Senecio spartioides

Broom-like ragwort, Broom-Like Ragwort

Family: Asteraceae · Type: shrub · Native

Broom-like ragwort is a California native shrub found in the Sierra Nevada, San Bernardino Mountains, eastern Sierra Nevada, and desert mountains in open, dry disturbed sites, streambanks, and hillsides at elevations of 1,000 to 3,500 meters. Flowering from July to September, this plant produces yellow flowers in radiate heads with 5 to 8 ray flowers arranged in compound flat-topped clusters. Growing with multiple stems 2 to 12 decimeters tall from a woody taproot, it develops distally branched stems that are glabrous or slightly hairy. Its distinctive leaves are fleshy, narrowly linear to thread-like, 5 to 10 centimeters long and extremely narrow, ranging from 1 to 6 millimeters wide. The fruit is 2 to 3.5 millimeters long with sparsely hairy ribs.

Habitat: Open, dry disturbed sites, streambanks, hillsides

Bloom period: Jul-Sep

Elevation: 1000-3500 m

Bioregions: SNH, SnBr, SNE, DMtns

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