Compilation
Sonchus lactucoides

Perennial herb, usually weak-stemmed, from a stout rootstock, 0.4–1.5 m high; stems scrambling or straggly, to 9 m long; stems often reddish, hollow, glabrous or distally glandular-setose. Leaves shiny above, glaucous beneath, sessile, linear-elliptic to lanceolate, 4–20 cm long, 0.2–1.6 cm wide, base attenuate and shortly sagittate in proximal leaves, in distal leaves semi-amplexicaul and sub-auriculate, margins entire or less often with recurved teeth or spinules, sometimes lobed with the lobes narrowly triangular and to 2 cm long, apex attenuate, glabrous. Capitula solitary or in few-headed rather dense Groups, these in turn in lax leafy corymbs or panicles; stalks of individual capitula short, white-tomentose and sometimes with stalked glands extending further down the inflorescence; involucre cylindric to campanulate, eventually with reflexed phyllaries, 10–15(–18,K3) mm long; phyllaries green with reddish or purplish tinge or tips, narrowly ovate to lanceolate, 2.5–13 mm long, obtuse, white-tomentose proximally, becoming more glabrous distally and on the inner phyllaries, distally ciliate, sometimes the outer and distal part of the inner glandular-setose. Florets many per capitulum; corolla yellow, tube cylindric, 6–10 mm long, distally pilose; ligules 3–6.5 mm long, 0.5–1.2 mm wide. Achenes pale or reddish brown, narrowly ellipsoid, slightly flattened, 2.5–3.5 mm long, ribbed, rugulose but glabrous; pappus white, 7–11 mm long.