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Common Name:
KING DEVIL, YELLOW HAWKWEED
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Coefficient of Conservatism:
*
Coefficient of Wetness:
5
Wetness Index:
UPL
Physiognomy:
Ad P-Forb
R. Schipper
Like H. aurantiacum, almost everywhere, especially along roadsides and in fields; railroads, gravel pits, and disturbed places of all kinds; invading dry forests, plantations, sandy and rocky openings, shores, even wet ground.
This is a European species, introduced a little more recently than H. aurantiacum and now about equally abundant in northern Michigan, where the two often dominate old fields and roadsides. The first Michigan collection is from Houghton Co. in 1914; it spread rapidly in the Copper Country. No collections from south of the Straits of Mackinac were noted before 1935 (Mackinaw City).
Our plants are quite variable and sometimes distinguished only with difficulty from H. caespitosum, which generally is a much hairier species on stems and leaves, with larger heads and darker, gland-tipped hairs among the dense stellate pubescence, especially on pedicels. Some plants referred to H. piloselloides have large heads on rather densely stellate pedicels, but with leaves and stems nearly glabrous. These and assorted other ambiguous plants (such as a very few hairy ones referred to H. caespitosum despite smaller heads than usual for that species) could result from hybridization.