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Balsam ragwort flowerheads are 1/2-3/4" across 8 or 13 (rarely, 0) pale yellow ray florets and 50-65+ golden-yellow disk florets. Both disk and ray florets are perfect (i.e., have both male and female reproductive structures). The disk florets are tubular with five lobes at their apex; they have a single style and five stamens. At the base of each flowerhead is a single series of bracts (phyllaries); the phyllaries are light green, fading to pale purple at their tips. Butterweed (Packera glabella), balsam ragwort (Packera paupercula), and prairie ragwort (Packera plattensis) are easy to confuse — all boom in the late spring/early summer and all are weedy-looking plants with yellow/golden-yellow, daisy-like flowers. The flowers don't help to distinguish them; you'll need to look carefully at the leaf shape and presence/absence and quantity of wooly fine white hairs on the leaves and stems. Butterweed has large (10" long) basal leaves; the leaves are pinnatifid with multiple semicircular lobes and a circular terminal lobe. Balsam ragwort (Packera paupercula) basal leaves are no longer than 3", the flowerheads have 0, 8, or 13 ray florets, the phyllaries behind the flowerhead are purple-tipped, and wooly hairs are usually found in the leaf axils. Prairie ragwort (Packera plattensis) is extensively covered with white wooly hairs on the stems, leaves, leaf axils, and on the phyllaries behind the flowerheads.

Packera

Packera paupercula

balsam ragwort [Blooms: Apr-May]