H. niger: annual or biennial, hairy, viscid, with a nauseous smell: annual plants erect, about one foot high, the leaves sessile, the upper ones clasping the stem, ovate, irregularly pinnatifid: biennial plants producing a tuft of large, stalked, elliptic, radical leaves which perish, and in the follow-ing year a coarse branched stem 1-2 feet high; flowers in onesided leafy spikes,rolled back at the top before flowering; calyx persistent round the fruit, strongly veined, with five stiff, broad, almost prickly lobes; corolla lurid-yellow, with purplish veins. - Waste, stony places, roadsides, etc. Fl. July.