What is the genus name of the hawkweed plant that Mendel studied?

The genus name of the hawkweed plant that Mendel studied was Hieracium. The name covers hawkweeds, flowering plants in the daisy family, Asteraceae, and the genus is closely related to dandelions and chicory.

After his famous pea experiments, Gregor Mendel investigated Hieracium hybrids because they behaved differently from his pea crosses. Instead of showing the expected segregation patterns, some hawkweed offspring appeared remarkably uniform. This unusual result helped reveal the importance of asexual seed formation, now called apomixis, in some Hieracium groups.

A common mix-up is Taraxacum, the genus of dandelions. Dandelions and hawkweeds belong to the same broader tribe, Cichorieae, and both often have yellow flower heads, but they are separate genera. Pisum, meanwhile, is the pea genus Mendel used for his best-known inheritance experiments.

Botanical classification within hawkweeds can be complicated: some botanists recognize hundreds or thousands of species, while others divide parts of the traditional genus into Hieracium and Pilosella.