Red Hawksbeard

Native to the Mediterranean region and Asia Minor, Crepis rubra is widely cultivated throughout the world and occasionally escapes. It can be easily recognized by its annual habit, scapiform stems, relatively large, often single heads, and pink or white corollas. Wild plants are shorter than cultivated ones.

Annuals, 4–40 cm (taproots shallow). Stems 1–8, decumbent to ascending, scapiform, branched proximally, glabrate to tomen-tulose. Leaves basal and cauline; petiolate; blades (at least basal) oblanceolate or runcinate, 2–15 × 0.5–3 cm, (bases attenuate) margins pinnately lobed to dentate, apices acute, faces hirsute. Heads 1(–2), usually borne singly (peduncles scapiform). Calyculi of 8–10, ovate-lanceolate, glabrous bractlets 4–8 mm. Involucres cylindro-campanulate, 11–15 × 4–7 mm. Phyllaries 8–14, (dark medially), lanceolate, 10–12 mm, (margins yellowish) apices acute, abaxial faces sparsely to densely stipitate-glandular, adaxial with fine, appressed hairs. Florets 40–100; corollas pink or white, 16–17 mm. Cypselae dimorphic, dark brown, fusiform: outer curved, 8–9 mm, coarsely beaked, inner straight, 12–21 mm, finely beaked, ribs 10 (sharply spiculate); pappi yellowish white to dusky white (fine), 5–8 mm. 2n = 10.

Crepis rubra is a European species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae with the common name red hawksbeard or pink hawk's-beard. It is native to the eastern Mediterranean region (Italy, Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Asia Minor) and is widely cultivated as an ornamental. It became naturalized in a small region of the United States (Marin County just north of San Francisco Bay in California).

Crepis rubra is an annual up to 40 cm (16 in) tall. Each plant will usually produce only one or two flower heads, each with as many as 100 pink or red ray florets but no disc florets. It grows in rocky fields and meadows.