Went up to the recycle bins to dump some cardboard. As I was turning I noticed a clump of yellow flowers in the hedgerow.

Snipped off a section and got busy with the ring flash when I got back home. Uploaded 8 pix on Flickr and Morguefile. Taking the example from Roger Phillips I now take a picture of the extended stalk as well as leaf and blossoms.  I had not taken any shots of this obtrusive weed previously. Known by the Scots as "Stinking Billie" after the Duke of Cumberland who had defeated them at Culloden this weed is injurious to cattle if consumed for any length of time.

Even though its consumption will kill cattle, Culpeper says of ragwort :—

Ragwort is under the command of Dame Venus, and cleanses, digests, and discusses. The decoction of the herb is good to wash the mouth or throat that hath ulcers or sores therein: and for swellings, hardness, or imposthumes, for it thoroughly cleanses and heals them; as also the quinsy, and the king's evil. It helps to stays catarrhs, thin rheums, and defluxions from the head into the eyes, nose, or lungs. The juice is found by experience to be singularly good to heal green wounds, and to cleanse and heal all old and filthy ulcers in the privities, and in other parts of the body, as also inward wounds and ulcers; stays the malignity of fretting and running cankers, and hollow fistulas, not suffering them to spread farther. It is also much commended to help aches and pains either in the fleshy part, or in the nerves and sinews, as also the sciatica, or pain of the hips or knuckle-bone, to bathe the places with the decoction of the herb, or to anoint them with an ointment made of the herb bruised and boiled in old hog's suet, with some Mastick and Olibanum in powder added unto it after it is strained forth. In Sussex we call it Ragweed.