Senecio squalidusL.

Oxford Ragwortoxford ragwort

WFO wfo-0000138664 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Senecio squalidus, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. a Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205546948

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 16 botanical countries

Regions where Senecio squalidus is native: Tunisia, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Switzerland TunisiaAlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSiciliaSwitzerland Sardegna
Native distribution of Senecio squalidus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Bulgaria BUL
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Switzerland SWI
Tunisia TUN AFRICA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 254 in flower of 283 examined

Proportion of examined Senecio squalidus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 5 6 83% 44% to 97%
Feb 3 7 43% 16% to 75%
Mar 8 14 57% 33% to 79%
Apr 56 60 93% 84% to 97%
May 28 28 100% 88% to 100%
Jun 21 22 95% 78% to 99%
Jul 34 35 97% 85% to 99%
Aug 36 37 97% 86% to 100%
Sep 20 20 100% 84% to 100%
Oct 19 26 73% 54% to 86%
Nov 14 14 100% 78% to 100%
Dec 10 14 71% 45% to 88%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Senecio squalidus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 254 of 283 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 24 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cineraria humilis Poepp. ex DC.
  • Cineraria incisa Thunb.
  • Jacobaea incisa C.Presl
  • Senecio aethnensis Jan ex DC.
  • Senecio chrysanthemifolius Poir.
  • Senecio chrysanthemifolius subsp. aethnensis (Jan ex DC.) Lambinon
  • Senecio chrysanthemifolius subsp. chrysanthemifolius
  • Senecio gallicus var. araneosus Emb. & Maire
  • Senecio glaber Ucria
  • Senecio incisus C.Presl
  • Senecio laciniatus Bertol.
  • Senecio nebrodensis subsp. rupestris (Waldst. & Kit.) Hayek
  • Senecio nebrodensis var. aurasicus Batt.
  • Senecio nebrodensis var. balansae Boiss. & Reut.
  • Senecio nebrodensis var. rupestris (Waldst. & Kit.) Fiori
  • Senecio nebrodensis var. sardous Fiori
  • Senecio rupestris Waldst. & Kit.
  • Senecio rupestris f. rupestris
  • Senecio rupestris var. rupestris
  • Senecio sardous (Fiori) Arrigoni
  • Senecio siculus All.
  • Senecio siculus var. siculus
  • Senecio squalidus var. rupestris (Waldst. & Kit.) P.D.Sell
  • Senecio squalidus var. squalidus

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.