Senecio hydrophiloides
Senecio californicus
stout meadow groundsel, sweet marsh ragwort, sweet-marsh butterweed, tall groundsel
California butterweed, California ragwort
usually glabrous or glabrescent (young plants sparsely tomentose).
glabrous or sparsely tomentose.
usually single, sometimes 2–4 clustered (sometimes reddish-tinged).
usually single (erect), sometimes 2–6 (branching from bases, arching upward).
progressively reduced distally; usually petiolate (petioles often winged);
blades elliptic to broadly lanceolate, 5–15(–20) × 2–7 cm, bases broadly to narrowly tapered, margins dentate to denticulate (distal leaves sessile, bractlike).
(sometimes subsucculent) evenly distributed; ± petiolate (proximal);
blades linear-lanceolate to lanceolate 2–5(–7+) × 0.5–2(–3+) cm, bases tapered, margins subpinnatifid to dentate or subentire (mid and distal leaves sessile, bases clasping).
0 or (± 3 or 5) ± 8;
corolla laminae 5–10 mm.
± 13;
corolla laminae 8–11 mm.
(± 8) ± 13 (± 21), 4–9 mm, tips (minutely to prominently) black.
± 21 (sometimes fewer), 5–7(–8) mm, tips black.
of 2–5 bractlets (less than 2 mm).
of 5–8+ lanceolate to lance-linear or filiform bractlets (0.5–3 mm, usually inconspicuous).
(6–)15–30+ in congested or loose, corymbiform arrays.
usually 3–10(–20+) in open, cymiform arrays, sometimes borne singly (depauperate plants).
glabrous.
hirtellous-strigose.
= 40.
= 40.
Senecio hydrophiloides
Senecio californicus
Plants of Senecio hydrophiloides from toward the western end of the range tend to have the heads more or less congested and eradiate and stems loosely clustered; plants from toward the eastern edge tend to have heads loosely arrayed and radiate and stems single. The two forms have been recognized as weakly defined species (or varieties), the former as Senecio foetidus and the latter as S. hydrophiloides. They intergrade so completely that they are best treated as a single, variable taxon. The use of the epithet foetidus for the broadly conceived single species was based on a bibliographic misunderstanding; the correct epithet is hydrophiloides (T. M. Barkley 1978; A. Cronquist 1994).
In 1900, Thomas Howell gave the name Senecio oreganus to a collection from Lake Labish, near Salem, Oregon. The area has seen much disturbance and development since Howell’s time, and the plant appears to be extinct in the region. The collection is difficult to exclude from S. hydrophiloides, and the collection is here regarded as an odd outlier of S. hydrophiloides, which is known chiefly from east of the Cascade uplift. Howell’s collection and therefore the name S. oreganus also have been treated within S. sphaerocephalus (T. M. Barkley 1978; A. Cronquist 1955); that attribution appears to be in error. The “type” materials are now in the herbarium of Oregon State University in Corvallis.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Dwarfish, subsucculent plants of Senecio californicus from near the coast have been recognized as S. ammophilus.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
- Local floras:
BC, 
CA, 
OR, 
WA - Local Web sites: CalFlora, CalPhotos,
Flora NW, 
PNW Herbaria, Turner Photog. 
WildflowerSearch
iNaturalist (observations)
USDA Plants Database- LBJ Wildflower Center
- SEINet
- Plants of the World Online
- Encyclopedia of Life
- Wikipedia
- Google Image Search
