Senecio aronicoides

Rayless ragwort, Rayless Ragwort

Family: Asteraceae · Type: perennial · Native

Rayless ragwort is a California native perennial found in northwestern California, the Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, Sacramento Valley, central western California, and Modoc Plateau in dry or drying sites within open woodland and montane forest at elevations of 800 to 3,020 meters. Flowering from April to July, this plant produces heads of disk flowers without ray flowers, forming clusters 15 to 30 millimeters wide with green or black-tipped involucral bracts. Growing 30 to 100 centimeters tall with a single stem that becomes increasingly glabrous, it develops from a button-like caudex with fleshy, fibrous roots. Its basal leaves are 7 to 20 centimeters long and 2 to 3 centimeters wide, varying from ovate to oblanceolate with minutely toothed edges that become smaller and more sessile toward the stem tip. The fruit is 1.5 to 2.5 millimeters long and glabrous.

Habitat: Dry or drying sites in open woodland, upper foothill, montane forest

Bloom period: Apr-Jul

Elevation: 800-3020 m

Bioregions: NW, CaR, SN, ScV, CW, MP

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.