Lapsana communis
species of plant
Lapsana communis, the common nipplewort, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to Europe and southwestern Asia, and it is widely naturalized in other regions including North America.
Description
Lapsana communis is an annual or perennial herbaceous plant growing to 1–1.2 m (3 ft 3 in – 3 ft 11 in) tall, with erect, hairy branching stems and milky sap. The leaves are alternate and spirally arranged; the larger leaves at the base of the flowering stem are often pinnate, with a large oval terminal leaflet and one to four small side leaflets, while smaller leaves higher on the stem are simple oval; all leaves have toothed margins. The flowers are yellow, produced in a capitulum 1–2 cm (0.39–0.79 in) diameter, the capitula being numerous in loose clusters at the top of the stem. The capitulum is surrounded by a whorl of involucral bracts, the outer ones very small and the inner ones erect, narrow and stiff and all the same length. The eight to fifteen florets are all ligulate and pale yellow, shaped like a tongue with a five-toothed tip. Each has five stamens and a gynoecium composed of two fused carpels. The fruit is a cypsela surrounded by the hardened remains of the involucral bracts. The numerous small seeds are retained in the cypsela until the plant is shaken by the wind or a passing animal.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lapsana communis” is species of plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lapsana, communis and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q754672. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lapsana communis” 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.