Oxford Ragwort

This has been lurking in a corner of my garden in a gravelly patch where two walls meet.

This is not your usual ragwort, but a species descended from a hybrid grown in Oxford in the 1700s.  It prefers gravelly/rocky/waste ground where there is little competition.  It found an ideal habitat in the gravel beds of the railways and hence spread throughout the UK.

The original hybrid was found growing half way up Mount Etna.

It flowers earlier than our usual ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris, aka Senecio jacobaea).

Oxford Ragwort, Senecio squalidus