It's been a while since I last posted but summer can be a quiet and lazy time for me in the garden—just mowing the lawn, dead heading flowers like those on the buddleias and roses, stuff like that. However, this morning I mowed the lawn, then edged it and cut around the paving stones with my long-handled shears. Yesterday, I was having a chat with the neighbour and I noticed that thriving nicely in her rather bedraggled lawn was a solitary bright orange flower amid several other little plants which had not yet flowered. Jealously, I had to know what they were but she had no idea. She said that they had sown themselves and that down the road, in other neighbouring gardens, there were lots of them right now. So I Googled to find out what it was. I'm not so jealous now. The flower is Hieracium aurantiacum also known as Orange Hawkweed which is considered to be an invasive plant and a noxious one at that, i.e. harmful to the environment.
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| Hieracium aurantiacum aka Orange Hawkweed |
Funnily enough, it would seem that some horticultural companies sell Orange Hawkweed seeds in packets, and I bet they have no trouble at all finding seeds to put in their packets and sell at a good profit to gardeners who have no idea what they could be letting themselves in for.
The thing to do if you want to grow them is, before they make seeds, chop off their heads!
The plant seems to have several names, including Fox and Cubs, which I think is rather cute.
United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDA) re Hieracium aurantia
