Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Verbascum thapsus subsp. thapsus
Common name
Great Mullein, Aarons Rod
Family
Scrophulariaceae
Where found
Woodland, pasture, roadsides, disturbed sites, crops, and stream banks, and stony river beds. Widespread. Rarely coastal.
Notes
Introduced biennial herb to 3 m high, greyish or whitish hairy with stellate hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see). Leaf bases form wings down the single stem. Leaves form a rosette in the first year; and a leafy stem, with leaves alternating up the stem, crowned by the infloresecence, in the second year. Rosette leaves 8–50 cm long, 25–140 mm wide, margins entire or scalloped, base tapering into the stalk. Stem leaves to 40 cm long and 100 mm wide, stalkless and continuing down the stem, becoming smaller and narrower towards the top of the plant. Flowers yellow, 12–30 mm in diameter, with 5 petals fused at the base. Flowers densely arranged in a large elongated cluster 15–100 cm long at the top of the stem. The numerous yellow flowers are arranged in groups of 1-7 above small, leafy, bracts. Flowering: November–March.
Noxious weed Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=in&name=Verbascum~thapsus+subsp.~thapsus (accessed 5 February, 2021)
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