Sonchus oleraceusL.

Common Sow-thistle

WFO wfo-0000069236 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Sonchus oleraceus, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. a Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-05 / obs. 203584995
Sonchus oleraceus, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. b Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 206026840
Sonchus oleraceus, photographed by Yurii Basov
fig. c Yurii Basov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205164356
Sonchus oleraceus, photographed by Michel Langeveld
fig. d Michel Langeveld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203296809
Sonchus oleraceus, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. e Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202960755
Sonchus oleraceus, photographed by Joe Dillon
fig. f Joe Dillon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203786380
Sonchus oleraceus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202488837
Sonchus oleraceus, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. h Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202499875

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 6,732 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 6,732 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 49 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Carduus amplexicaulis Noronha
  • Lepicaune spinulosa Lapeyr.
  • Sonchus angustissimus H.Lindb.
  • Sonchus angustissimus Hook.f.
  • Sonchus asper G.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.
  • Sonchus asper P.Gaertn. & al.
  • Sonchus australis Trevir.
  • Sonchus australis Hort. ex Trev.
  • Sonchus ciliatus Lam.
  • Sonchus ciliatus var. subbipinnatifidus Guss.
  • Sonchus fabrae Sennen & Sennen
  • Sonchus glaber Gilib.
  • Sonchus gracilis Phil.
  • Sonchus gracilis Sennen
  • Sonchus lacerus Willd.
  • Sonchus laevis Vill.
  • Sonchus laevis Garsault
  • Sonchus longifolius Trev.
  • Sonchus longifolius Trevir.
  • Sonchus macrotus Fenzl
  • Sonchus mairei H.Lév.
  • Sonchus oleraceus f. oleraceus
  • Sonchus oleraceus subsp. angustissimus H.Lindb.
  • Sonchus oleraceus subsp. oleraceus

and 25 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.