Taraxacum haematicum

Taraxacum haematicum (Asteraceae) is a European apomictic microspecies of the dandelion aggregate (Taraxacum section Ruderalia), distributed in central and northern Europe in mesic grasslands, roadsides, lawns, and waste places. Plants form a stout tap-rooted rosette of oblanceolate, deeply pinnatifid leaves 10 to 25 centimetres long, with retrorsely directed lobes and conspicuously dark reddish to purplish-brown stained petioles and midribs at flowering — the epithet haematicum (blood-coloured) referring to this distinctive pigmentation. The hollow leafless scapes are 10 to 30 centimetres tall, also often reddened at the base, exuding white latex when broken. Each scape bears a single solitary terminal capitulum with numerous bright yellow ligulate florets, the outer involucral bracts being recurved to spreading. The fruit is a beaked, brownish to straw-coloured cypsela with a fine white capillary pappus, dispersed by wind in the characteristic dandelion-clock head.