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Sonchus (the Greek name). Compositae. Mostly weedy plants, but some of the Canary Island species are good foliage subjects.
Annual or perennial, usually more or less succulent, sometimes frutescent, leafy-stemmed, mostly smooth and glaucous, summer-flowering: lvs. usually clasping entire, toothed or runcinate-lobed or even pinnatifid and laciniate, more or less prickly-margined: heads homogamous and ligulate, yellow-fld., with more or less imbricated involucral bracts, becoming thickened or tumid at base, corymbose or paniculate: achenes ribbed or costate, not beaked, with fine white pappus. —Species 40 or more, in the Old World, some of them intro. in N. Amer. as weeds.
Certain bold foliage plants of this genus are more or less listed and mentioned abroad, the botanical identity of which is to be determined. S. arboreus laciniatus described as a "magnificent foliage plant with laciniated lvs.," is probably a form of S. pinnatus, Ait., which grows 3 ft. or so high, bearing glabrous pinnately parted lvs. with narrow entire or toothed lobes, native of Madeira. What is mentioned abroad and also in S. Calif. as S. Jacquinii, is probably S. congestus, Willd., described as a beautiful foliage plant with long and broad crowded recurved oblanceolate more or less pinnatifid lvs. (1 ft. or less long and 2-3 in. broad) and showy panicles of yellow heads 2-3 in. across; Canary Isls., where it is known as pastor's lettuce (lachuza de pastor), perhaps in allusion to availability of the lvs. for salad. The lvs. of other species of Sonchus are said sometimes to be similarly used. The names S. elegantissimius and S. laciniatus sometimes appear in horticultural literature, representing ornamental plants with much-divided lvs., the segms., very narrow; they are probably forms of Canary or Madeira species.
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== Species: ==
== Species: ==
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