Centaurea boissieri

Centaurea boissieri is a perennial herb of the Asteraceae endemic to the western Mediterranean, with its main range in the Iberian Peninsula (especially the calcareous mountains of southern and eastern Spain) and adjacent North Africa. It grows on rocky limestone slopes, scree, and dry stony grasslands from foothills into the subalpine zone. The plant forms a low cushion or rosette from a stout woody rootstock, with much-divided, pinnately or bipinnately lobed grey-green leaves covered in a dense whitish tomentum. Branched flowering stems 10-40 cm tall bear solitary or few terminal heads with hard, overlapping involucral phyllaries whose appendages are fringed with pectinate spines or fimbriae. The florets are pink to purple, all tubular and without true rays. Several subspecies and microspecies are recognized within the C. boissieri group, distinguished by phyllary appendage morphology.