Cat’s ear
Scientific name: Hypochaeris radicata L.
Family: Asteraceae
MORPHOLOGY
Habit and size: Perennial herbaceous plant, 30-50(90) cm tall, with a robust fleshy rhizome, more or less branched and containing white latex.
Stem: Erect, glaucous, and glabrous, or rough at the base, simple or sparsely branched upwards, somewhat swollen at the apex under the flower heads, with scattered scale-like bracts of 1-3 mm arranged spirally.
Leaves: All basal leaves, sessile, close to the ground, bright green, rather firm, and highly polymorphic, with a spatulate outline (1.5-2 x 5-10 cm), pinnately lobed or pinnatifid or sinuate-dentate with triangular lobes, nearly glabrous or more or less hairy-setulose and hirsute.
Flowers: Terminal flower heads (2-4 cm) with a cylindrical involucre of 30-35 imbricate scales, generally glabrous, scarious on the edges, with other very small scales at the base. All ligulate flowers hermaphroditic, bright yellow, the peripheral ones externally green-reddish. Receptacle with chaff at the base of the flowers. Blooms from April to July.
Fruits and seeds: The fruit is a rough, brown cypsela (achene) with a long beak (sometimes truncated and ± absent); pappus with biserrate setae: the outer ones shorter and denticulate, the inner ones long (1 cm) and plumose.
DISTRIBUTION AND HABITAT
Present throughout Italy in dry meadows, uncultivated land, roadside edges, from 0 to 1,500 m.
USE
In folk medicine, it was used as a purifier, but especially as an antidiabetic, in the form of a decoction of the aerial part to be drunk in the morning on an empty stomach. Before taking any plant-based product (medicinal or non-medicinal) for therapeutic or similar purposes, it is always advisable to consult your doctor. The young rosettes are often consumed both cooked and raw, and the roasted roots are used as a coffee substitute like those of Taraxacum.
Photo: Not subject to license from Saxifraga and Ed Stikvoort, Hans Dekker, Rutger Barendse, Jasenka Topic
