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Sonchus
Also called Sow Thistle, Sow Thistles
Sonchus, the sowthistle genus in the daisy family, includes annual, biennial and perennial herbs that are common roadside weeds with yellow flowers and milky latex. Commonly grown or seen members are hardy weedy species rather than cultivated ornamentals, so care is largely about controlling spread.
Sonchus is a genus of flowering plants in the tribe Cichorieae within the family Asteraceae and are commonly known as sow thistles (less commonly hare thistles or hare lettuces). Sowthistles are annual, biennial or perennial herbs, with or without rhizomes and a few are even woody (subgenus Dendrosonchus, restricted to the Canary Islands and Madeira).
Sow thistles are common host plants for aphids. Gardeners may consider this a benefit or a curse; aphids may spread from sow thistle to other plants, but alternatively the sow thistle can encourage the growth of beneficial predators such as hoverflies. In this regard sow thistles make excellent sacrificial plants. Sonchus species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera including Celypha rufana and the broad-barred white, grey chi, nutmeg, and shark moths. The fly Tephritis formosa is known to attack the capitula of this plant.
Sow thistles have been used as fodder, particularly for rabbits, hence the other common names of "hare thistle" or "hare lettuce". They are also edible to humans as a leaf vegetable; old leaves and stalks can be bitter but young leaves have a flavour similar to lettuce. Going by the name pūhā or rareke (raraki) it is a traditional food eaten in New Zealand by Māori. When cooked the flavour is reminiscent of chard. The greens were also eaten by the indigenous people of North America.
Field sowthistle · Spiny sowthistle · Common sowthistle · Slender sowthistle
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Sonchus 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.
