Orange King Devil

Orange King Devil

Pilosella aurantiaca

Other names: orange hawkweed, fox-and-cubs, tawny hawkweed, devil’s paintbrush, grim-the-collier

Family: Asteraceae

Further Classification (Asteraceae only)

Range: Southern Canada and New England south to the mid-Atlantic states and west through the Great Lakes region to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Native: Introduced (Invasive)

Native Habitat: Native to alpine regions of Central and Southern Europe.

Bloom Time: June – October

This flower usually appears in late spring along with Yellow King Devil – they’re usually some of the first asters I see every year. I see them in fields, and they’ve very happy to range to forest edges. We used to call these Indian paintbrush. I suspect that came from the devil’s paintbrush common name at some point.

It’s been introduced to North America and Australia through gardens and has a reputation for aggressively spreading. I’ve always loved this flowers – the orange really makes it stand out. I was sad when I found out it’s considered invasive.

Formerly Hieracium aurantiacum. The split of Hieracium and Pilosella is relatively recent, and is based on various differences, but the easiest to spot is that Pilosella generally have basal leaves. Gobotany (my normal source of truth) still officially has this species under Hieracium, but I actually attended a webinar a few years back where they talked about the differences and why they’d be reassigned. Proof that databases everywhere are a pain to maintain.

Further Classification (Asteraceae only):

Subfamily: Cichorioideae (Subfamily including lettuces, dandelions and chicory)

Tribe: Cichorieae

I keep track of this level of detail because there are so many Asteraceae species my folders were getting hard to organize.