In Washington you cannot buy it and you cannot move it. The orange hawkweed noxious weed listing there goes back to 1988, when the state put the plant in weed class B. It sits on the Washington quarantine list too, and that list bars transport, sale, or distribution of the plant, its parts, or its seed inside state lines. Anywhere else, the answer rides on what your own state board says.
The orange showed up along the fence line where the mower stops, a thin band of it maybe 20 feet (6 m) long. I pulled one clump and got runners heading both ways, some creeping over the soil and some under it. Seeds, stolons, and rhizomes all work at once in this plant, so a single patch pushes out in three ways instead of one. By June the band had crossed the fence and was sitting in pasture grass.
That three-way habit is why a plant like this lands on a quarantine list in the first place. Seed starts fresh patches away from the parent. Stolons walk it sideways over open ground. Rhizomes carry it under a mowed edge, so the tops you cut tell you nothing about how far it has already gone. Take the flowers off and the underground half is untouched.
The class B listing is one thing, and the quarantine list is the part with teeth for a shopper. No nursery in Washington may sell you Hieracium aurantiacum, ship it, or hand over its seed. The wording reaches plant parts as well, so a division passed over a fence counts the same as a pot bought at a register. What those rules cover is sale and movement, not what you do with a plant already standing in your yard, so I won't tell you that planting is banned there. And this is Washington only. I checked no other state's list, and yours may read differently.
In bloom you can pick it out without much trouble. Flowerheads run about 1 inch (2.5 cm) across, red on the margin with an orange center, and they sit in clusters of 3 to 7 or more on one stem. The bright orange is the tell, since the other hawkweeds don't carry that color. If the flowers come up yellow, you have a different hawkweed on your hands, and you'd have to look that one up on its own terms. In pasture and range it is an aggressive, unpalatable competitor, and it turns into a serious pest of lowland pasture, mountain meadows, and lawns.
The Washington State Noxious Weed Control Board notes that the plant is still sold as an ornamental in nurseries. A price tag is not legal clearance. An invasive orange flower can sit on a bench beside the bedding plants with nothing on its label about weed status, which puts the check on you rather than the seller.
- Search: Pull up your state noxious weed board and search the site for orange hawkweed and for the botanical name.
- Read the class: Note whether the plant sits on a quarantine list, since that is the part that covers sale and transport.
- Ask the seller: Ask the nursery what your state list says about the plant, and treat a shrug as a no.
- Skip anything you cannot confirm, because one clump is far cheaper to avoid than to dig out.
Check your own state's noxious weed board before you hand over money. If the plant shows up on the list, walk past it and buy a different orange bloom. If it doesn't, you're still taking on a plant that spreads three ways at once, and I'd keep it far from any pasture or open meadow you care about.
Read the full article: 10 Orange Flowers Worth Planting
