, pathways, hedgebanks, ditches, borders of fields, and waste places on a stiff soil. The habit is as in the last. The stem is erect, branched, stout, hairy, the bristles 3-fid, rigid, hooked, and tuberculate at the base. The radical leaves are stalked, wavy, toothed, the upper heart-shaped, clasping, oblong, lance-shaped. The flowerheads are large, the florets yellow. The flower-stalks are stout, stiff, enlarged, spreading, naked. The involucre is hemispherical, bristly. The outer bracts are leaflike, heart-shaped, the inner long, narrow-pointed. The ligules are short. The fruit is shortly, narrowly beaked, reddish-brown, angular. The pappus is snowy-white. The plant is 1-3 ft. high, flowering between June and October, and is a herbaceous annual.

Hieracium surrejanum, F. J. Hanb. - The habitat of this species is sandy hedgebanks. The stem is usually simple, finely furrowed, reddish, hairy below, woolly-felted, stiffly hairy above. The earlier radical leaves are not persistent, oblong to elliptic, the later broad to egg-shaped, blunt, narrowed below, toothed, the inner egg-shaped to lance-shaped, blunt, wedge-shaped below, purplish, stiffly hairy below and on the border. The stem-leaves are 2-5, the lower stalked, egg-shaped, oblong to lance-shaped, the upper blunt, narrowed to the nearly stalkless base, toothed. The panicle has 1-2, erect, spreading, 2-3-flowered branches in a corymb, the upper arching, exceeding the acladium. The 3-7 heads are broad, egg-shaped. The flower-stalks are woolly-felted, hairy, glandular. The phyllaries are dark, the outer linear, acute, the inner broader, lance-shaped to oblong, narrow above, blunt, with a pale border, woolly-felted, glandular, hairy. The ligules are hairless. The styles are yellow. The plant is 1-2 ft. in height, flowering in June, and is a herbaceous perennial.

Acrid Lettuce (Lactuca Virosa, L.)

The habitat of this plant is hedgebanks, dry banks, and waste places. The habit is erect. The stem is leafy, branched above, panicled, rough. The plant is bluish-green, full of milky acrid juice, which serves to protect it. The leaves are spreading, the radical leaves inversely egg-shaped, oblong, toothed, wavy, stalked, with black spots, the stem-leaves clasping, with auricles, pointing downwards, hardly narrowed below. The flowerheads are pale-yellow, scattered, with few, green, red-tipped, acute, heart-shaped bracts, rarely with the lobes pointing backwards. The panicle branches are long-spreading. The flower-stalks are slender and bear bracts. The involucre is narrow, conical. The fruits are black, beaked, the beak as long as the fruit, with a cellular wing, and ribbed faces. The pappus is white, slender. The plant is 2-4 ft. high, flowering in July and August, and is a herbaceous biennial.