“A Big Year for Ragwort” – The Plant We Love to Hate

It’s mid-June and the countryside is quietly gearing up for its summer crescendo. You might have noticed it already— what looks like billowing kale-like green spikes emerging on fields, road verges and perhaps even in your garden, the first yellow flowers beginning to open in the midsummer sunshine. Ragwort is back, and if the early signs are anything to go by, this is going to be a big year for it.

There’s something about ragwort that seems to stir a collective unease. Maybe it’s the sulphurous colour—so uncompromisingly golden and vibrant when so many other wildflowers are beginning to fade later in the summer. Or perhaps it’s the myths that cling to it like dew: the warnings, the panic, the vague sense that it shouldn’t be allowed to exist at all. “Poisonous!” someone always says. “Dangerous to horses!” says another, eyes narrowed. It’s practically folklore now. But let’s step back a moment.

Ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris, formerly Senecio jacobaea) is a native wildflower. Yes, it’s common (sometimes very). Yes, it thrives in disturbed soils, like those you’ll find on building sites, neglected paddocks, and roadside banks. And yes—like almost every other plant that’s survived in Britain for millennia—it has a story. It’s just not necessarily the story you’ve been told.

First, the Myths

Let’s address the elephant in the room (or should that be the horse?): is ragwort toxic to livestock? Yes, it contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids which, in large quantities and when ingested, can cause liver damage in horses and cattle. But here’s the key: animals never eat it in the wild. It smells nasty and tastes bitter, and they avoid it. Problems arise when ragwort is dried into hay or silage, where the bitterness is lost and they can’t recognise it. That’s where the risk lies—not in the odd plant blooming in a hedgerow or even swathes of it growing among the free roaming herbivores in the wildlands of Knepp. It is not obligatory for landowners, farmers and gardeners to root it up wherever it occurs. There is a common misconception that people are legally bound to remove it. In fact, government guidelines are to leave it be in the wild.

And no, it doesn’t ‘spread like wildfire’ just because it’s in flower in a neighbouring field. Ragwort has a relatively short-lived seed bank, and although its seeds can travel, the plant thrives best where the soil has been disturbed or left bare—so good land management goes a lot further than frantic spraying ever will. And, in fact, evidence from a 40-year study on ragwort at Imperial College London tells us that healthy, viable seed only tends to travel a few metres anyway. So when we might picture clouds of fluffy ragwort seed blowing through the air on a summer breeze, much of this will be infertile and little more than harmless chaff.

Then, the Truth

Here’s what rarely gets said: ragwort is a powerhouse for wildlife.

Over 30 insect species depend on ragwort as a food source, including the striking cinnabar moth whose black and yellow stripey caterpillars can be seen munching the leaves – nature’s own hazard tape. One study reported 178 different insect species visiting ragwort flowers, including 47 bees and 35 hoverflies. That’s a huge ecological lift from a single plant.

And in a world where we’ve watched pollinator numbers fall off a cliff and insect-rich grasslands retreat under concrete and pesticides, ragwort is quietly doing the work. It’s a refuge. A late-summer and early-autumn lifeline. A riot of gold in a green monoculture.

So Why the Bad Press?

Part of it, I think, is psychological. We as humans do have a tendency to instinctively dislike anything we deem to be ‘too successful’, especially if it is obvious and makes its presence felt in our immediate line of sight. Ragwort dares to grow where we’d prefer order—neat fields, mown verges, sterile lawns. It turns up uninvited and thrives. And we’re told (by inherited wisdom, often unexamined) that it’s a threat, something to control.

But take a walk with different eyes. Notice the hum of bees, the flash of pink and black cinnabar wings, the breeze shaking that unrepentant yellow. Ragwort isn’t the villain. It’s just a wildflower doing what wildflowers do—surviving, offering up nectar for pollinating insects, drawing life toward it. Not bad for a plant with such a bad reputation.

In summary

This summer, let’s look again. Not every wild thing that grows without permission is a problem. Sometimes it’s a gift.

Ragwort is not our enemy. It’s part of the system – feeding pollinators, supporting biodiversity, and bringing a fierce and necessary riot of colour to a landscape that too often feels like it’s being scrubbed clean of anything wild.

It’s a big year for ragwort. Maybe it should be a big year for rethinking what we call weeds.

Come and see Knepp for yourself. Find out What’s On.

Further reading: both Buglife and Friends of the Earth have interesting pieces about ragwort.