Jersey knapweed

Centaurea paniculata is a slender biennial to short-lived perennial herb of the Asteraceae family standing 25-80 cm tall from a slim woody rootstock. The stems are erect, wiry, finely ridged, distinctly white-cottony or grey-pubescent and much-branched in the upper two-thirds in a characteristic open panicle. The basal and lower-stem leaves are once- to twice-pinnatisect into narrowly oblong-linear lobes 1-2 mm wide, sparsely white-tomentose to almost glabrous; the upper stem leaves are progressively reduced, becoming entire, linear and bract-like. The flower heads are small, very numerous, and borne singly at the tips of slender panicle branches. Each head is 8-13 mm long with an ovoid involucre of imbricate appressed bracts; the bract appendages are small, triangular to oval, pale green to pinkish-tinged, with a short scarious tip and a fringe of fine teeth 0.5-1 mm long, lacking the conspicuous black-fringed appendages of related species. All florets are tubular pink to purplish-pink, the marginal sterile florets slightly enlarged and somewhat radiate, the central fertile florets producing the seed. The fruit is a small obovate glabrous cypsela 2-3 mm long crowned by a short reddish pappus of unequal scabrous bristles. Native to dry stony slopes, garrigue, gravelly riverbeds and roadsides of southern and western Europe.