Plant

Common Sow-thistle

Sonchus oleraceus

Common Sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) photographed by Devendra Bhardwaj — Image: Devendra Bhardwaj · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0 · Vaishali Nagar, Jaipur, Rajasthan · Resized

Common Sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) photographed by Devendra Bhardwaj — Image: Devendra Bhardwaj · iNaturalist · CC BY-NC 4.0 · Vaishali Nagar, Jaipur, Rajasthan · Resized

Scientific name: Sonchus oleraceus
Family: Asteraceae, order Asterales
Group: Plant

A wayside daisy with a milky stem.

Spot it Spiny-edged leaves and yellow dandelion-like heads.
Home Fields and wasteland.
Food web Hoverflies and bees visit; finches eat the seeds.
Why it matters Feeds hoverflies and bees, and its seeds feed small birds.

Read more: Sonchus oleraceus on Wikipedia

Sources and credits

Records and field notes

RajasthanDevendra Bhardwaj has 2 verified records of this species on iNaturalist in 2024, in Jaipur.^[20]

Sources

Devendra Bhardwaj. iNaturalist observations and notes, with place and date (inaturalist.org/people/devendrabhardwaj) (field record). The observer's own dated records and notes, with places. Statements in his notes are his own and were not independently checked by KJVF.
GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF species data (family, order, Hindi names, IUCN category) (database). Open biodiversity data. Used for classification, Hindi common names and the IUCN category where one is given.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (opening lines of each species article, CC BY-SA 4.0). The link on each entry goes to the article (reference). Not peer reviewed. Only the opening description is used, and statements about origin or medicinal use are left out.
Short introductions and key points written with AI help (Google Gemini and Claude) and checked against GBIF where possible (reference). AI-assisted text for general readers. Please check important details before relying on them.

The tag before each record shows the place it was checked for.

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