If you live around Asheville, NC then you’ve most likely spotted this flower from puzzler #242 blooming along the roads. It is everywhere! Whole seas of yellow decorating the highways, fields and wild lands all around us. I love it!
IT is Golden Ragwort, (Packera aurea) also called Golden Groundsel, Golden Senecio, Squaw Root, Heart-leafed Groundsel, Liferoot, Coughweed, Cocash Weed, Waw Weed, False Valerian, Staggerwort, St. James Wort and Ragweed. Phew! That’s a long list! I have only ever heard it called the first two. Do you know it by any of these names? The last one will surely confuse people as Ragweed is the plant that causes allergies called hay fever, which is often blamed on another innocent plant called Goldenrod. To
Well anyway, whatever you call it, it is a fast-spreading wildflower that blooms in the spring and lasts for about three weeks. Then the yellow flowers turn to seed heads that are stuffed with what I like to call mini parachutes, blown and spread by the wind.
Many sites online list numerous health benefits from this flower. It seems to be used for everything from kidney stones to pain from bee stings.
Ready for another puzzler? This next one is a native, twining vine with a heart-shaped leaf–and no, it’s not Dutchman’s Pipevine, a plant I featured as Puzzler #214.