Where I parked up at a petrol station last night, there was a huge array of these bright yellow flowers along the fence in front of me. I suppose most people might call them 'dandelions' if they even noticed them at all. But I was very chuffed to see them, because they're another sign of spring. They're Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara).
They look rather unusual because at this time of the year they don't have any big basal leaves (those have died off during the winter). So you just see these rather thick woolly shoots with their tiny reddish... well, perhaps 'leaves' pressed close up them, but they look more like the sepals protecting the back of the flowers. The flowers are typically Asteraceae-ish, with thin flat petals around the edge and many tiny florets in the centre.
Tussilago derives from 'to cough', in Latin. And you might recognise this plant from bottles of cough mixture - it's used in traditional remedies around the world. Culpeper's Herbal (from the 1650s) mentions it, and also calls it foals-foot, horse-hoof and bulls-foot. Perhaps that's to do with the vaguely hoofish shape of the leaves. Or perhaps it's supposed to grow where hoofy animals have trod, who knows.
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Another interesting Coltsfoot feature can be examined by seizing your handlens. In good light you will see tiny 'glandular trichomes' on the stem. These are like little hairs with a bulb on the end, and they produce chemicals that probably put off herbivores that would like to take advantage of the plant as an early spring snack. Other Asteraceae also feature trichomes.
If anyone started collecting this family last autumn, Coltsfoot would be a nice addition. The flowers' bright colour should draw your eye. It tends to like hedgerows and roadsides and disturbed habitats. Wherever there's one plant there'll generally be many, because it spreads by underground rhizomes.
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