Tragopogon minor

Tragopogon minor, the lesser goat's-beard or smaller meadow salsify, is a biennial or short-lived perennial herb in the Asteraceae family widely distributed across Europe and naturalised in temperate North America; it is often treated as a subspecies of the closely related meadow salsify, Tragopogon pratensis. From a stout, milky-sap-filled taproot the plant produces an erect, slightly branched stem 30 to 70 centimetres tall, bearing long, linear, grass-like, glaucous leaves that sheath the stem at their bases. Each stem ends in a solitary flower head opening only in the morning sunshine (giving rise to the folk name 'Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon') and composed entirely of pale lemon-yellow ligulate florets, with greenish involucral bracts that are distinctly shorter than the rays in this taxon. After flowering the head expands into a large, spherical, dandelion-like clock of long-beaked achenes with plumose pappus hairs, dispersed by wind across the rough grasslands, roadsides and waste places it inhabits.