Hieracium aurantiaca / orange hawkweed

Adjectives: clonal, forest openings, highly visible, interesting bits, invasive, LSRP, non-native, showy, striking, understory, white latex

Also known as: devil’s-paintbrush, king devil, missionary weed, orange paintbrush, red daisy
Synonym: Pilosella aurantiacum
See also: Hieracium albiflorum / white hawkweed, Taraxacum officinale / dandelion

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Orange flowers are rare because they are virtually invisible to bees, but this is one. Often, the petals fade to yellow in the center. At least they also reflect UV light, which helps the pollinators—bees, butterflies and pollinating flies— find them. The flowers are dandelion-like, but with up to 25  flower heads per stem (dandelions only have one). Each head is small, maybe an inch across, with a small button of stamens and pistils in the center. The heads are bundled together on short pedicels at the top of a stem. The petals have square ends with several small notches in them.

The fruit is a small achene (more long than wide). Attached to it is a tuft of white hair (a pappus) to carry it off in the wind.

Should you try identifying this plant without flowers (in which case you’re probably beyond needing this site), orange hawkweed stems and leaves are covered with numerous short, stiff hairs. Those higher on the stems are shorter still, and glandular, as are those on the involucre and peduncles. The leaves may also be hairy, with stellate (star-like) hairs. Most of the leaves are basal and somewhat spatula shaped.

Orange flowered hawkweed is non-native and invasive and well-adapted to many habitats. It spreads by seeds, rhizomes and runners, and grows well in many soils. There are a lot of hawkweeds, and most share these characteristics, depending on where they are. The other complicating factor to their control is that they are pretty, and popular in both home and formal gardens.

Interesting bits – Like white hawkweed, the actual structure of the flower heads seems to be a matter of discussion (among whom, I don’t know). On the one hand, there are those who say that there are only ray florets. Others say they have only “ray-like disk florets.” Still others, probably most of them, just say they have florets and avoid the whole controversy.