Kuan Dong Hua

Tussilago farfara is a low-growing herbaceous perennial in the Asteraceae, native across Europe, North Africa and temperate Asia and widely naturalised in North America, where it colonises disturbed ground, roadside banks, stream sides, gravelly slopes and clay soils. Plants spread by long, scaly, white underground rhizomes that produce two distinct kinds of shoots. In late winter and early spring, before any foliage appears, scaly, reddish flowering stems 10-20 cm tall arise singly, each topped by a solitary, bright yellow capitulum 1.5-3 cm across, with many narrow ray florets surrounding a disc; these are followed by spherical, dandelion-like seed heads of plumed achenes. Only after flowering do the large basal leaves expand: long-petiolate, broadly cordate to polygonal, 10-20 cm wide, with shallowly toothed margins, dark green above and densely white-felted with cottony hairs beneath.