Geograph - photograph every grid square

Senecio smithii is a big and rather coarse composite, known as Magellan Ragwort (or sometimes, and less accurately, as Australian Daisy, but it is neither a daisy nor from Australia). The plant is a native of southern South America. Popular belief is that the plant was brought to Shetland by Shetlanders returning from the whaling or from sheepfarming in the Falklands, but the plant is not found in areas that Shetlanders would have visited. It is more likely that the plant came to Shetland as a garden plant, but it has become naturalised outside gardens, finding the climate to its liking.