Family: Asteraceae (daisies)

Status:

Description:
May be a shrub with long canes which will climb, or if a suitable support is available, it becomes a conventional climber, twining around its supports. Its leaves are glossy, thick and fleshy, and bluntly lobed. Flowers are daisy-like with yellow petals. Seed is dandelion-like.

Preferred habitat and impacts:
Found around towns or old farms. Tolerates drought, and salinity.
It can be very invasive in the understorey of open forest, as a shrub, or climb into trees and shrubs. Likely to smother shrubs or smaller trees.

Dispersal
It can reproduce vegetatively, from stem segments dumped or transported by floods, as well as rooting from the branch tips around the edges of the infestation. Also from wind-blown seed.

Look-alikes
Many native Senecio species have similar yellow flowers, but all are herbs or small shrubs, not climbers. Cape ivy (Delairea odorata) and another climbing groundsel (Senecio tamoides) are similar, but both are weak-stemmed climbers, not shrubs, and have thinner textured leaves, which are sharply, not bluntly, angular.

Creeping or climbing groundsel