Tridax procumbens L.

Coatbuttons

Herb

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Vascular

Coatbuttons is an introduced annual or perennial herb in the Sunflower family (Asteraceae). It is native to Central and South America, but has become established in many tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions around the world. In Alabama in has been recorded from the southern third of the state. Coatbuttons occurs in nursery stock, in flower beds, on roadsides, and in other ruderal habitats. It is a creeping or ascending herb, rooting along the procumbent stems. The leaves are opposite, petiolate, lanceolate to ovate in outline, with pinnately lobed or coarsely toothed margins. The leaves are glabrous or pubescent, especially along the veins. Flowers are produced in cylindric to hemispheric heads. The heads are solitary on long peduncles. Each head has 3-8 white to pale creamy-yellow ray flowers that are three-lobed and pistillate. The bright yellow disc flowers average 40-80 and are bisexual. The fruit is a dark brown, cylindrical, pilose achene with a tuft of plumose pappus. Tridax procumbens is listed as a Federal Noxious Weed.—A. Diamond.

A pernicious pantropical weed that has only recently been discovered in Alabama from Mobile County (Howard Horne pers. com. 2018).

Not Native

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