Foetid hawk's-beard

Crepis foetida, the stinking hawk's-beard or foetid hawk's-beard, is an erect annual or biennial herb in the family Asteraceae native to most of Europe, North Africa, and southwestern Asia. Plants reach 15-50 cm in height, with branched or simple stems clothed in coarse stiff hairs and a basal rosette of leaves arising from a slender taproot. The whole plant exudes a bitter milky latex and gives off a characteristic unpleasant odour when bruised, which gives the species its specific epithet. Basal leaves are oblanceolate to runcinate, 5-15 cm long, deeply pinnately lobed with backward-pointing lobes, and clothed in stiff bristles; stem leaves are smaller, sessile, and lanceolate with clasping bases. The inflorescence consists of one to several pale-yellow flower heads 12-18 mm across on slender peduncles that are characteristically nodding or pendulous before anthesis, becoming erect when in bloom. The involucre is cylindrical-campanulate with a single row of inner bracts that develop conspicuous wing-like keels in fruit, and an outer row of small spreading bristly-hairy bracts. Flowering takes place from May to September. Fruits are slender beaked achenes of two types: the outer with a short or absent beak, the inner with a long slender beak, both crowned with a soft white capillary pappus.