The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Grindelia squarrosa
Also called Gum plant, Curly-cup gumweed, Gumweed, Broad Leaved Gumplant, Broadleaf Gumweed, Prairie Gumweed, Curlytop Gumweed
Curlycup gumweed is a small North American biennial or short-lived perennial with sticky, resinous leaves and yellow daisy-like flower heads. It thrives in dry, open ground and needs little water once established.
Grindelia squarrosa, also known as a curly-top gumweed or curlycup gumweed, is a small North American biennial or short-lived perennial plant.
The plant concentrates selenium from the soil, and can be toxic when ingested by cattle, humans, and other mammals, but is rarely eaten because of its unpleasant taste. It is a plant that can increase with overgrazing since it isn't very palatable to begin with, and can have a negative effect on the range. It can also indicate poor range management since other species can usually compete with it and slow down its expansion, if they are allowed to grow.
The species is native to western and central North America, from British Columbia east to Québec and New England, and south as far as California, New Mexico, Arizona, Chihuahua, and Texas. The species may possibly be naturalized in much of the eastern part of that distribution, and has been introduced into Asia in Ukraine.
The flowers and leaves are used by Great Plains Tribes as a medicinal herb to treat illnesses such as asthma, bronchitis or skin rashes. The powdered flowers were also once smoked in cigarettes to ease asthmatic symptoms.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Grindelia squarrosa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
