Round-leaved groundsel is one of seven ragworts, or Packera species in our state. Its showy, bright yellow, daisylike flowers form flat-topped clusters that arise from sparsely leaved stems. It is most common in the Ozarks.
Round-leaved groundsel is a branching, usually single-stemmed perennial often found in colonies.
The small, bright yellow flowerheads are on the tips of long, mostly leafless stalks. Both disk and ray florets are bright yellow. The ray florets look somewhat ragged.
Blooms April–June.
The leaves are mostly basal, rounded to spoon-shaped, toothed, the leaf blade tissue conspicuously continued into the leaf stalk, to 3½ inches long. The stem leaves are few, sessile (stemless), and often deeply lobed.
Learn more about Missouri's ragworts on their group page.
Similar species: Seven Packera species occur in Missouri, plus a number of hybrids having intermediate characteristics that make identification tricky. Here's how to distinguish round-leafed groundsel from our most common species:
- Golden ragwort (Packera aurea) also has mostly basal leaves, but they are heart-shaped and pointed at the tip, not spoon-shaped.
- Prairie ragwort (Packera plattensis) has mostly basal leaves, but they are shaped like a pointed paddle. It is scattered statewide in open, grassy, drier habitats.
- Butterweed (Packera glabella) lacks basal leaves; its stem leaves are pinnate, deeply lobed, with rounded teeth. It is found on floodplains of big rivers and in southeast and east-central Missouri.
Height: to 2 feet.
Scattered nearly statewide, mostly south of Missouri River, but apparently absent from the Bootheel lowlands and portions of the glaciated plains of northern Missouri.
Habitat and Conservation
Grows in bottomland forests, rich upland woodlands, banks of streams, ledges of bluffs, and rarely moist depressions of glades and upland prairies; also roadsides and open, disturbed areas.
Status
Native Missouri wildflower.
Human Connections
Round-leaved groundsel and golden ragwort are the most commonly used ragworts for native wildflower gardening.
- They are somewhat weedy, and in the right situations with moist soils, they can naturalize and spread into large patches by stolons and self-seeding.
- They bloom profusely in spring, with a long blooming period.
- When the plants aren’t blooming, trim the spent flower stalks: the basal leaves can function as an interesting, semi-evergreen ground cover.
- Also used in rain gardens.
- Bees and other pollinators love the flowers.
Ragworts are poisonous if eaten, but they were also used in folk medicine. Such is the case with many plants that contain powerful chemical compounds.
This plant was called “squaw-weed” for many years. That term dropped out of use because people now understand it is at least a demeaning, if not deeply offensive term. In the past, many English speakers understood the word to mean merely “Native American woman,” so it was sometimes used in names for plants, like this, that had historic medicinal uses for illnesses specific to women.
Ecosystem Connections
Bees and other insects visit the flowers.
One of Missouri’s rarer butterflies, the northern metalmark (Calephelis borealis), uses round-leaved groundsel, possibly also golden ragwort, and perhaps some types of fleabane daisies as caterpillar food plants.
- The northern metalmark is a species of conservation concern in Missouri. It occurs only in small, localized populations and is rare, declining, threatened, or endangered throughout its range (our other metalmark species is the swamp metalmark).
Because this plant is toxic to eat, most mammals do not eat it.
