urbpan | 100 Species #60: Yellow hawkweed (Reply)

For a brief time one stretch of the front yard was full of yellow hawkweed (Hieracium sp.) blossoms. Now there are but a smattering.

"Yellow hawkweed" is actually an unknown number of species, somewhere between 800 and ten thousand, depending on which taxonomist you trust. The typical weedy species found in yards and along roadsides are pretty difficult to distinguish from one another. Traits such as relative hairiness, number of blossoms per stem and so on are variable and are known to grade somewhat between species and species complexes. Hawkweeds are closely related to dandelions, chickweeds, and sowthistles. Hawkweeds reproduce asexually, with seeds that produce genetically identical clones of the mother plants, and by spreading and sprouting new plants from the roots. Some Eurasian species of hawkweed are invasive in North America, and all hawkweeds are considered invasive in--and prohibited from importation to--New Zealand.

Someone once asked me if hawks eat this plant. To my knowledge, they do not. Naturalist lore holds that the blooming of hawkweed (whichever species that was first named hawkweed)coincided with the reappearance of migratory hawks. Sounds plausible. I'll always think of yellow hawkweed as a kind of "lesser" Indian paintbrush: Indian paintbrush is common name my mother used for orange hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum).

The patch of hawkweed in my yard covers an area which would otherwise have narrowleaf plantain, or worse, grass. I don't pull the hawkweed, but I don't feel bad mowing over it either.