Guide

Look closerPlants

Winter rosettes: plants that wait out the cold flat on the ground

November to March

Many wild plants, like Queen Anne's lace, common mullein, bull thistle, and shepherd's purse, spend the cold months as flat circles of green leaves lying on the ground. Some of these rosettes keep making food on mild winter days, and in spring or summer the plant sends up a flowering stalk.

Why this time of year

Once frost browns the grass and the taller plants die back, the rosettes stand out green against the dull ground. Winter annuals sprout in late summer or fall, biennials made theirs during the past growing season, and both wait out the winter in this flat form.

How to notice it

  1. On a dry day, walk the edge of a lawn, a path, or a weedy field where the ground is bare of snow, and look for green circles of leaves lying flat against the ground.
  2. Crouch down and look from the side: count how many leaves overlap and notice that there is no tall stem, because every leaf starts right at the soil.
  3. Compare shapes without touching: soft, gray, felt-like leaves (common mullein), finely cut, ferny leaves (Queen Anne's lace), or spiny leaves (thistle).
  4. Pick one rosette and come back to it in early spring to see whether a stalk starts growing up from the middle.

Try this with kids: Can you find a flat green circle of leaves on the winter ground? Count its leaves with your eyes, hands in your pockets.

Word to know: “Rosette”: a ring of leaves that all grow from a very short stem at ground level.

Safety

  • Look, don't touch or pick. Poison hemlock also grows as a roadside rosette, and its ferny leaves can be mistaken for Queen Anne's lace. Wash hands if you brush against unknown plants.

Sources

  • umass.eduUMass Extension (primary, regional). Names Queen Anne's lace (wild carrot), evening primrose, burdock, common mullein, and moth mullein as biennials 'found in our area'. Biennials form a rosette in year one ('A rosette is a plant form with no central stalk'; 'All leaves in a rosette arise from close to the soil surface, as in thistle'). Winter annuals such as shepherd's purse 'germinate from seed in the late summer or early fall' and 'live through the winter'. Dandelion is listed as a perennial.
  • plantscience.psu.eduPenn State, Gover, Johnson, and Kuhns 2007 (primary, extension training module, PDF). Winter annuals 'overwinter as a rosette. In the rosette stage, the stem of a plant does not elongate so all the leaves are close to the ground', and 'Early the next spring the plants bolt'. Biennials 'overwinter as a rosette'. Roadside biennials include wild carrot, bull thistle, and poison hemlock (basis for the safety note). Dandelion is a perennial whose new rosettes form from crown buds on the taproot.
  • agris.fao.orgFAO AGRIS record of Regehr and Bazzaz 1976, 'Low Temperature Photosynthesis in Successional Winter Annuals', Ecology 57(6):1297-1303 (primary research, read via the bibliographic record and abstract). Measured species included Capsella bursa-pastoris (shepherd's purse). 'Rosette leaf temperatures, at air temperatures of 0 degrees - 10 degrees C, were up to 10 degrees C above air temperature'. Winter photosynthesis at 15 C approached maximum summer rates. The authors suggest this may explain why winter annuals dominate in spring.
  • gobotany.nativeplanttrust.orgNative Plant Trust Go Botany (botanical authority). Common mullein 'develops a basal rosette of felt-like leaves the first year', then bolts. It is a biennial recorded in all six New England states, including Massachusetts, in meadows, fields, roadsides, and disturbed ground.
  • ontario.caOntario government weed identification guide (primary, government). Common mullein 'grows as a rosette throughout the season. The rosette overwinters and then flowers, producing seed in its second year of growth'.
  • extension.illinois.eduUniversity of Illinois Extension (primary, extension blog, Jan 2020). Winter annuals 'survive through the winter, many times by growing into small rosettes low to the ground' and in winter 'are green and have grown to a size easy to see against an otherwise dull background' (basis for why_now and the timing).
  • uaex.uada.eduUniversity of Arkansas Extension (primary, refute pass): 'it can be difficult for the untrained eye to spot the difference between wild carrot and poison hemlock'; 'Seedlings start as a basal rosette'; wild carrot itself 'reported to produce neurotoxins'. Basis for the look-don't-touch safety note.
  • gobotany.nativeplanttrust.orgNative Plant Trust Go Botany (refute pass): poison hemlock present in Massachusetts on 'Roadsides, fields, waste areas'.
  • gobotany.nativeplanttrust.orgNative Plant Trust Go Botany (refute pass): bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) is biennial and present in Massachusetts.

Checked against these sources on October 23, 2026.

In the guide for November, December, January, February, March

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