Pilosella officinarum
species of plant

Pilosella officinarum (synonym Hieracium pilosella), known as mouse-ear hawkweed, is a yellow-flowered species of flowering plant in the daisy family Compositae (= Asteraceae), native to Europe and northern Asia. It produces single, lemon-coloured inflorescences. Like most hawkweed species, it is highly variable and is a member of a species complex of several dozens of subspecies and hundreds of varieties and forms. It is an allelopathic plant.
Description
It is a hispid (hairy) perennial plant, with a basal rosette of leaves. The whole plant, with the exception of the flower parts, is covered in glandular hairs, usually whitish, sometimes reddish on the stem. The rosette leaves are entire, acute to blunt, and range from 1–12 centimetres (0.39–4.72 in) long and 0.5–2 centimetres (0.20–0.79 in) broad. Their underside is tomentose (covered with hair). The flowering stem (scape) is generally between 5–50 centimetres (2.0–19.7 in) tall, and sprouts from the centre of the basal rosette. The flowerheads are borne singly on the scape and are a pale lemon-yellow colour, with the outermost ligules having a reddish underside.
“Pilosella officinarum” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pilosella, officinarum and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Pilosella officinarum” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Pilosella, officinarum and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15593797. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pilosella officinarum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.